Michael, sorry to hear of these further problems.

Do you have another computer where you could double-check your backups on?

This could be another computer with ATI installed to allow Validation to be performed for the backups on your external drive, or else, another computer where you can boot into the Acronis offline application and do the same.

If validation done as above is OK, then you could try doing the restore from that other computer, assuming that you are able to connect both the backup drive and the new target drive to it.

When you use the Acronis offline application, I would recommend saving the Log file for any activities being performed when there are issues.  The logs are lost when restarting the computer so have to be saved (right-click on the log title entry) before doing so.

If you have Acronis Rescue Media on a USB stick or CD/DVD from this or an earlier version, then it can be worth trying that too.  There have been cases reported in the forums where a backup reported as corrupt by one version is seen as fine by a different one!!!

Note: If you have registered different ATI versions in your Acronis account, then you can download .ISO files of the Linux versions of the Rescue Media from there (to burn to CD/DVD).

Thanks for the info.  I have another machine & have another license of Acronis left to use it on.  However, I can't access my email to get my serial #.  So I got kind of stuck as I couldn't find that in my online account.  Is there another way to get my serial #?  DISREGARD THIS PART, I GOT MY SERIAL #.

And then the other issue is my secondary machine is a Surface 4, which has 1 USB port.  So I need to go get a hub when stores open today so that I can plugin more then 1 USB device.

The weird thing is I did try to do one more restore while I got a couple hours of sleep.  I had that windows can't repair your computer screen, which is not abnormal as that happened all last night.  However, this external drive, if I plug it into my surface, the drive letter isn't even recognized by the computer anymore.  But I know for sure it was before I added some to it yesterday, because I removed stuff from it before trying to restore my computer to it.

ok so I ran a validation of my survival kit on my other machine, it ran thru the process, finished & that was it.  No error, nothing saying it was a good copy.  Does that mean it works?

And if so, whats my best option for restoring the drive onto, a external drive or usb stick? (keeping in mind that the drive restore is for my c: that I believe had a factory small partition on it).

Michael, that sounds good that the validation was successful on the other machine.

If you are able to connect your C: drive plus your backup drive to the second computer via a hub or docking station, then you should try restoring the backup to that drive from there.  If your C: drive is still working fine / booting into Windows, then you may want to consider restoring to your backup to a spare drive.

Just to make sure... my original C drive my SSD, is the drive that has the broken pin.  One of my external drives has the survival kit on it.  So I can attached my usb hub & connect both the external drive with the survival kit, as well as the new external drive / usb stick to the hub as well.  Load up my secondary computer, login to ATI GUI & go from there?

My only C drive that works is on my secondary computer, so just wanted to make sure.

I have all my devices plugged in that are needed to try to solve this issue.  However, in ATI GUI when I do a recovery of either the survival kit (I have 2 backed up on different drives) or even a recovery of my C: files, the same files and folders keep saying they are not found & I have to keep clicking ignore for those.

I am not sure if I am doing something wrong with the way I am trying to load the survival kit as thats a new part of 2019, but I will see if I can dig up a how to recover file regarding the survival kit.

Michael, if you have ATI installed on the second computer, then you should be able to do the restore from within Windows to your new replacement C: external drive without needing to boot from the Survival Kit media.

As far as the Survival Kit goes, it is just the same as using the Acronis Rescue Media on a USB stick or CD, except now you have it on the same HDD as you keep your backup images.

When using Rescue Media, the important factor is matching the BIOS mode for the OS being restored, so if Windows 10 uses UEFI as the BIOS boot mode, the rescue media should use the same.

Thanks for this info. So I should be going to the rescue media to try to load my survival kit? Sorry if I am misunderstanding, running on about 2 hours sleep in a panic state since this hasn't gone as planned yet.

One of my external drives has the survival kit, I am then trying to recover that onto my new usb stick.

How would I know if my stick is using UEFI? Thanks again for all the help.

My goal if I am doing this all right is to get my usb stick to have my original C drive that had windows on it. Then I would use that to power up my main machine. Get my new internal drives installed (unplugged & power off of course) and then I would get this C drive transfered to my new SSD C drive.

In the meantime I was trying it one more time from the acronis boot up on my secondary machine since I didnt try it from that. My backup even shows like it is looking good from the attachment.

So I should be going to the rescue media to try to load my survival kit?

