Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 - Restore fails...

[drylightn]

Hi everyone! I backed up a 128 micro SD card to an image on my HD. I am attempting to copy it to another 32 gig microsd card (the 128 gig backup is mostly empty only about 30 gigs actully taken up). However, when I try to restore the image, I keep getting this error message:
2018-01-05_0-25-21.png

The microSD i'm trying to overwrite seems to work fine (i can copy files to it and delete them), so I'm not sure why it keeps saying the disk isn't initialized? Any ideas? Running win 8.1 pro.
thanks
Chad

[aoz987]

i can't see the full error message - but i would bet that even though your sd is 32 microsd, it is probably short on storage space, . do you have another micro-sd card, larger capacity, to try this with? or a spare hard drive?

[drylightn]

i can't see the full error message - but i would bet that even though your sd is 32 microsd, it is probably short on storage space, . do you have another micro-sd card, larger capacity, to try this with? or a spare hard drive?

Right, but thats why I'm using the software? Cause supposedly it will shrink the empty space to make it fit?

-Chad

[aoz987]

if adequate space is available, the softwre will work. But, (and this is not a paragon-specific issue), there many times needs to be working reserve space at the destination to allow for some file manipulation; and 32G is not always 32G; the MicroSD card itself may have some invisible operating system storage on it, and many times the makers of them (just like tv's) state 32g range, and it might be 31.5, etc (example, tv is 30 inch class, and still may be 29 inches diagonal), marketing is involved.
for my own preferences, I try to make sure that I have about a 5% extra space available, to allow for discrepancies.

[HenR]

Hi everyone! I backed up a 128 micro SD card to an image on my HD. I am attempting to copy it to another 32 gig microsd card (the 128 gig backup is mostly empty only about 30 gigs actully taken up). However, when I try to restore the image, I keep getting this error message:
2018-01-05_0-25-21.png

The microSD i'm trying to overwrite seems to work fine (i can copy files to it and delete them), so I'm not sure why it keeps saying the disk isn't initialized? Any ideas? Running win 8.1 pro.
thanks
Chad

I found a solution to the same error message:

I stumbled upon "Migrate OS To SSD Troubleshooting" - https://kb.paragon-software.com/article/94 - which explained that you have to ensure that the restore target drive has the same partition table type as the backed up drive - in terms of either MBR or GPT. My backup was from a modern GPT SSD but I was trying to restore it to an MBR-formatted USB-stick. So I had to change the USB-stick to GPT.
I use the free Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic, where you have to pay for that functionality, so instead I used GPartEd.org to convert the USB-memory from MBR to GPT. But to boot on the gparted CD, I needed to Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS... life is getting cumbersome, with UEFI, secure boot, GPT etc.etc.
But why did Paragon give me that non-sense error message "disk is not initialized"?

What annoyed me the most about Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic is, that when I wanted to put it on a boot CD, it asked me to install "WAIK ADK" from Microsoft, which takes up 7 GB on my SSD...! So I had to remove it again afterwards.

Another annoyance is that it is quite hard to figure out how far in the backup or restore process Paragon is. One minute it says 12 minutes left, the next minute the process has completed.

[HenR]

I found a solution to the same error message:

I stumbled upon "Migrate OS To SSD Troubleshooting" - https://kb.paragon-software.com/article/94 - which explained that you have to ensure that the restore target drive has the same partition table type as the backed up drive - in terms of either MBR or GPT. My backup was from a modern GPT SSD but I was trying to restore it to an MBR-formatted USB-stick. So I had to change the USB-stick to GPT.
I use the free Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic, where you have to pay for that functionality, so instead I used GPartEd.org to convert the USB-memory from MBR to GPT. But to boot on the gparted CD, I needed to Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS... life is getting cumbersome, with UEFI, secure boot, GPT etc.etc.
But why did Paragon give me that non-sense error message "disk is not initialized"?

What annoyed me the most about Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic is, that when I wanted to put it on a boot CD, it asked me to install "WAIK ADK" from Microsoft, which takes up 7 GB on my SSD...! So I had to remove it again afterwards.

Another annoyance is that it is quite hard to figure out how far in the backup or restore process Paragon is. One minute it says 12 minutes left, the next minute the process has completed.

NB!! - In the above mentioned process, I shrinked the Windows 10 partition on the SSD using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic on my new Lenovo Thinkpad L570, before backing it up. Something has corrupted Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. So now I will try restoring an earlier backup...

[HenR]

NB!! - In the above mentioned process, I shrinked the Windows 10 partition on the SSD using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 16 Basic on my new Lenovo Thinkpad L570, before backing it up. Something has corrupted Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. So now I will try restoring an earlier backup...

By now I doubt that it was Paragon shrinking my win10 partition that messed up a few things. I think it was GPartEd - or more specific, when I tried getting it to use my Danish keyboard mapping. It didn't work - just as 5 years ago... And it couldn't use the touchpad and trackpoint of the Lenovo, so I had to connect a USB-mouse. But beside that, it's a great free app!