Windows 2008 R2 Restore using Windows Backup error (0x80042408)

Whilst restoring (transferring) a Windows 2008 R2 machine using the built-in Windows Backup software we ran into a few problems:

The original machine was a PC server with some dynamic disks as the system did not have RAID support for all drives.

The system disk was 111 GB

The data disk was 465 GB

The log file disk was 69 GB

We were restoring to a SUN X4150 with:

131GB system disk

514 GB Data disk

131 GB log file disk

The error we were getting was that the disks were too few or too small ????

0x80042408 We have never understood why it thought that there were not enough disks but...

We used the workaround with the wbadmin command line:

wbadmin get versions –backuptarget:<Target:> 

This is to interrogate the media for the backup sets that are present on the target drive.

wbadmin get items –version:<versionid> -backuptarget:<Target:>

Then this command shows the volumes and applications contained within the backup set on that drive or device.

Wbadmin start recovery –version:<versionid> -backuptarget:<Target:> -itemType:Volume –items:C: -recoverytarget:D:

Where Target: is the target drive letter. This command performs the restore. Here we are only restoring the system drive, as the applications and services relying on the data contained on other disks could be restored simply by robocopying the data back onto those data disks and then correcting the drive letters afterwards whereupon the services could be started.

After completing the above, the system was then still missing some boot files.

We then repaired using a Windows 2008 R2 / 7 x64 automatic repair and the system started to boot but obviously BSOD'd itself from lack of drivers for the new storage devices.

The Windows DVD could not repair any further and so we therefore had to add the storage device drivers manually using:

DISM /image:C:\ /add-driver /driver:G:\ /recurse
(C is my OS partition and G is the DVD drive where the driver DVD is inserted.)

This added the files from the X4150 drivers\storagetek\windows\2008\ and drivers\storagetek\windows\2008\amd64\ 

The system then booted OK but the drive letters had changed. After re-assigning the drive letters the system appeared to be back to normal.

Just for anyone still having difficulty, sometimes we are unable to run the repair from the DVD until we have repaired the bootcfg folder using bootrec /rebuildbcd after which we can run the DVD repair and start Windows successfully which on 7/2008 R2 or later will then install the required drivers to boot from there.

If you still have BSOD difficulties then use the DISM command above to add necessary drivers.