Seemingly unable to recover backup of a whole OS disk using TI 2018 or TI 2015
First my backups on this computer were created with TI 2013. I do a whole disk custom (full) backup twice/month. Generally only keeping the past couple of months. I have used TI many times to clone new SSDs. No problems. This time I was relying on it to be able to back up a 960 GB SSD that was my boot disk. The TIBs are on other HDDs in the system. So I was using bootable media. I don't think 2013 had an iso file available so my boot DVRs are 2015 and 2018. I booted into the bootable media and then tried to recover from a disk back to my new SSD that is seen by the computer and is seen by 2018 (although is invisible to 2015)
First Q, when recovering a system disk do you check to recover the MBR and Disk 0 also? I did do some searching in the forum before I started all this and was told not to check it if the partition is new and marked active. Since then I have seen a YouTube video that says you do check the MBR/0 partition to recover also. I need to know which way works as the manual is completely silent on this issue.
Next problem; both 2015 an 2018 bootable DVRs will not restore a whole disk partition. Very quickly giving me an error that according to all my google searches here has never been solved. So the whole disk recovery is not possible. I have now defaulted to a files and folders recovery. I am using 2018 the last couple of days and I did set it up to recover all files and folders but don't know if I was given a choice to choose the MBR/0 partition in F&F recovery. If I was, I deliberately did not check it as that was my understanding yesterday. I am now at 22 hours and the Recover Backup Archive seems to be proceeding. At least the machine doesn't appear to be locked up and there is some small movement of the green bar. But at this pace the recovery operation will take about 72 hours. Now it is unfortunately a 900 GB system disk. So I am simply letting the computer and Acronis do its thing. If I can get my First Q answered, I may go back and restart the F&F recovery operation if I need to be recovering the MBR partition also, unless somebody can tell me how to do it afterwards. I have multi computer licenses on the 2011, 2013, 2015 and a one computer license on the 2018. This is the first time I have had to use a Recovery operation and frankly am very disappointed that Acronis seems to be unable to perform its main task. As I say I have used it for partition work and multiple times for OS disk cloning with much success, but why won't it do a simple recovery operation on a tib file?
I am on an older ASUS P8z68 mobo and it clearly is legacy only, so all boot drives are MBR. This is back when they called their bios uefi but it really wasn't. Just a graphical bios that had no capability for efi or gpt booting yet.
And I have a new SSD or at least a repartitioned SSD. So I would need to add the MBR partition. Unfortunately Acronis boot media will not recover the TIB giving an error early in the process. And that error is the same across my last 4 TIBs. I have ordered a new oem Win 10 disc so will do this the hard way. I have lots of successful OS disc to OS disc clones with Acronis. That is the way I should have proceeded but I didn't. Partially because at the time I was not certain that Gen 1 P8z68-V mobo would not support GPT booting and UEFI.
Thank you for the kind response.
BTW, there is a good possibility I will go ahead and build a new rig with a modern board and an I7-8700k simply to move to more current technology. I need to decide that before I use the new OEM Win 10 disc from Amazon as it can't be moved from computer to computer supposedly.
I am really disappointed in Acronis. Having relied on them from TI 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2018 w multiple licenses, it is hard to believe it can't do a simple recovery operation from a TIB to a new disc.
William, what actual error are you getting for your last 4 tib files? Assuming that you are using the Acronis boot media, then save a copy of the log file for your recovery attempt as this may help show what problem you are getting? The log will disappear as soon as you restart the computer, hence the need to save it while it is still present.
I have never had a problem with recovering legacy / MBR drives and have been fortunate to never hit a bad .tib file either.
Thanks, Steve. I will do that. My machine is still working on the F&F recovery operation. Sometime this afternoon it should complete. I am 42 hours into the operation now and it appears that the recovery to a non system NVME SSD from a HDD will end up taking about 48 hours. It appears to be progressing as I have HDD activity and the green bar is progressing albeit at a real hour per second of Acronis predicted remaining time. Now I am down to 5 seconds to go and based on the past day or two that should take about 5 hours. Somewhere on here or in the manual I read that it takes about 30 min per 50 GB or 100 GB/hour. I am doing near 900 GB, but 48 hours still seems extreme. That is only 18 GB/hour across a SATA 3 interface from the HDD and into a PCIe slot for the NVME SSD.
Have a great Memorial Day.
I will wish you good fortune with the Files & Folders recovery but if this is for your OS drive then I am not confident that you will end with a working system due to what may be missing.
We have a late May Bank Holiday here in the UK rather than a Memorial Day that you have in the US - that tends to be held on November 11th as our Remembrance Day here. Hope you have a great day regardless!
William,
Be advised that recovery at the file level is performed at the bit level versus recovery at the disk/partition level is done at the block level. block level transfers are much faster than file level because of this.
Still would be nice if you would tell us what the error was you encountered and I am not sure if the backup file you are working with was created using TI 2018 or something earlier, If the backup was prior 2015 then there may be incompatibilities and in that case you would need to use recovery media of that version to insure compatibility.
Still working on the F&F restore. Lordy this is slow. I am past 50 hours and it appears that I likely have another 8-10 to go. As disks get bigger backup solutions get worse. I think I may set up a mirror RAID 1 on my next build. This is ridiculous.
I would say that your recovery speed is largely due to not having the correct drivers installed for the NVMe drive you are using. I suspect that given your mobo dates back to 2011 and does not have an M.2 slot for the drive you have the drive mounted into an adapter in a PCI slot.
By the way, your mobo DOES have a UEFI bios so it WILL support NTFS/GPT - UEFI booting. Not sure where you get that that is not possible.
I suppose that you were using Windows 7 with this board, Windows 7 did not have UEFI in mind when designed so when you installed it you probably got a vanilla MBR install as that would be the default at the time.
At any rate, having a new copy of Win 10 will provide for a UEFI/GPT install as long as you have UEFI enabled in the bios when you begin the install. Start with only the intended OS system disk installed during the Win 10 installation will simplify and speed up the install procedure. You can add other drives and such after that.
You are correct on the drivers. After successfully recovering the system I updated the bios and the NVME is both recognized and noticeably faster.
Re the error: Sorry I forget exactly what it was but it googles as appearing in this forum about 5 times over the years and was never solved. But I found my problem (after that 72 hour F&F recovery).
I had chosen a Disk/Partition recovery and when selecting the disk/partitions had not selected the whole disk. I had an ancient Win 7 small recovery partition I no longer needed. Not selecting that partition on the drive always brought the error very early in the process. After the F&F recovery, I simply checked the entire disk, which chose the C: partition, the MBR and the Recovery Partition. With everything checked the Disk recovery worked just fine. Steve, thank you for your help. Everything is working well now. Rather than restore to my NVME (I recovered to my original OS SSD) I will clone from the SSD to the NVME just before I move it to my new build. All this angst on this computer and the trouble with the lack of drivers in the older BIOS got me to order parts for a new build. Will do that this weekend.
William, glad to read that you have been successful in doing the full disk restore and are back to a working system again. Thanks for giving the feedback.