trying to restore backup
hey everyone
I had a win7 computer (laptop) running Acronis TI 2015 on it. we went to upgrade the laptop to windows 10 (which ultimately was a BIG mistake).
We backed up both partitions (C, E) on the boot drive. they contained two separate copies of windows 7, We backed them up to a .tib file.
After 10 installed in place it was apparent there were severe issues and we decided to revert to 7 again using the TI backup.
I booted to the TI start disk and attempted to restore from the tib file to the main drive. FYI: the tib file is on an external USB 3.0 drive directly plugged into a USB 3.0 port on the laptop. It shows up fine in Acronis boot disk.
The restore failed saying the backup tib is corrupt, though that does not really explain anything.
right now the boot drive (500gb ssd) is showing as "unallocated" and I really would like to get the drive restored. I never have had confidence in backup programs, and this behavior is exactly why.
Any help working through this would be great.
any help on this forum?
Jay, welcome to these public User Forums.
Sorry but there probably more questions here than answers.
You mention having 2 copies of Windows 7 on this laptop - was this using dual-boot to switch between these 2 OS versions?
How did Windows 7 boot - was this using Legacy / MBR in the BIOS, or was this UEFI / GPT boot?
Do you have more than the one backup image .tib file to try recovering from?
Have you bought a license for Windows 10 that you were using to upgrade from Windows 7 with?
Given that Windows 7 will be completely unsupported by Microsoft in less than a year, have you considered doing a clean install of Windows 10 on this laptop? I have never had a great deal of confidence in upgrading older, established Windows 7 systems to Windows 10. My own approach for when Microsoft was offering their free upgrade to Windows 10, was to do the upgrade and get the computer activated on Windows 10, then wipe the drive and do a clean install of the activated Windows 10 OS followed by restoring any data preserved by backups and reinstalling my applications etc.
Steve
thanks for getting back to me, yes I noticed that about lots of forums. Its not just here.
As for the windows 7 booting I did not really want to go into detail with that as I would think that would not be the issue. The system was setup with two separate partitions (C: E:) on one SSD physical. Both had a standard windows 7 install, one was skinned down to look more like windows 2000 without all the colors and flashy effects windows 7 had.
I backed up the ENTIRE drive to a TIB file. Came in at like 238gb of data.
I have attempted several restores and they all fail ( a log would be immensely helpful) with not given reason after trying to restore for a little while. See screenshot in this post.
As for windows 10 in place upgrade I have the proper keys and 10 did install originally over 7, however there were "problems" that again had nothing to do with Acronis.
My end goal is to restore the drive back to the "7 backup" and as you pointed out , reinstall the programs one by one and piece together the data slowly. Its not optimal but neither is the in place "easy upgrade" that was offered.
My issue lies with the trust I placed in Acronis. With the drive completely erased now and the recovery the only way to restore it back to 7, I am left at the hands of this TIB file. I did check it with CRC and even used a file copier to make sure the file copied byte for byte.
I also ran a "verify backup" prior to restore and that also failed.
My trust level in Acronis going forward will be almost zero if we cannot get this backup to restore properly
I am at the moment trying the 6th restore attempt from the Acronis boot disk
Steve
ALSO to clarify the goal was never to really upgrade the laptop. The laptop is being decommissioned and sold to a surplus.
The REASON for the windows 10 upgrade was so that we could just "swap" the windows 10 on this laptop with the new laptop. it would be impossible to restore a drive backup of windows 7 onto a laptop that cannot even run 7 as it is too new a technology.
When we backed up Acronis it was on the windows 7 setups so that if 10 FAILED (As it did) we could revert and then manually copy programs and setting to the new laptop. We now need to get back to the 7 setup the way it was PRIOR to the 10 "upgrade" to continue
NO REASON WHATSOEVER
ALSO to clarify the goal was never to really upgrade the laptop. The laptop is being decommissioned and sold to a surplus.
Jay, if the laptop is being decommissioned / sold on, then why not just do a vanilla clean install of a basic Windows 7 using your existing COA key?
The REASON for the windows 10 upgrade was so that we could just "swap" the windows 10 on this laptop with the new laptop.
Sorry, but am not sure that I understand the above, as unless you have bought a full Retail or Volume license for Windows 10, then installing it on the old laptop would tie it to that machine.
Going back to the original issue here. Do you have another system with ATI installed where you could do the further test of your backup image .tib file, as suggested earlier?
