Failure of BMR in Essentials due to EFI partition error

[TwoWheels]

I'll try to give a l the pertainent details.

I have a Lenovo Flex 4 1580 that came with a 512GB Liteon SSD. That drive failed, and I'm trying to replace it with a 1TB Sandisk SSD.

I used network PE boot to launch the restore, and then used ctrl-alt-shift to run diskpart. In diskpart, I created the two partitions on the existing drive, a 1GB WINRE_DRV partition and the remainder of the disk (I think) as a primary NTFS partition (which came out to 930GB approx).

After restoring 100% (0% remaining, more precisely), it timed out and gave this error:

[08/19/2019 00:33:04  664] RestoreHelper::FixBootBlock: fixing boot block
[08/19/2019 00:33:04  664] RestoreHelper::ExtendVolume: extending the volume
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] Restoring ESP
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0x0, size: 0x4400
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0x4400, size: 0xfbc00
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0x100000, size: 0x6400000
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0x6500000, size: 0x8000000
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0xe500000, size: 0xe891900000
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] Found existing volume
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0xe89fe00000, size: 0x41000000
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] existing offset: 0xe8e0e00000, size: 0x1fbe00
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] FormatPartitionEsp called for disk \\?\PhysicalDrive0
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] Formatting ESP partition at offset 0x8100000
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] ERROR: FormatPartitionEx failed, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] ERROR: FormatPartitionEsp failed, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] RestoreHelper::T_Restore: failed to restore ESP, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] RestoreHelper::T_Restore: restore complete with return value 536870914
[08/19/2019 00:33:27  664] ERROR: CDialog_Restore::Completed failed, HR=0x80070002 (at func: CDialog_Restore::Completed, admin\serveressentials\backup\pc\bmr\restorewizard\dialog_restore.cpp (97)

I tried the instructions in Client BMR failed for UEFI machine in advanced mode , but the calculation in powershell yielded a non-integer, negative number of -2048.74120616913. 

Based on the article, I'm assuming that instead of padding, I need to reduce the size of SOMETHING by 2GB, but I'm not clear how to do that so it lands on precisely the same address, particularly because of my fractional results from the powershell calculation.

 

Is there a way to determine the EXACT sizes for the WINRE_DRV, Windows, EFI, and MSR partitions from the backup itself. It seems odd that it handles what should be a straightforward restore so poorly (and manually). the Restore UI provides "human readable" sizes, but what is really needed are exact sizes in MB blocks, apparently.

 

Thanks for your assistance. This was my primary client machine and I really need it back!

 

 

 

 

[TwoWheels]

I should note that I originally relied on the steps in this article:

Restore a full system from an existing client computer backup

and used the diskpart steps verbatim - 100 and 128. 

So the confusing part to me is needing a negative 2048.xxx position for these, when creating a passing partition would create a positive offset?

[nrf]

I have found that these restore processes can be quite fussy, even on the server when directly recovering from disk. One kludge I have developed is to format the c drive and do a windows install, then recover onto that. seeing the length of that article it seems microsoft should be embarrassed at how not convenient it is. I have taken to keeping around a thumb drive with another products's recovery bootable image for restoring it as that company builds the drivers into the restore media. Just saying, not so easy...

Edited August 19, 2019 by nrf

[TwoWheels]

 

Update:

I tried again using diskpart to create a 2049 MB padding partition first. This time, I got this result:

[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0x0, size: 0x4400
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0x4400, size: 0xfbc00
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0x100000, size: 0x80100000
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0x80200000, size: 0x6400000
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0x86600000, size: 0x8000000
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0x8e600000, size: 0xe852800000
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] Found existing volume
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] existing offset: 0xe8e0e00000, size: 0x1fbe00
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] FormatPartitionEsp called for disk \\?\PhysicalDrive0
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] Formatting ESP partition at offset 0x8100000
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] ERROR: FormatPartitionEx failed, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] ERROR: FormatPartitionEsp failed, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] RestoreHelper::T_Restore: failed to restore ESP, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 12:25:27  420] RestoreHelper::T_Restore: restore complete with return value 536870914

so hopefully the "existing offset" numbers being different here, but still getting the same error, are helpful? I tried some [failed] math, and this is a 3rd try with padding partition increased by 22MB - still same error:

[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0x0, size: 0x4400
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0x4400, size: 0xfbc00
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0x100000, size: 0x81700000
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0x81800000, size: 0x6400000
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0x87c00000, size: 0x8000000
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0x8fc00000, size: 0xe851200000
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] Found existing volume
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] existing offset: 0xe8e0e00000, size: 0x1fbe00
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] FormatPartitionEsp called for disk \\?\PhysicalDrive0
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] Formatting ESP partition at offset 0x8100000
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] ERROR: FormatPartitionEx failed, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] ERROR: FormatPartitionEsp failed, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] RestoreHelper::T_Restore: failed to restore ESP, error 0x80042405
[08/19/2019 23:43:52  194] RestoreHelper::T_Restore: restore complete with return value 536870914

 

HELP!