Trying to repair copied bootcamp partition

In fact I used the restore functionality of the Disk Utility. As far as I understand this does not work on file basis, but on sector basis, or am I wrong? The GUI of the Disk Utility shows (I am trying to translate the German GUI) "Source" and "Destination Medium", and I drag and drop the partition showed on the left side of the GUI into the input lines, and then press "Restore". So I did "Restore" twice, the first time from the Windows partition to the external drive and then from the external drive to the new bootcamp partition (containing the fresh Windows installation). I thought that this procedure is more or less the same as using some command like "dd".

And, yes, the old hard disk still exists, and I could try to access it via a SATA/USB adapter (which is quite slow).

So is the "Windows Backup/Restore System Image" you mention something else than I created with Disk Utility?

OK, so the procedure would be like that:

1. Re-exchange the hard drive (I was trying to avoid that ..)

2. Boot from the old drive

3. Use some Windows tool to create an image of the running system on my external drive (maybe I have to repartition it. Hopefully Windows can access FW drives.)

4. Re-re-exchange the hard disk

5. Install a fresh Windows on an arbitrary partition (size must be larger or same)

6. Use the new fresh Windows to restore the old Windows from external drive.

OK?

Unfortunately that did not work.

This is what I tried:

- I used dd instead of Disk Utility, with the same result: black screen with some text "read error". I just wanted to check if it's a Disk Utility problem.

- Following your advice I re-inserted the old Windows drive and created a kind of "system image" (called "Systemabbild" in German Windows) on an external FW drive which in fact is a directory containing lots of strange hidden files.

- I changed the disk again and installed a BOOTCAMP partition and Windows on the new drive.

- When trying to access the FW drive, that failed.

- So I had the idea that I first have to install some magic "updates" to Windows, like Service Pack 1. And after some hours and various failed attempts I got a Windows that could access the external FW drive.

- In the system control panel I looked for the "restore from image" function, which is kind of hidden (I do not like Windows very much, and there was no reason to change my mind...), and managed to activate it.

- Instead of asking which image to restore to which partition a kind of "mini Windows" started, that was not able to access the external FW drive.

- So I copied the restore data directory to a USB drive (Windows told me: One directory, zero files, zero bytes, but took hours ...).

- In the next attempt the mini Windows found the restoration data, but denied to install it to the disk it was started from. Why? So again no reason to like Windows...

- As next try I booted from the Windows DVD and found the image restoration program, this one could access the external USB drive, but again gave me no choice where to restore the data to.

- Instead Windows wants to partition and format every single drive in my computer and erase any data including Mac OS.

- After some investigations I found some very good article explaining that this exactly is what this function is meant for, i.e. restoring not the volume, but the computer, including any disk. I still do not like Windows...

So it seems that this method is basically wrong. Is there an alternative method to restore the C: partition without touching any partition or disk? Or was the backup strategy (creating the image) the wrong way, and there is a better solution that creates an image not of the system, but only for the C: partition?

Yes, I had already taken some screenshots (using a digital camera, so the quality is not really optimal, but with some help of "gimp"...).

1.

Start from Windows 7 installation DVD. There is a language selection popup, but this is "fake", as there is only German.

2.

I chose "Computerreparaturoptionen" (Options to repair the computer)

3.

A window "Systemwiederherstellungsoptionen" (system restore options) opened, and a progress bar tells that it is searching for Windows installations.

The new Windows partition (191686 MB) is shown in the list.

4.

One can choose between "repair operating system that does no longer start" or "restore the computer using a previously created system image". For germanists: Notice the dumb-ugly denglish word "WiederherstellungsTOOLS". :-)

I selected the second choice (system restore)

5.

This dialogue window has a wrong window title (the text white on blue). The title says "create a new system image", but the text inside the window tells "The computer will be restored using a system image. Any ⚠ data on the computer will be replaced with the data of the system image".

As only one system image was found (that on my external USB harddisk, here obviously called "H:"), there was no choice.

6.

This dialogue also has the wrong title, as before. The text black on white tells "Select further restore options". The upper checkbox is greyed out, but enabled (!). It basically tells that ANY DRIVE WILL BE REPARTITONED, AND ANY PARTITION ON ANY DRIVE will be formatted and overwritten. There is sub-dialogue that can be opened using the box called "Datenträger ausschließen..." (exclude data storage devices).

7.

Still the wrong window title...

This dialogue allows excluding data storage devices which shall not be restored. These devices shall not be formatted or repartitioned. Any internal hard disk is listed here, including that I wanted to restore Windows to, and an external USB stick. The text below the list, black on grey, tells that the data storage device 7 has already been excluded, because it contains the system image that has to be restored. Note that this text is also misleading or even wrong, because it tells that the SYSTEM IMAGE has to be restored. This is nonsense, because in fact the image is the source that is used to restore the computer, not the image. Typical for Microsoft...

(too many images for one message, message will be continued)

(continued from previous message)

8.

Again the wrong windows title...

It tells "The computer will be restored using the following system image.", "Drive to be restored: C:". For germanists: There is another typo, the box below must be "fertigstellen" (finish), not "fertig stellen" (something senseless like "ready put").

This was the point when I got panic and stopped the process with "Abbrechen" (Cancel). I expected the process at least to repartition and reformat the drive with the BOOTCAMP partition (first partition is HFS+, second one is NTFS/BOOTCAMP).

9.

When cancelling the process, this window appears (system restore options). Among others this allows the selection of "repair system start", "restore system" ("restore Windows and reset it to a previous state") and "restore system image" ("restore computer using a previously created system image").

From my current knowlege the option "restore Windows" should have been the better one, preferrable to "restore computer", but in this case the choice to create a system image had been wrong.

This whole process is nicely explained here: http://www.edv-lehrgang.de/festplatte-mit-systemabbild-wiederherstellen/ (in German), and this article confirms that the hard disk the Windows partition will be restored to will be repartitioned and reformatted, and any other partition on the same hard disk will be deleted. So in my case the HFS+ partition on the same hard disk will be destroyed.

As a conclusion I would now check the other Windows backup method (not system image backup) and test if that can be restored to a different partition, or use a third party tool as you mentioned.

The "system restore" method ("Systemwiederherstellung") does just not work as expected. It only resets the installation to an earlier version, without using any backup data.

So this does not help.

In a running Windows one can enable a backup service, like a poor version of TimeMachine, but when restoring the data from the backup device, this can only be done in the running system, and any files in use cannot be restored.

So this does also not help.

As a "final" solution I physically removed all drives from the computer (just to be sure) and tried the system restore from system image way, that one that is supposed to partition and format every drive. When Windows has gathered all parameters (which system to restore, which system image as source for restore process, which drives to exclude, etc.) this polite, well done and nice dialogue box appears:

It basically tells:

- "create new system image" (the usual wrong window title...)

- Error during restoration of system image (the usual Windows nonsense, meaning: restoration of computer using the image...)

- No data storage device for restoration was

The rest of the sentence is missing.

Well done, Microsoft! The 90 EUR I spent for this piece of junk called "operating system" obviously were too much.

😠

Of course newer versions of Windows might possibly be better. My Windows DVD was manufactured in 2009 or 2010, when in most cases the MBR partition scheme was used, and GPT support could be in an early state and thus rather poor.