No.  The Rescue Media (on a USB stick) is the same as your Survival Kit ability to boot from the HDD.

One of my external drives has the survival kit, I am then trying to recover that onto my new usb stick.

Sorry, but why are you trying to recover to a USB stick?  Microsoft impose restrictions on booting Windows from any external media (USB sticks or HDD drives etc).

How would I know if my stick is using UEFI?

This is only needed if your Windows OS (in the backup image also used UEFI).

Looking at your screen image of the backup image contents, this looks like it may be from a Legacy system using MBR partition format, not UEFI - so the Rescue Media or Survival Kit boot should be using Legacy boot mode.

My goal if I am doing this all right is to get my usb stick to have my original C drive that had windows on it. Then I would use that to power up my main machine. Get my new internal drives installed (unplugged & power off of course) and then I would get this C drive transfered to my new SSD C drive.

Sorry again but your intentions sound ok on paper but will not work!

If you want to recover your C: drive OS backup to your new internal drive in the main computer, then you should boot that main machine from either the Survival Kit HDD or the Rescue media USB stick (in Legacy mode) then recover the backup directly to the new internal SSD drive.

Sorry if I am misunderstanding, running on about 2 hours sleep in a panic state since this hasn't gone as planned yet.

I would strongly recommend setting all this aside and going to bed and getting a good night's sleep before coming back to it a whole lot fresher and awake.  You will make a lot less mistakes that way!

Steve,

Thanks for all the helpful info.  I was mainly trying to do the recovery to a external hard drive or flash drive because my secondary computer is a laptop.  So I have no way of recovering to an internal drive on the laptop.

But now that I know that cannot be done (and maybe why I kept receiving errors), I will have to change from that thought.  I also wasn't trying to do it on the main machine because I was under the assumption that I would need to format the drives before trying to use them, which in this case I can't format them since I can't get windows to load.

My last question.  Since my survival kit is in legacy mode, will it automatically try to put it on the new drive as legacy mode?  Or do I have to do something specific to make that happen?  I will be going back to my main computer to try this again (when I do make another attempt) so I will be running all this from the acronis boot up menu.

I also wasn't trying to do it on the main machine because I was under the assumption that I would need to format the drives before trying to use them, which in this case I can't format them since I can't get windows to load.

Michael, new drives can be handled within the ATI Rescue Media / Survival Kit media by using the Tools option for Add New Disk which will make the disk ready for the recovery without you having to use Windows to format it. 

Since my survival kit is in legacy mode, will it automatically try to put it on the new drive as legacy mode?  Or do I have to do something specific to make that happen? 

When you are booting either the Survival Kit media or Rescue Media, you need to look at the Boot menu options and ensure that if there are 2 entries shown for the HDD or USB stick, that you choose the one without UEFI being shown against the name.

See examples of how the boot menu might look below - yours may look different but should show similar entries depending on your hardware.

Awesome thank you.  This Add New Disk is probably exactly what I needed.  Probably why it did not work last night since I didn't initialize my other new hard drive (before I switched to external & flash drives).  So fingers crossed, I would be back with good news shortly.  If not then I would have to figure out why the survival kit is failing, as it seems like it is legit file size & everything compared to my old machine.

This is the error I received.  You think there is any way around it?  I have one other survival kit file on another external hard drive, but it may end up with the same result.

Part of the log record.

This is what my partition looks like within acronis.  I have been checking the full drive (including MBR) but wasn't sure if its now worthwhile to try it without it because of the errors & corrupt data message.

Or if I would have any better luck getting a sata to usb cable & running this from my secondary computer.  If you think that might help I can run to the store & get one.

Michael, normally error messages like 'Failed to read from sector '103,458,823' of hard disk '2'. are caused by physical disk surface errors on the disk involved.

Given this was a read operation, this suggests that disk '2' is your backup drive, so definitely worth running CHKDSK /R against that drive.  I would recommend doing this with the drive connected to your second computer then leave it to run as it will take a long time if this is a large drive.

Or if I would have any better luck getting a sata to usb cable & running this from my secondary computer.  If you think that might help I can run to the store & get one.

I would say that trying this from the second computer with the new target drive connected via a SATA to USB adapter cable would be worth trying.  You should be able to do this from the Windows ATI application rather than having to boot that second computer from your Survival Kit or Rescue Media stick.

