Offline incremental restore, possible?

[Rhyslin]

I'm about to replace a Windows disk (is the system C: volume) that has not yet failed. And I want to minimize the downtime for the system I'm going to replace the disk in. So, does this strategy work on Retrospect 9.5?

1. Mount the new drive in an USB enclosure (will now be something like E: or F:)
2. Restore the most current snapshot to the new drive using a Restore Entire Volume option.
3. Do a final backup of the current disk.
4. Restore to the new drive using a Replace if Backup is Newer option
5. Bring down the system, swap the drives

Will that 2nd restore take considerably less time (about 200 GB of files will be restored for the full volume, probably less than 1 GB for the 2nd backup/restore cycle).

 

After doing a whole disk restore like this, should I start a new backup set, or will it be able to handle future incremental backups?

 

Thanks.

[Lennart_T]

The answer is "that depends". 

 

For one thing, Windows 10 is not supported.

I doubt the restored drive will be bootable. This is a Windows problem, not a Retrospect problem per se. Please see:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/clone-disk-and-make-it-bootable/a8a6ebbd-f8ac-4482-9ec1-8eda3707de87?auth=1

 

Provided you are running Windows 8.1 or less and provided you can make the new drive bootable, I say your chances are good to do what you want.