Cannot Create Restore Media for Bare Metal Restore

[DRepke]

I have been using Active Backup for Business on my DS220+ Synology NAS for the past several months to backup the Windows 10 Pro computers on my home network. I have used individual file restore at least a few times without any issues but I haven't tried to do a Bare Metal Restore. Recently, I decided to test the Bare Metal Restore which, to my surprise (and disappointment), would NOT work.

My issue is not being able to create the Restore Media required to do the restore. I have NOT been able to create either a USB or ISO restore media using Synology Restore Media Creator-2.5.0-2081(2631). I have tried at least 4 different USB sticks multiple times and the "create" process always takes nearly 15 minutes to complete (it never actually completes, it just "ends"). When I check the error log, once the "removable device detection" starts, I get nothing but a lengthy series of repeating error messages like this:

Start removable device detection
Feb 27 15:19:32 [ERROR] ../restore-media/platform/win/volume-info/win32-volume.cpp(229): DeviceIoControl first IOCTL_VOLUME_GET_VOLUME_DISK_EXTENTS failed 1
Feb 27 15:19:32 [ERROR] ../restore-media/platform/win/volume-info/win32-volume.cpp(183): getVolumeDiskExtents failed
Feb 27 15:19:32 [ERROR] ../restore-media/system-info-manager-win.cpp(178): Failed to get drive geometry(21)
Feb 27 15:19:32 [ERROR] ../restore-media/system-info-manager-win.cpp(178): Failed to get drive geometry(21)
Feb 27 15:19:32 [ERROR] ../restore-media/system-info-manager-win.cpp(178): Failed to get drive geometry(21)
etc...

I have tried this with 4 different USBs and at least 2 different DVDs using at least 4 different USB 2 and 3 ports on my Windows 10 Pro computer. The result is always the same. I have gotten this to work on my wife's Win10 Pro computer but it does NOT work on mine. It always "Failed to get drive geometry".

I am using Active Backup for Business to do a full backup of my system daily but what good is it if I cannot do a full restore.

I spent a lot of time searching the internet about this issue but could not find anything even remotely close. I've tried everything I can think of to get this to work but always get the same error.

Any and all help with this issue would be greatly appreciated. I'm totally lost.
Thank you.

 

[Telos]

Recently, I decided to test the Bare Metal Restore

Glad to see you take this step. I advise it for everyone, but few do, and some believe a VM restore is sufficient proof of work (it's not).

Hopefully you'll work this out, but if not, Veeam Agent for Windows (free) and Macrium Reflect Free, are solid alternatives.

 

[EAZ1964]

Cannot help you with the restore issue, this looks like serious and my recommendation is to raise a ticket at Synology.

Back to your way of working: nowadays, full bare metal backups of multiple PC‘s is a rare thing. In business environments, the data is split from the OS, and only data is taken into the backups.
This saves a lot of time in both backup and restore.
Windows OS and programs are installed fresh, or taken from a single mirror, kept on a spare SSD or whatever to be able to quickly restore.

Even better is to centralise the data on the nas and remove all data from the PC’s. Understand that this is not always possible eg if you are a video editor and need full SSD speed for the data.
Then backup from the NAS.

 

[dimfil]

I had issues myself too creating restore media, and when I finally did I could not connect to my NAS either by ethernet or by WiFi. Although the drivers seemed to be present and installed, no connection could be established.

I can't understand what is going wrong with Synology's media creator but I have given up trying it. I ended up using a pre-built Win PE iso (HBCD_PE for example) and put there a copy of ABB Recovery Wizard. It works just fine that way, tested with all my computers at home.

 

[DRepke]

Veeam Agent for Windows (free) and Macrium Reflect Free, are solid alternatives

I am already using Macrium Reflect and also have SyncBackPro and AOMEI available but would still like to get ActiveBackup working.

-- post merged: 12. Mar 2023 --

Cannot help you with the restore issue, this looks like serious and my recommendation is to raise a ticket at Synology.

I did finally submit a ticket a few days ago but haven't heard anything yet.

 

[EAZ1964]

"There is nothing so useless as doing something efficiently, that should not have been done in the first place"
Peter Drucker