USB Bare Metal Restore: Advanced Partitioning

Topic

This article explains how to work with the Advanced Partitioning schemes available in the Datto USB BMR environment. It assumes that you have already completed the steps in USB Bare Metal Restore: Booting the target machine from USB , have reviewed the Beginning the restore article, and that you have elected to manually partition your Bare Metal Restore.

Environment

  • Datto SIRIS
  • Datto ALTO
  • Datto Bare Metal Restore (BMR)

Description

Index

General Warnings

  • When a partition is too small for the minimum space required the status will show a warning and not allow the user to proceed.
  • When a partition is too large for the size of the disk, the user will be prevented from continuing with a reason explaining why the partition table is not acceptable.
  • When using the Mirroring option, you will not be able to manually partition unless the automatic partition fails. In this situation, you must ensure that the partition is larger than the volume you are restoring to it in order to accommodate the mirrored data.

NOTE   If a partition is sized incorrectly, diskpart (external link) can be used to resize the partition.

Linux Partitioning

If you are performing a Bare Metal Restore of a Linux system, keep the following differences in mind while you go through this process:

  • The file system type will be ext2, ext3, ext4, or xfs unless the partition is for swap. You'll need to use manual partitioning to add a swap.
  • If there is only one partition, it will be bootable by default.
  • If there is a separate /boot partition, set it to be bootable, and make sure it is the first partition listed.

Getting started

By this point in the process, you should see the Partition Manager environment.

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Figure 1: Partition Manager

Setting up an OS partition

Your next steps depend on whether you want your target machine to use Master Boot Record or GUID Partitioning Table (GPT). The advantages of GPT include EFI booting and creating volumes over 2.2 TB in size. Make sure that you have hardware that supports EFI before you choose this option.

Setting up an MBR OS Partition

To set up an MBR OS partition, follow these steps:

  1. Create the partition scheme. The Bare Metal Restore wizard will suggest a partition layout, Review the information presented carefully.

IMPORTANT  Any configurations made or accepted in this step will delete existing partitions on the production machine when the changes are committed. The BMR utility will not preserve existing production data.

IMPORTANT  Do not exclude any partitions which reside on a single drive in a multi-partition configuration; doing so will cause all partitions to be erased.

  1. Click Add Partition. Create the OS partition with an MBR partition scheme. Set the Type to Primary, and the size to be larger than the original OS drive that you are restoring. Set the File System to NTFS.
  2. Click Bootable. Then, set the Restore Mount Point to the volume you are restoring. Note that you'll receive a warning if the partition size exceeds the size of the disk, as in the example below.

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Figure 2: Creating a Windows OS partition

  1. If you need to create a data partition, go to the Setting up a data partition section below.
  2. Click Accept when done.

Then, proceed to the article USB BMR: Data Transfer.

Setting up GPT OS partition

To set up a GPT OS partition, follow these steps:

Create the partition scheme. The Bare Metal Restore wizard will suggest a partition layout. Review the information presented carefully.

IMPORTANT  Any configurations made or accepted in this step will delete existing partitions on the production machine when the changes are committed. The BMR utility will not preserve existing production data.

IMPORTANT  For single drives containing multiple partitions, it is critical that no partitions be excluded. Failure to include all partitions in this scenario will result in data loss.

  1. On the physical drive that you want to use for the OS, set the Partition Scheme to GPT.

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Figure 3: GPT Partition Scheme

  1. Click Add Partition, and create a primary GPT partition with an EFI file system format. Set the Size to 512 MB by entering .5 in the Size field.

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Figure 4: EFI Partition

  1. Click Add Partition again, and create a Microsoft Reserved partition with an MSR file system format. Set the Size to 128 MB by entering .125 in the Size field.

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Figure 5: Microsoft Reserved Partition

  1. Click Add Partition, and create the OS partition as the primary boot partition. Set the size to at least 20% more storage space than the system you are restoring. Set the file system to NTFS, check the Bootable box, and select the Restore Mount Point of the volume you are restoring. See Figure 6.

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Figure 6: OS Partition

  1. Click Add to add the partition. You will see the window shown in Figure 8. If you need to create a separate data partition, go to the Setting up a Data Partition section of this article.
  2. When done with partitioning, click Accept. Then, proceed to the article USB BMR: Data Transfer.

Setting up a data partition

To set up the data partition, follow these steps:

  1. Create the partition scheme. The Bare Metal Restore wizard will suggest a partition layout, as shown in Figure 8. Review the information presented carefully.

IMPORTANT  Any configurations made or accepted in this step will delete existing partitions on the production machine when the changes are committed. The BMR utility will not preserve existing production data.

IMPORTANT  Do not exclude any partitions which reside on a single drive in a multi-partition configuration; doing so will cause all partitions to be erased.

  1. If you need to add a partition, click Add Partition, and create the new partition scheme in MBR or GPT format, as desired. See Figure 7.

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Figure 7: Setting the Partition Scheme

  1. Choose NTFS for the file system. Make the size at least 20% larger than the existing data set that you want to restore.

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Figure 8: Adding a data partition

If you want to set up another data partition, repeat the steps in this section.

  1. Click Apply when done, then, proceed to the article USB BMR: Data Transfer.