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[Solved] Destination disk grayed out when trying to restore image

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I have several identical PCs .Same make. model and disk. They currently run Windows 7. I have upgraded one to Windows 10. I created an image of the 500GB disk to a portable USB HD with TI 2018. When I try to restore it to one of the other PCs , the recovery wizard (bootable media) shows all destination disks grayed out and I cannot proceed. 

I have done this before with  no problems. Any ideas what the problem is?

Thanks

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Eran, welcome to these User Forums.

How do your PC's boot into Windows - are these Legacy BIOS systems or are they UEFI?

Are you booting the Acronis Rescue Media in the same mode as used for Windows?

When you upgraded one PC to Windows 10, was this a clean install or an actual upgrade from Windows 7 to 10?  Is it the Windows 10 PC that you have made the backup of that you are wanting to restore to one of the other Windows 7 PC's?

How many actual disks are in each of these PC's - is it just a single 500GB drive?  If there are multiple disks did you use the 'Entire PC' backup option for the Source data, or click through this to see Disks & Partitions, and select only the 500GB drive?

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

How do your PC's boot into Windows - are these Legacy BIOS systems or are they UEFI?

The Windows BIOS is UEFI, but the WIndows disk boot is Legacy.

Are you booting the Acronis Rescue Media in the same mode as used for Windows?

The Acronis bootable USB drive is UEFI. I don't see the Acronis disk in the Legacy drives boot devices.

When you upgraded one PC to Windows 10, was this a clean install or an actual upgrade from Windows 7 to 10?  Is it the Windows 10 PC that you have made the backup of that you are wanting to restore to one of the other Windows 7 PC's?

This was an actual upgrade from within WIndows 7. Yes, I want to restore the upgraded PC to the other Win 7 PCs

How many actual disks are in each of these PC's - is it just a single 500GB drive?  If there are multiple disks did you use the 'Entire PC' backup option for the Source data, or click through this to see Disks & Partitions, and select only the 500GB drive?

Each PC has one SATA disk of 500GB. I only have the option to choose the partitions of the drive. I chose all the partitions.

I also have the same situation if I try to restore the PC from which I made the backup image.

 

IMG_2660 (Medium).JPGIMG_2659 (Medium).JPGIMG_2658 (Medium).JPG

 

Eran, thank you for the answers to my questions.

The Windows BIOS is UEFI, but the WIndows disk boot is Legacy.

The Acronis bootable USB drive is UEFI. I don't see the Acronis disk in the Legacy drives boot devices.

This is an issue as if you boot the Acronis Rescue Media in UEFI for a Legacy OS the drive will be converted from MBR to GPT on the restore.

You should check your BIOS settings and try to set these to allow Legacy / CSM then boot the Rescue Media in this mode as that is how you say your Windows OS boots.

I used Rufus to create the bootable media. There is only an option for this ISO to boot UEFI. Therefore the boot menu only allows the Acronis media to boot UEFI.

Is there another way to create the USB bootable media?

I created a bootable CD , and it can boot legacy. Then it recognizes the HD.

How can I create a legacy+UEFI bootable USB ?

Eran, there is no need to use Rufus to create bootable USB media, you should be able to do this directly from the Acronis Rescue Media Builder tool running in Windows provided you plug in your USB drive before using the builder tool, and this is 32GB or less in size, formatted for FAT32.

See KB 58108: Acronis products: using USB sticks with more than 32GB capacity about the USB stick size considerations.

See KB 60091: Acronis True Image 2018: how Simple bootable media creation mode works and also KB 1526: Starting Acronis product from USB flash drive

I do not use Acronis on my PC. I downloaded the bootable media ISO from my account. I would like to use that. I don't want to install Acronis on my PC, as I don't use it there, only for cloning.

Eran, ok, then you will need to continue to make the rescue media in the same way using a third-party program to convert the Linux ISO file to the USB media format.

One key change with ATI 2018 is to allow Cloning to be done from within an active Windows OS using the Microsoft VSS snapshot method (as used for backups), but again this would require that you should install the ATI application.

To create a bootable USB that supports both Legacy and UEFI Boot options proceed as follows.

  1. Open Rufus utility.
  2. Select the USB drive onto which you want to create the live bootable media.
  3. In order to support both UEFI and Legacy boot select the first option i.e MBR Partition scheme for BIOS and UEFI under partition scheme and target system type.
  4. Select file system as FAT32 and Default Cluster size.
  5. Tick the box with Create a bootable disk using and browse for the ISO file.
  6. Click START and wait for it to complete.

You just need to setup Rufus as I outlined for it to create media capable of booting in both modes.

With Rufus latest builds, using the Acronis  ISO image, you can only choose UEFI (MBR or GPT). With previous builds you can choose Boot & UEFI, but when it's done, you can see it is only UEFI. Try it and see.

Attachment Size
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Please look at the screenshot below, notice that the Rufus version is the same.

Rufus.png

It is a limitation of the Rufus app.  I would suggest using a different application.  I recommend Win32 Disk Imager.  I am providing link to portable version HERE

It is a .zip file so must be extracted first then run the .exe as admin.

Keep in mind the tool defaults to writing .img files so when you go to select the True Image ISO you will need to change the explorer browser to show *.* then select the ISO.  I am including a screenshot below of how it should look.

Win32 Disk Imager.png

Notice you will only need to setup the Image file location by clicking on the folder icon and the Device which is the drive letter of your USB flash drive.  In most cases it will default to the correct letter.

I have tested this and it will create the media with both Legacy and UEFI boot entry options.  To boot in Legacy mode choose the boot entry that does not have UEFI in its name.

Thank you very much! This does the trick. I have used this software before, but though it only works with IMG images.

You're welcome, glad to have it sorted for you, enjoy :)

Thank you very much guys! After over 24 hours of struggling with my SSD nvme, the trick of using "Win32 Disk Imager" did it for me! 

 

For people still looking for a solution when cloning using AcronisTrueImage does not work (for Sector size incompatibility), then backup and restore is your only option.

For backup and restore the issue is that you must use the trick above otherwise your nvme with stay not selectable in gray with the "regular" UEFI USB boot of Acronis. You must make a Legacy boot USB. I hope other people with this issue will find this thread more easily than I did :)