Note: check what the BIOS mode for Windows on the second computer is - run the msinfo32 command in Windows and look for BIOS mode in the report to see if this shows Legacy or shows UEFI?  

If the second computer is UEFI, then you need to watch any Recovery carefully and ensure that this will not convert the drive from MBR to GPT partition format.  There should be an option shown to allow this to be overridden and keep the drive as MBR.

Lol was literally just about to create a post that you were going to suggest CHKDSK /R from threads I have been reading about other peoples issues.

Before I do that, can I safely copy my .TIB file to another drive, so that I have an extra copy of it.  Or does acronis not work that way?

I just checked msinfo32 & my secondary computer (surface pro 4) is UEFI.  Do you know exactly where in ATI GUI that I would see the MBR setting? Is it in advanced?

And lastly & maybe most importantly, if I am running this backup from ATI GUI on the secondary computer, am I simply just going to add backup & adding my survival kit TIB file?  Or is there a different way to do this?

Michael, I have been checking through the ATI 2019 User Guide to check on being able to recover a MBR disk on a UEFI system and all that I have read tells that the disk would be converted to GPT and I couldn't find any option to prevent this.

What this means, is that you would need to be able to boot your Surface Pro 4 laptop in Legacy mode using either the Survival Kit or Rescue Media in order to keep the recovered disk in MBR format.

There should be no issue with copying your .tib file to another drive.  If you have ATI 2018 or 2019 then you will need to Turn off Acronis Active Protection to do the copy.

For fun I ran the backup with MBR & Track 0 deselected. Oddly enough the backup finished, said it completed.  But then when I went to booted from the drive it said an operating system wasn't found.

Ok thank you for the info.  I will look up how to run a surface pro 4 in legacy mode before attempting this.  Lets say worst case this doesn't work, are there any options left at that point?

My custom computer builder did say that during transport they have seen sometimes this plastic pieces do break off & I may be able to attach it temporarily to get another copy of the drive. So thats worth a shot at some point if the other attempts at the file fail.

Just one further check I would recommend here Michael, on your main computer, go into the BIOS settings and check what is shown for the Boot option (the name may vary with different BIOS makes).

If the Boot option is set to 'Windows Boot Manager' then you have an UEFI system.
If the Boot option is set to your SSD drive, then you have a Legacy system.

One other late thought, if a pin from the SSD has broken off, then potentially that pin may still be in the SATA cable plug and could prevent the plug from being connected to a new drive.  You may need to obtain another SATA cable to avoid any damage to the new drive!  A longer cable would be worth investing in given how this issue arose.

On my main machine in bios, top left corner it says ASUS UEFI BIOS Utility - EZ Mode.  Safe to assume that I am UEFI then?  Or does the hard drive control that?  Only hard drive currently connected is my new ssd drive, but it doesnt give me any specific details on that.

Thanks for the info on the cable.  Indeed the plastic & pin is in the sata cable.  However, I have 4 power supply connections on that sata cable, as well as 3 sata data wires.  So I have been skipping past the one with the plastic.  I have left the plastic in there, just in case I need one last chance of line up the wiring right.  However, I think thats not going to be possible now, as I looked up the pin out & the one that I have broken is a power pin & not a grounded pin.

As for the cable, it turns out it was my stupidity.  I am used to one wall inside the casing being connected to the motherboard.  However, my custom build, looks like is, but both side walls slide off.  So had I down that yesterday on the motherboard side, unplugged the hard drives & then pulled them out, this would have been a 15 minute job.

Michael, in your ASUS UEFI BIOS Utility - EZ Mode display, what is shown in the Boot Priority box?

See webpage: EZ Mode introduction - for an explanation of the different parts of the display.

Only 1 drive, which is correct, I disabled all drives, dvd drive, etc.  The drive when moused over is listed as P6: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB (476940MB)

Its the new solid state drive I purchased today.  Is it worthwhile for me to move it to sata 1 rather then 6?

On a side note, not sure if my chkdsk r\ d: is stuck in stage 4, bad cluster stage. At progress 18 it has been there for a while, but will let it go longer to see what happens.

If I plugin my ssd into my surface it doesn't even recognize the drive because of the way its formatted since its showing up as MBR.  Where as my surface is running on GPT.

