I installed Backupper v3.2 on my new Asus laptop with 64-bit Windows 8.1 and created the WinPE boot CD. I then did a Windows reset, rebooted to the CD and performed a disk backup using intelligent-sector and high-compression options. The following GPT partitions are factory-installed:
100MB FAT32 EFI system partition (active, boot)
128MB unformatted Microsoft reserved
95GB NTFS OS (system)
128GB NTFS Data
15GB NTFS Recovery
During backup, Backupper threw errors about the VSS service not being available, but proceeded OK. Then I rebooted and went through the initial Windows installation. As a test, I rebooted to the Backupper CD and restored the OS partition. After reboot, Windows indicated that it was repairing and diagnosing, and then I went through initial Windows installation successfully again.
The problem occurred when I rebooted to the Backupper CD and did a disk restore (all partitions). Windows indicated that there was a problem and would not start, even after another reboot. Therefore, I gave up on Aomei Backupper, and I restored my disk to factory defaults using the backup I created with Asus Backtracker instead.
Some questions:
1. Did the problem occur because I did not perform a sector-by-sector backup of the first two partitions, and that Microsoft is changing data in them?
2. Is there a way in Backupper to do a sector-by-sector backup of the first two partitions and intelligent-sector backup of the last three partitions when performing a disk backup?
3. Can I achieve the same goal with separate partition backups? If so, is the order of the restore important?
4. Do all partition backups contain starting and ending sector info so they can be restored to the same location?
5. Does only the backup of the active boot partition contain the partition table?
I need to understand these things better before I reformat the disk and install Windows using different partitioning. After that, I can only use Asus Backtracker to restore to factory defaults. I would like to learn how to use Aomei Backupper to restore my own backups.