Problems performing a full system restore on Dell XPS 8700

[Gonad]

I'm using the latest version of SSR 2013 on a Windows 8.1 PC. My SSR boot disk is also the latest version.

Recently I had to perform a full system restore to the same hard drive that had been fully wiped (not just reformatted but all partitions erased etc.).

No problem I thought. That's why I use SSR 2013 for backups!

However after booting to the SSR recovery disk and selecting a full system restore using the .sv2i file, a whole series of errors came up relating to invalid partitions etc. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact messages.

These can usually be fixed by clicking the Edit button for each partition (six of them in my case). However this didn't work and I kept getting error messages telling me that a maximum of four primary partitions are allowed.

Eventually I gave up and performed a Dell factory restore. This restored all of the system partitions. All I had to do then was to do an SSR restore of my OS partition to replace the newly restored OS partition of EXACTLY the same size.

Even this failed first time. Eventually I got it working by booting to a partition manager utility disk and deleting the OS partition. After booting to the SSR disk again, the OS restore worked and my PC is back up and running.

It's very disappointing that SSR didn't work first time and restore all of the system partitions in one go as I expected it to do. It took me a couple of days to finally get it sorted out.

I was just wondering if this is a common problem when trying to perform a full multiple partition system restore.

Is there anything I can do to make any future recoveries behave as expected?

Alan

[TRaj]

Well I applogize as SSR SRD did not work well!

But to get to the cause of the issue wherin , if the product like SSR is at fault we need in depth investigation and evidence.

You said " a whole series of errors came up relating to invalid partitions etc. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact messages". It is very important to collect evidence in such situation for the technicians to provide you best solutions and if it is a product fault to fix the same right away.

However , now since you do not remember the error messages , there could be many facts and cause of the restore fail. It could also be mis management of the partitions as you said "Eventually I gave up and performed a Dell factory restore. This restored all of the system partitions. All I had to do then was to do an SSR restore of my OS partition to replace the newly restored OS partition of EXACTLY the same size"

Now I would like to know what were the options choosen to perform the recovery ?

You said you had 6 partitions , what were these partitions ( example system reserved , dell utility , C:, etc )

[Gonad]

Thanks for the reply. I'll have another attempt at a restore when I can get hold of a spare disk as I'm not prepared to do any more experimenting with my current drive now that it's working again.

Then I can let you have some more specific details of the problem.

I've attached a screen capture of the Dell XPS 8700 partitions using MiniTool Partition Wizard as it shows more details that the Windows Disk Manager.

All I can say for now is that I have been using Ghost for many years, right up to version 15 and never experienced such problems before.

There definitely seems to be a problem here when performing a multiple partition restore.

I'm sure you'll get some similar reports in the near future.

Alan