I looked up the legacy boot at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023532/surface-how-do-i-use-t… & it looked like it may be problematic on my surface.  Is the best option if I can get my hands on another laptop to do it that way?  I do have 1 acronis license left, so I could probably find one somewhere.

I ran the full chkdsk & it didnt spot any errors.  So I am currently back to trying it on the main computer thru the usb ports on the acronis boot up.

Does it sound like if I get my hands on a different laptop that is also running MBR that I would be better off?  And then can start to rule out things better from there if the backup from ATI GUI does not work?  I am kind of stumped now, especially with the corrupt issue because the drive when I load up from boot with acronis, the volume sizes all look like they were.

And now that I have formatted certain external drives/flash drives some are recognized only one of the machines now because of the MBR or GPT.

And probably an obvious answer here, but because my survival kit had one volume as MBR and track 0,its safe to say that my main computer was running MBR?

Michael,

You can verify the boot mode on the ASUS motherboard by changing from the EZ mode bios view to the Advanced view.  Pressing F7 should get you to the advanced screens.  Once there click on the Boot tab, scroll the screen down and look for Boot Options.  You should see an entry for changing the boot mode that when selected will show UEFI only, UEFI First Legacy/CSM, etc.  The current mode will be what you see first.

The first image is when I have my computer connected via a sata usb wire to the new hard drive.

The second image is when I take off the sata usb wire & directly plugin in the new hard drive.

The last image (the blurry one) is what happens after I exit Bios.

It seems like that my surface formatted some of these drives so that now I can only see them on my surface via UEFI and then cannot see them on my broken machine.  I can format them on my broken machine using the acronis start up, but that doesn't help me get data onto them from the other machine as I was trying to load on different sets of backups.

Is my best option at this point to find another machine with MBR?  And any suggestions on what type of machine I should be looking for to do that?

Ultimately, I am just trying to find out if any of my survival kit backups (I have 2) are really corrupt or if they will work. Worst case I would have to get windows (not even sure if/where my backup disk is since the machine was custom built & was built right before windows 10 came out).  And then see if I can extract my data from another acronis backup.

So at this point I am just not sure if I am doing small things wrong, that are causing this to not work because of the differences in the Bios of the 2 machines I have.

Is this worthwhile trying: https://kb.acronis.com/content/1517?

Since the drive that I would be copying the file to, is the same drive that I would be trying to load the c: onto to get my computer working again?  And would have to do that thru the acronis loader at boot up.

One more thing, just got some very good info as well from Microsoft as my final resort would be to purchase a new copy of windows 10 & start over.  And then see if I can get my files to load up.

In any case, my computer that crashed was a windows 8.1 computer, had it built right before windows 10 came out & got the free upgrade.  Microsoft is saying that the free upgrade only works on 1 hard drive & is NOT transferable.  Could this be why acronis keeps showing a corrupt file?  Ultimately, if I have to buy a new copy of windows, then so be it.  My biggest importance is hoping that the TIB file recovers my programs, so that I don't have to reinstall everything.  Especially my adobe applications since I only have 2 licenses for that stuff & they are probably going to block me if I try to do a new install of that stuff on a 3rd drive.

Michael, sorry for not responding any sooner, have been out today with family.

Just want to pick up on some of your various updates.

The drive when moused over is listed as P6: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB

This was in the context of what showed in the ASUS BIOS Boot settings - my related question here is did the drive icon have UEFI shown on it?  I suspect it doesn't simply because this is your new drive and the original drive is not present to show exactly how that was used to boot!

Your BIOS is definitely UEFI capable but I do not see any answer to the question below that was asked by Enchantech?

You can verify the boot mode on the ASUS motherboard by changing from the EZ mode bios view to the Advanced view.  Pressing F7 should get you to the advanced screens.  Once there click on the Boot tab, scroll the screen down and look for Boot Options.  You should see an entry for changing the boot mode that when selected will show UEFI only, UEFI First Legacy/CSM, etc.  The current mode will be what you see first.

Please can you try doing as asked above, i.e. going into the ASUS BIOS Advanced view and then opening the Boot tab and check the Boot Options to see what the current mode is?  This will help confirm whether the old drive was MBR or UEFI (regardless of seeing MBR & Track 0 in the ATI backup image contents).

That leads on to my next point about your Survival Kit drive format:

You said: And probably an obvious answer here, but because my survival kit had one volume as MBR and track 0,its safe to say that my main computer was running MBR?

