Win 10 Image Restore from Network Location

I have tried for about a week and a half to restore an image backup of my system from a network location.

Windows 10 originally successfully completed the image backup to the network location (share): it told me it was successful, and I also inspected the network location to see if the contents made sense: they did.

I am using the repair disk I created originally when I updated my system to Win 10.  I have read and tried all of the usually suggested solutions like loading the network driver after repair disk startup and moving the image to "root level" of a share and nothing works.  I have also tried copying the image to an external usb drive: again, no luck (there is no option to point to an image location on a USB drive, only a network location).

From my searches for a solution, I see I am not alone with this problem.

After loading network drivers (after repair disk startup), I looked to see if I could access my network location share where the image backup is by pretending to look for a driver to add, and sure enough, I got prompted for the share's user id and password, which I presented, after which I could see my backup image.  Then I went back to the Advanced setting to select a network location to restore my image and the system (restore image utility) asked for the network location, then it asked for the share user id and password, which I entered (as in the previous step), and the system momentarily flashed a dialogue screen and went right back to the start of the process and offered no insight as to whether there was a problem or not.

Now, in an older post on this site - http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2009/10/31/learn-more-about-system-image-backup.aspx - from the Microsoft Storage Team Blog, I found the following statement:

"Considerations while creating a system image

Since system image is a critical feature to ensure availability of your system and data after a disaster, it is important to understand how some of the advanced configuration on your system may affect your options during restore.

1. Choosing the backup target

System image is supported on internal\external disks, optical removable media, and network locations (Business edition or above). Aside from the usual tradeoffs when picking a storage location such as performance and reliability, here are some additional recommendations to consider for picking a system image backup target:..."

While this post is 2009, I wonder whether the stated caveat about system image recovery only being available in "Business edition or above" still applies?

So, I have two questions:

1) Can anyone confirm whether image recovery from a network location requires a particular level of Windows OS product?

2) Or if not, can someone from Microsoft provide an answer why image restore from a network location does not seem to work for many, many people, and also, if it does work, what is the restore image utility actually looking for on the network location folder/file-wise and who/what privileges are required over and above authorized access to the network share?

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.

You can create and store Recovery image in a network location in Windows 10. System image is stored in the root of the network drive. Therefore, when you try to restore, the image it should be available in the root. If you store multiple back up copies, you must rename all the other backups and save one backup with the original name.

The network path should be as follows \\ComputerName\SharePath.

Hope this helps. Please respond if you have further related queries.

Thank you for your reply Jesinta.

I have tried various combinations of path and none seems to work.  Examples I have tried are:

\\NAStorage\WindowsImageBackup

\\NAStorage\WindowsImageBackup\ComputerName

\\NAStorage\WindowsImageBackup\ComputerName\Backup 2015-10-13 002128

My NAS drive is a Western Digital My Book Live.

Any further help would be gratefully received as I have three computers backed-up using this image backup method (and a further three friends computers also - so six computers in total depending on this method working if required).

One of my own computers needs the image to be restored as the hard disk has failed.

Also, can you please confirm or not whether the Windows version is a factor or not: I have Win 10 Pro.

 It's an old post, but this issue still remains in 2017 and Windows 10 Creators Update (ver 1703). Anyways, I managed to find a workaround. The workaround is to use command line tool WBADMIN which is installed by default when you create Windows 10 repair disc.

1. Boot with your repair disc.
2. Choose keyboard.
3. Choose an option: Troubleshoot.
4. Advanced Options: Command prompt.

Now you're in command prompt.

Start the network with command:

startnet

Check that you have valid IP configuration. If you don't, install necessarry driver and check again.

ipconfig

Connect to your network location which holds your backups.

net use \\pc1\backups /user:localhost\operator

In the example above adjust for your network name and user name.

Run wbadmin on it's own to see available parameters.

wbadmin

Run wbadmin to retrieve available versions of backups that can be recovered.

wbadmin get versions -backupTarget:\\pc1\backups

This will retrieve available version identifiers in the format 'MM/DD/YYYY-HH:MM'

Use the version identifier from above to restore your backup.

In the example below, I removed old disk (250 GB) and replaced it with a bigger one (500GB).

I chose to recreate disks and restore all volumes. Originaly, I had one disk with two volumes - 'system reserved' volume (500MB) and another volume occupying the rest of the disk.

The command below recreated these two volumes succesfully, but when I signed in, I had to extend the volume, because it created it with the original size of 250 GB.

Modify the command below to your needs. specifying version you want to restore, where your backup is being stored (-backupTarget), the machine you want to restore (-machine) and whether you want to recreate disks an restore all volumes.

wbadmin start sysrecovery -version:05/30/2017-22:05 -backuptarget:\\pc1\backups -machine:ds2 -recreateDisks -restoreAllVolumes

wbadmin 1.0 - Backup command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Troubleshooting information for BMR: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=225039

You have chosen to recover volume(s) \\?\Volume{319c017e-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\,C:
from the backup created on 5/30/2017 2:05 PM to the original location.
Warning:  You are about to recreate volumes, which will erase the data on all
volumes that contain operating system components. This action might also
delete data on data volumes. The deleted data will be replaced with the data
in the backup. If the disk layout is different from the layout when the
backup was created, this action will also erase data on the other disks. Once
the recovery operation starts, you cannot recover the erased data, even if
the action fails or is restarted.

Do you want to continue?
[Y] Yes [N] No y

Preparing all the volumes on all disk(s) for recovery.
Retrieving volume information...
Running a recovery operation for volume System Reserved (500.00 MB), copied (0%).
Running a recovery operation for volume System Reserved (500.00 MB), copied (94%).
Running a recovery operation for volume (C:), copied (0%)

Running a recovery operation for volume (C:), copied (20%).

...

Running a recovery operation for volume (C:), copied (97%).
Running a recovery operation for volume (C:), copied (99%).
The recovery operation for volume (C:) successfully completed.
The recovery operation completed.
Summary of the recovery operation:
--------------------

The recovery operation for volume System Reserved (500.00 MB) successfully completed.
The recovery operation for volume (C:) successfully completed.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I'd like to endorse this method and add some notes to help folks work thru the syntax components.  

1st: Avoid spaces / long file names in your server and network locations.  If you messed this up in the back up step then you can just move it to a new directory later.  wbadmin will still show the old dir when you do a wbadmin get versions but it works fine recovering.  If you use spaces / long file names... your probably going to have problems. 

TLDR:  \\My Awesome Server\My Awesome Drive\ is bad

           \\AwesomeServer\AwesomeDrive\  is good

2nd: You can find the machine name required for -machine: by double clicking into the WindowsImageBackup directory in the share that your back up is stored in.  That next level directory is the machine names, choose the machine name you are restoring.

3rd: When doing the net use, i recommend using the net use * \\pc1\backups\ format.  This will prompt you for user name / password and save you a lot of heart ache trying to get the syntax right.

This process allowed me to back up and restore a 1 TB Surface Book 2 15" when I had to send it back to Microsoft for service.  Thanks to @Les52 for the original guide.

No joy with this procedure.  I did see that WBADMIN supports pointing to a local drive to search for a backup.  My backup is on an external drive mounted as D:.

I too was having problems with the "net use"

I added "*" so that the command would ask for a password for the user account on my NAS