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Restoring Windows 2008 R2 to a blank disk

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:27 pm
by lmeyer
I tried to restore Windows 2008 R2. I first tried to install Windows 2008 R2 server and restore over the active installation. Unfortunately, to server did not boot after the restore.

The problem is related to the 100MB Sytem reserved partition: on the old disk it was present, but it was missing on the new install.

I also tried to restore to the blank disk with the Restore CD, but I was confused about how to create the system reserved partition, because the AISBackup restore CD didn't let me create a partition that is not linked to a drive letter.

What is the recommended way to partition a blank drive in a way to end up with a System Reserved partition and a OS partition ?

Boot files

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:16 pm
by Barry
Was the boot partition backed up on the old disk or have you still got access to the old disk? This could be from another Server 2008, indeed the boot files from Windows 7 or 8 may work. It may also be possible to extract the boot files from Server 2008 on the 'C' drive to itself (by copying to the correct place and then using AISBackup to make the boot work) - I will try this here first if you like.

Barry

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 1:03 pm
by lmeyer
This is how I did:
  • 1. Clean install of Server 2008 R2 (with disk controller driver)
    2. Restore the partition C: from the backup using AISBackup restore CD. Imporrtant: keep the boot folder and files.
It worked perfectly. Thanks

Restore

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:26 pm
by Barry
I am please to hear that this worked out.

I am still going to look into repairing or making the boot files in the 'C' drive if the boot partition is missing or is corrupt.

Barry