It would be good to actually conform that the Survival Kit HDD drive is MBR or GPT as this also indicates what was used on the computer used to create the kit.

To do this, you should connect the Survival Kit HDD by USB to your second computer, then open Windows Disk Management so that you see the HDD listed in the view of drives.

Next, as shown in the screen images below, right-click on the Survival Kit Disk and select Properties, then on the new Properties page look at the Volume tab to confirm whether MBR or GPT has been used?

One other check point while you are looking at Windows Disk Management with the Survival Kit HDD connected, please confirm that you see a small 2GB FAT32 partition shown at the start of the drive?  See example below from my own bootable rescue drive.

Final comments for now:

In any case, my computer that crashed was a windows 8.1 computer, had it built right before windows 10 came out & got the free upgrade.  Microsoft is saying that the free upgrade only works on 1 hard drive & is NOT transferable.

It does not matter that your computer originally came with Windows 8.1 installed.  Once you have upgraded to and activated Windows 10 on that computer, you can always reinstall Windows 10 again on the same hardware and reactivate again based on the hardware signature of the computer.  I have done this a number of times with no issues for computers that were upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 where I have done clean installs of the OS.  It also doesn't matter that you are installing / activating on a different disk drive.

You can download the Windows 10 installation media as either an ISO file (to create an install DVD) or download / write directly to a USB stick to use as the install media.

Steve, no worries & thank you again for your time & help.

Please can you try doing as asked above, i.e. going into the ASUS BIOS Advanced view and then opening the Boot tab and check the Boot Options to see what the current mode is?  This will help confirm whether the old drive was MBR or UEFI (regardless of seeing MBR & Track 0 in the ATI backup image contents).

In regards to the above, I posted some pics a few threads above & seen here ----> https://forum.acronis.com/comment/460765#comment-460765 

I thought that covered what was asked for, but if not, please let me know & I can do that again.  I figured pics might be better since that will show you exactly what I am seeing.

Next, as shown in the screen images below, right-click on the Survival Kit Disk and select Properties, then on the new Properties page look at the Volume tab to confirm whether MBR or GPT has been used?

The partition style is MBR.  There are other files on the drive as well, does that matter? 

One other check point while you are looking at Windows Disk Management with the Survival Kit HDD connected, please confirm that you see a small 2GB FAT32 partition shown at the start of the drive?  See example below from my own bootable rescue drive.

I see an exact 2GB file on that drive, but it does not say FAT32. Just says 2.00GB Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)

You can download the Windows 10 installation media as either an ISO file (to create an install DVD) or download / write directly to a USB stick to use as the install media.

Would this still help me at this point since I can't get the original drive to load?  I agree, Microsofts answer sounded odd.  He was trying to say, because it was a free upgrade copy, that was the issue.  But I didnt go thru with the purchase as that would be a last resort for me.  Mainly because I know that certain programs that were on it, that license restrictions are probably not going to load unless I get acronis to work without buying new licenses for those as well.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me know what sounds like the next best option to try from the above.  I know my new SSD & new flash drive are both now not showing up on both computers, I assume because of the UEFI/MBR so I will need to get those formatted again before doing anything.  But wasn't sure if I end up formatting the internal SSD that would be connected via usb sata cable on the secondary computer, if it comes up as UEFI if that will be an issue when I add it back to the main machine. 

Crap did my reply not go thru?  It said waiting for approval & then was gone.  Trying it again now.  I will try to remember what I wrote.

No worries, thank you again for the help.

Your BIOS is definitely UEFI capable but I do not see any answer to the question below that was asked by Enchantech?

On this post: https://forum.acronis.com/comment/460765#comment-460765 I posted 3 photos that I thought indicated what Enchantech was looking for.  If that is incorrect, let me know & I can grab the right information.  Just figured pictures would be an exact verification of what I am seeing.

It would be good to actually conform that the Survival Kit HDD drive is MBR or GPT as this also indicates what was used on the computer used to create the kit.

Both drives that I have survival kits on are MBR.  However, they both also have other files on them also.  Is that part of the problem? 

One other check point while you are looking at Windows Disk Management with the Survival Kit HDD connected, please confirm that you see a small 2GB FAT32 partition shown at the start of the drive?  See example below from my own bootable rescue drive.

