I recently ran into a case where a target of Windows Server Backup began failing. Luckily the external hard drive was under warranty. However, the customer wanted to retain the 200+ backups that WSB made to it. So I cloned it thinking that WSB would identify the drive by the Volume Label. I was wrong - WSB did not recognize it as the original external hard drive. So I did some digging on the web. I found these three pages that, when put together, helped me figure out what to do: and Yeah, that was a lot of digging... So I learned that Macrium Reflect gave my new external hard drive a new Disk Signature to avoid a collision. That also meant Windows gave the new drive a new GUID path. By deductive reasoning I could safely assume that Windows Server Backup identifies target disks by their GUID path. All I had to do was set the new drive's Disk Signature in the registry key for the old drive's GUID path. Here's the outline of what I did:
After that, Windows Server Backup recognized the drive and I could backup to it successfully. |
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