To: editor@pcug.org.au
Subject: 16 Bits article
From: Paul Blair
Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:55:43 +1000

There is a story going around that Microsoft rushed Vista to market because (1) it was already way overdue and over-budget, and (2) the looming end of the calendar year meant that any further delay would force Microsoft to extend existing corporate contracts, at a loss to them. Whether either tale is true doesn't really matter, because there are some real concerns emerging about some of the "unfinished" items built into the package.

Microsoft has been gradually absorbing characteristics of other companies’ efforts for a while now. Picasa users needn't bother, there is a utility in Vista to do the job. WinZip users needn't bother, there is a (poor) unzip facility in Vista. And now we have a backup and restore facility in Vista. But it’s broke.

Windows XP Pro had a form of backup installed at setup time (the Home version could be easily upgraded to the Pro setup by adding a file from the XP CD). But restoration depended on first of all re-installing XP, then using the data from the XP backup to add in the extra items that you had installed.

The Vista business versions include the new image utility – home users, even premium home users, don’t get the privilege, as if their computer was less worthy of backing up. This seems a bit back-end-forward – business users are generally more professionally set up than home users, and have systems in place to protect “mission critical” stuff. Maybe Microsoft will reconsider this lop-sided arrangement.

The Vista Complete PC Backup (to use the proper title) makes an image - all the software you have on your drive (or drives). Like Ghost, Acronis and all those other things that you pay money for (or not - there is at least one free item.) So why would I bother writing all this?

The other half of the package, Complete PC Restore, is broke. Let me explain a bit of the process, and how you will know about the problem. And (wonder of wonders!) what to do about it.

Assume your main drive has been backed up to an image on a different drive, but then that main drive dies. Or it has become too small for your needs. You decide the best solution is to use a new (or bigger, or both) drive. You format it, and want to restore the image. This entails connecting up the two drives – the drive you want to put the image on, and the drive with the image.

The Vista install disk is also a repair disk, so you boot from it and follow the prompts to "repair". At this point you can choose to take the full restore option. You do this, but then you get an error message:

Windows Complete PC Restore operation failed.

Error details: There are too few disks on this computer or one or more of the disks is too small. Add or change disks so they match the disks in the backup and try the restore again. (0x80042401)

Golly. What does all that mean. "Too few disks" - well, there were 2 before, there are 2 now - ?? "Disks too small" - hmmm, the original was 120GB, the new one is 160GB...??

So I hunted around to see what I could find. The easiest way, if the mood takes you, is to Google for the error number.

The image I made is a full disk image, so my old 120GB main drive needs at least 120GB to backup to. The image might be only 50 or 60GB (remember that the imaging process does a small compression of the original), but the size rule still applies. You need the same or a bigger drive than the entire original drive to restore to. And it doesn’t matter what mix you have (SATA, ATA/IDE), the size rule is prime.

And note – if you backed up that 120GB drive to an 80GB drive (as I did), you still need at least a 120GB drive to backup to.

But even if you are 100% obedient, you will probably run into the error message. And I can only guess that the problem is that you have formatted the drive. Formatting adds a few bits and pieces to the drive, and, as best I can judge, they cause difficulties.

I spent most of a day trying to make this work (I’d had a drive failure, I had an image, and I also had a spare drive. I also had another backup drive, just in case.) But I wasn’t going to let facts get in the way of the chase.

As a starting point, I attached just the spare drive (160GB). It is SATA, so I booted up Vista and added the necessary driver. Then, from the Repair menu, I opened a command window (yep…still there!).

I opened “diskpart”, the disk utility. I then did “list volume” to see what was attached, and found my spare drive as volume 0. So I did “select volume=0” to attach it. This wasn’t really necessary, as the other two volumes were DVD drives, but I stuck with protocol.

Taking a deep breath, I typed “clean”. This brutal command is designed to remove any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus. On master boot record (MBR) disks, the MBR partitioning information and hidden sector information are overwritten. So the disk is bare, nude, naked, bereft, starkers…

I exited from Diskpart, and proceeded with the restore process, following the MS prompts. And it all worked fine this time.

There was still some housework to do. The restore had grabbed 120 of the 160GB, so I booted into Safe Mode and formatted the other 40MB (at this stage, the spare drive was rebooting itself continually, something I later figured was the lack of a driver, which sorted itself out.) And that was that.

The Microsoft team is aware of the problems, and will doubtless be working to amend the process in SP1 (due later this year) and the Help advice in the package.

One last thing. The MS image is full, complete, and indivisible. It is not possible to extract just one file or document from it. It’s all or nothing (until someone cracks the system and shows us how to do it…!)

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