The partition on one of them is listed at exactly 2.00GB but does not say FAT32.  Just says Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)

The larger partition of that same drive is showing up as NTFS

You can download the Windows 10 installation media as either an ISO file (to create an install DVD) or download / write directly to a USB stick to use as the install media.

Will this still help me at this point since my original drive is broken?  Or if I add this to my new ssd drive, will that do anything for my acronis rebuilding?

Microsofts claim was that since it was a free windows 10 upgrade, thats why it was not transferable.  But it sounded extremely odd to me.   If I have to buy a new windows 10 license, then thats fine.  But ultimate its a last resort for me mainly because some software will then be over its maxed licenses, which would create a separate headache.

-----------------------

In closing my 2 new drives, my SSD & flash drive, are both not showing up on both computers depending on how they are formatted, I assume because of the UEFI or MBR.  So I can get things loaded back to them, but will have to format them to get to use them on both, if possible.

My last post shows this at the top of the page: 

Your comment has been queued for review by site administrators and will be published after approval.

What did I do that caused that to happen on only the new post that isn't currently appearing?

Michael, sorry, no idea why you should see that message and I have never seen it myself or had anyone else mention it either?

That is strange.  I posted my post twice right after your last post & then waited about 2 hours & posted again.  I am going to try to remember what I wrote & post it again now in about 5 minutes.  Only difference this time is I won't quote your topics with the quote tool & I also had a link to one of my previous posts.  I will leave that all out to see if it goes thru.

In regards to: 

Your BIOS is definitely UEFI capable but I do not see any answer to the question below that was asked by Enchantech?

>>>> I posted earlier 3 pictures of my bios.  I thought those were pics of what Enchantech was looking for.  If not I can take different pictures, but I figured they would be better so you can see what I am seeing.

------------

It would be good to actually conform that the Survival Kit HDD drive is MBR or GPT as this also indicates what was used on the computer used to create the kit.

>>>> Both drives that I have kits on are showing up as MBR within disk management

-----------

One other check point while you are looking at Windows Disk Management with the Survival Kit HDD connected, please confirm that you see a small 2GB FAT32 partition shown at the start of the drive?  See example below from my own bootable rescue drive.

>>>> My drive is showing up with a partition of exactly 2.00 GB.  However FAT32 is not listed.  Just says Healthy (Active, Primary Partition).  The other partition on that drive is NTFS

-----------

It also doesn't matter that you are installing / activating on a different disk drive.

>>>> Ok sounds good.  It sounded odd that microsoft was saying that, but there whole point was because its a free upgrade its nontransferable which just sounded strange.

---------

You can download the Windows 10 installation media as either an ISO file (to create an install DVD) or download / write directly to a USB stick to use as the install media.

>>>> Would this help currently since my main drive is the one that is crashed?  Or can I do this on my new ssd & then would just need a windows 10 key to get it to work?

----------

Ultimately purchasing another copy of windows 10 is my last attempt.  I have no problem buying another if needed.  But if I do then I know I am going to be out of licenses for other programs & then will have another headache there.

My new ssd drive & flash drive because of the formatting on the drives on one machine they now show up & on the other they don't.  So I will need to format them properly based on the next step.

I am open to whatever next suggestion you have, I was just hoping to use the weekend to get this finally working & then to get up to speed with everything else.

In regards to: 

Your BIOS is definitely UEFI capable but I do not see any answer to the question below that was asked by Enchantech?

>>>> I posted earlier 3 pictures of my bios.  I thought those were pics of what Enchantech was looking for.  If not I can take different pictures, but I figured they would be better so you can see what I am seeing.

------------

It would be good to actually conform that the Survival Kit HDD drive is MBR or GPT as this also indicates what was used on the computer used to create the kit.

>>>> Both drives that I have kits on are showing up as MBR within disk management

-----------

One other check point while you are looking at Windows Disk Management with the Survival Kit HDD connected, please confirm that you see a small 2GB FAT32 partition shown at the start of the drive?  See example below from my own bootable rescue drive.

>>>> My drive is showing up with a partition of exactly 2.00 GB.  However FAT32 is not listed.  Just says Healthy (Active, Primary Partition).  The other partition on that drive is NTFS

-----------

It also doesn't matter that you are installing / activating on a different disk drive.

>>>> Ok sounds good.  It sounded odd that microsoft was saying that, but there whole point was because its a free upgrade its nontransferable which just sounded strange.

