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cant boot dellxps 27, windows8, raid/ssd, from disk image backup after recovery

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I am trying to get confidence that a disk image backup and restore will work.

I have a Dell XPS27 running Windows8. It is equipped with a Hard Drive and SSD that is setup as RAID. Ive yet to be able to perform a disk image backup and restore successfully. At times I get an error on recovery that writing to a certain sector failed (the sector is 3xx,xxx,xxx). Ive done a sector by sector backup and restore, used both 2014 and 2015 with similar results. On restore system does not boot.

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If you have SSD caching turned on, that could be the source of issues. Before taking a backup, disable disk caching in the BIOS.
You just have to worry about making an image of each disk and restore to the right disk.

Since your error is about a specific sector, run a manufacturer disk diagnostics on both disks.

Many users with big enough SSDs end up installing the OS and programs separately on the SSD, and leave the content on the main disk. If you have a small mSata SSD disk, this won't be possible though.

Thank you for your prompt response ...

I just tried to do a restore from a clone disk, with the same result, system will not boot.

There are no settings in my BIOS to turn off Disk Cache. The only way I see is to change the SATA mode from RAID to AHCI. Ive done this in the past with other computers by changing the values within the registry.

My gut feel for the invalid write is something to do with RAID or SSD's.

The DELL system from the factory is installed with the Disk/SSD combo, setup as raid and I believe using Intel software to accomplish the caching.

Currently ACRONIS cannot backup and restore a disk image or clone and retrieve a disk image and boot successfully.

I will use my recovery disks and get the system back operational, maybe try changing the SATA mode from RAID to AHCI.

I am very computer savvy so if you have any other ideas I would greatly appreciate it. I would have to believe that others would be having this same issue. Ive successfully used ACRONIS in the past with Windows 7, I currently lack confidence in backup and restore of Windows8.1. Do you think this is a RAID/SSD issue?

This link might explain your issue:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/45886

Ive successfully performed an disk image backup and recover on a Dell XPS equipped with a Hard Disk / mSata SDD.

The system utilizes the SDD as a cache for the equipped Hard Disk. This is accomplished using the Intel Rapid Storage program. At first I thought it was the RAID setup that was in BIOS but realized Ive used ACRONIS on systems before with this set. What I had to do was to turn off the cache mechanism.

To turn of caching press Ctrl I at the boot up screen (if one appears showing the drives), or you can do it in Windows by opening up the Intel Rapid Storage utility.

I did get a couple of hickups using the Linux bootable Acronis disk, it had an error stating that I had a drive in sdc that had invalid sector of 4096, and it had an issue with couldn't find a volume and gave me a report. I rebooted and the Acronis came up the second time, did a backup and recovery and windows booted.

So ... yes there is some flakiness but I was able to backup and restore.

Yep! disabling the cache usually works. Glad you were successful!