---------

You can download the Windows 10 installation media as either an ISO file (to create an install DVD) or download / write directly to a USB stick to use as the install media.

>>>> Would this help currently since my main drive is the one that is crashed?  Or can I do this on my new ssd & then would just need a windows 10 key to get it to work?

----------

Ultimately purchasing another copy of windows 10 is my last attempt.  I have no problem buying another if needed.  But if I do then I know I am going to be out of licenses for other programs & then will have another headache there.

My new ssd drive & flash drive because of the formatting on the drives on one machine they now show up & on the other they don't.  So I will need to format them properly based on the next step.

I am open to whatever next suggestion you have, I was just hoping to use the weekend to get this finally working & then to get up to speed with everything else.

Michael, please take a look at webpage: 

Windows 10 - How to boot the system from USB drive/CD-ROM on the G11CD Desktop?

  from the ASUS Support pages, where this gives steps to get ASUS systems to boot from USB drives such as your Survival Kit and tells about having options for booting in Legacy (MBR) and UEFI (GPT) modes.

The webpage may be for a different ASUS Desktop but the UEFI BIOS panels & options should be similar.

Steve, thanks for sending this.  I will see if the booting from UEFI or MBR work.

Additionally I guess this also shows if I go the windows 10 route of buying a new license correct

Are these probably all the best options I have left?  I am fairly confident that this data is valid just looking at how the partitions appear in the acronis boot system.

Michael, sorry but nothing to do with needing to buy a Windows 10 license.  Your main computer should not need a new license if it has already been activated for Windows 10 prior to this problem with the SSD SATA connector.

If you can boot your Survival Kit drive on the main computer in Legacy mode, as per the webpage I directed you to look at, then you can try to recover your backup of the original Windows 10 that was installed.

Sorry, that was my mistake, I edited my note above as you must have been submitting your reply.  I didn't read everything properly, just more at my frustrated stage with myself.

One quick question before I do this.  How do we know I have this particular bios setup?  Is it something you saw in the pics?

And if all goes well & I get up & running.  Do I need to change the settings back to what they were?

Michael,

Sorry for the delayed response.

Looking at your bios pics my observations are as follows:

• Pic ending in 152048: Your first boot device from which the ASUS board attempts to boot from is shown in Boot Option #1 - Multi Flash Reader.  This is an SD card reader device in your machine.  Since the bios is attempting to boot from this device and there is no bootable source in the card reader it is failing.  This results in the Pic ending in 152054 - Press any key to boot from Floppy.
• Pic ending in 152051.  Looking at the Boot Override portion of the screen you will see that the first option is the card reader.  Next is - PNY USB 3.0 FD (Flash Drive).  Next is - P6: Samsung 860 EVO.  Next is - UEFI: PNY USB 3.0 FD.

Reference bullet point 2:  You will notice that the PNY Flash drive is listed twice.  This is because the Acronis Boot Media can be booted in either UEFI or MBR mode from the same device.  It is simply a matter of selecting the proper Flash Drive entry to do so.  Knowing that, what you need to understand is what entry does what.  Logic says that to boot the flash drive in UEFI mode you would select the entry that shows as UEFI, that is correct.  If you choose to boot in MBR mode then the entry that DOES NOT HAVE UEFI in the device name is selected  The Samsung entry here is of course your new target drive that you wish to restore your backup image on.

So what to do from here:  Looking again at Pic 152048 your current boot order is:

1. SD card reader
2. Apricorn device
3. UEFI PNY flash drive

Your bios looks for boot files on the devices in this list in order so SD card first, then the Apricorn device, then the UEFI flash drive.  The bios is not finding any boot files on any of the devices listed so it presents the message in Pic 152054.  The reason that option 3, the UEFI flash drive does not boot is most likely because your bios is set to boot MBR and the UEFI entry is not an MBR device.

Looking again at Pic 152048 you will see options for setting Floppy Drive BBS Priorities and Hard Drive BBS priorities.  I recommend that you select the Floppy option first.  This should present a list of floppy compliant devices installed on your machine that can be booted from if boot files exist.  Once you have accessed this list you should click on each device in the list and you should see some choices.  One of these should be Disable.  Select Disable for all floppy device entries here.  This will clean up your boot option order priorities making things much easier.

Next focus on Hard Drive BBS Priorities.  Click select this option to bring up the hard rive list.  In this list you should see the Survival Kit drive, (if it is attached to the computer), and you will be able to move it to the first position in the priority list.  This is typically done by selecting the device entry which in turn highlights it then press the + key on your keyboard to move the device up one level in the list.  Continue this process until the Survival Kit is number 1 in the list.  Once you have done that you should now see that the Survival Kit drive is also showing as Boot Option #1 under the Boot Option Priorities list. 

Your next step should be to Save changes and Exit the bios.  Your machine should now reboot, the bios should look to the survival kit drive for boot files which should be there, and in a few moments the Acronis Recovery Media screen should appear.  Your machine will be booted in the correct (MBR) mode at this point so you will simply need to select Recover Disks, locate the backup image and select it, locate your target Samsung drive and select it as Destination confirm your selections on the next screen, then press Proceed to restore the image to your new disk

I also recommend that you attach the new Samsung drive to SATA port number 0 rather than number 6 as it currently is.  Do this before following the steps above.

ok thank you @enchantech.  I am going to try this as well as @stevesmith suggestions today.  And hopefully one of the options will get something to work.

Based on your suggestions about, is that any different then what I was previously trying?  I have an external hard drive that the survival kit was backed up onto.  And that drive has been the one that my system notices when I boot the computer & was the one that I have tried to recover the device from.  But it always said it was corrupt.

So the new flash drive the PNY drive that you have seen, is the same exact file, just copied to a new drive.

My recommendations should remove any possibility that you are booting the system wrong.  If it does not boot to survival kit then I would agree that it is corrupt.

Yes what I am suggesting is way different from what you have tried so far.

Perfect, thank you.  I will try that as well & report back later today.  I have 2 different survival kits, one from Aug 22nd & one from Aug 29th.  So I will try both.

And then worst case if it doesn't work & I don't find my copy of windows which was 8.1, upgraded to free windows 10.  That I would need to buy a new copy of windows 10 & start over?  And then see if my other backups of just the files for this drive copy over?

And then worst case if it doesn't work & I don't find my copy of windows which was 8.1, upgraded to free windows 10.  That I would need to buy a new copy of windows 10 & start over?  And then see if my other backups of just the files for this drive copy over?

Not sure how many times I can say this Michael, but all you would need to do (worst case) is to download a copy of the Windows 10 OS Install media and install this on your main computer and it will activate based on your computer hardware signature.  There is no need to find Windows 8.1 and start over at that release of Windows!

Steve, sorry for the confusion.  So many options to try & just want to make sure I get everything right so that I don't make a mistake in trying to get this to work.

So far I tried @enchantech's solution of making my PNY drive boot 1, samsung ssd boot 2.  It wouldn't find the drive, it went back to that MBR error.  The PNY is a drive that I manually copied the TIB survival kit backup file to.

I then plugged in the original TIB backup drive which is an external drive.  Made that boot 1, PNY boot 2, samsung ssd boot 3.  Acronis loaded up, as it has before when I tried to load up from this drive.

When I went into acronis I could actually see both survival kits from both devices listed.  So once I get into acronis it DID then recognize the PNY drive.

I then went to the add disk screen & came to a part that I have been to in the past & always used MBR.  However, this time around I chose GPT (disregard my selection in the screen shot, I took photo before GPT selection), since it looks like I can run UEFI.

Run the process as normal & then..........................

IT WORKED!  I am back online.

So I am assuming that the MBR selection was the issue all along.  If not then the issue was the external drive and/or the August 22nd file.  As this time around I used the file on my PNY disk which was from August 29th.

THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE.  At this point there isn't anything else I should be doing except for activating my backups again on acronis since I disabled them for a few days during my previous restoring of my 2TB drive.

Michael, it has been a long road but I am sure that you and everyone else is pleased that you have got your backup restored and the main computer is working again!  Well done for persevering with this.

Yes, thank you so much.  One final question (for real last question).  I can't remember who mentioned this, whether it was on this forum or if it was my place that built the computer.

My original ssd was 120gb, my new one is 500gb.  So when I did the restore, it is still showing the drive as 120gb.  In disk management I can see 354gb is unallocated.  Is there a way of combining that to my C: drive, rather then making it a separate partition?  And of course doing it without wiping any data.