Your screen images show that you are using the Acronis Rescue Media for the Recovery attempt, and if you click on the Log option shown in the left side menu, you can access the log for the failed attempt to see what that says? You can also save the log data by clicking on the top line of the data shown in the main right panel and then choosing a location that isn't lost on reboot.
When doing the recovery, I would recommend doing this at the Disk level, not as individual partitions. See forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document showing this process for recovery.
Steve
ok lets try it like this
there are TWO LAPTOPS, one was a brand new one with windows 10 (which cannot support windows 7 allegedly, although I never tried to install 7 on it, something to do with the series of processor)
the SECOND laptop is an older Hp elitebook running TWO copies of WIndows 7 (for now lets just say its one physical ssd with two partitions on it, both with bootable windows 7 Os installs)
I backed up with Acronis the FULL drive of the elitebook (with the two 7's on it) and did this prior to doing an "in place upgrade" to windows 10 on ONE of the windows 7 partitions. This is where the TIB file comes from.
The goal had been to upgrade the elitebook to 10 then do ANOTHER TIB backup and then just load that backup on the NEW laptop, then I would have WIn 10 and all my programs and settings from the old laptop. Obviously 10 was acting funky so I did not want to move a malformed 10 version to the new laptop.
I attempted to REVERT the elitebook back to 7 with the TIB file
I have looked at the logs and it says "backup is corrupt, it may still be possible to recover files and folders) again no real specific reason as to WHY its corrupt. Again this makes me trust Acronis ZERO now.
Thats where we are at at this point, the funny thing is before I left 7 (after I made the TIB) i checked the backup and it was perfectly fine, again a reason not to put your life in Acronis hands
Where to from here?
OH FYI: just so its not confusing right now my only focus is to restore the elitebook back to windows 7 prior to the windows 10 upgrade. Lets start with that first
Where to from here?
OH FYI: just so its not confusing right now my only focus is to restore the elitebook back to windows 7 prior to the windows 10 upgrade. Lets start with that first
Jay, sorry to be pedantic here but I have asked previously about:
Do you have another system with ATI installed where you could do the further test of your backup image .tib file, as suggested earlier?
and...
When doing the recovery, I would recommend doing this at the Disk level, not as individual partitions. See forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document showing this process for recovery.
The first of the above is intended to try to get an indication of the integrity of your full backup .tib by seeing if the contents are explorable or not? Validation of the .tib is essentially a checksum verification process - there are checksum values embedded throughout the .tib file and these are recalculated by reading the file and comparing the values calculated versus stored. This can only tell you that the file is unchanged from when it was written to disk, but not whether the contents are valid and usable! Exploring the .tib file will let you see the internal structure of the file system that was captured in the backup, walk through folder paths etc.
The second, based on the first being good, is a recommendation for attempting to recover your full disk backup image to the original laptop SSD, but doing so at a Disk level, plus checking and/or capturing the log for the attempt while still in the offline rescue media environment.
Steve,
Apologies I have been under the weather while dealing with this and on cold medicine. I will install Acronis TI 2015 on another laptop ( I believe I remember the TIB files being browsable in the past) and attempt to path down to files/folders within the backup.
Also as far as restore from Disk level I have never quite done that type of operation, I will have to research the proper steps as I am used to just restoring on drive level
Ill let you know my progress soon!
Sorry guess I spaced that as well
Acronis TI 2015 (same version everything) is installed on another laptop, the TIB file is fully navigable without ANY issues. I can see files/folder from the entire backup across both "drives" (The C:, E: partition)
So at least that is a plus for now
Steve
I also noticed on this (3rd laptop) that the TI allows recovery from within, I could throw a generic windows 7 on the laptop (keep in mind I am talking about the windows 7 laptop that we started with) and load TI and see if it will recover from within windows?
I really do not want to take this step however, if its a dead end and will not produce the results I need
Thoughts
Also I looked at the logs that were in the TIB of the latest backup, I can see no errors on the TIB creation
Jay, please be careful if restoring the disk backup image to a different laptop unless you are doing so by attaching the original laptop's drive externally to that second laptop, then recovering the image to that external drive.
You also need to ensure that both laptops use the same BIOS boot mode for Windows, i.e. both are Legacy boot, or both are UEFI boot, as this comes into play when recovering and if a Legacy / MBR backup image is recovered on a UEFI system, the target drive will be migrated to UEFI / GPT partition format.
The forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document linked from the same, was created using a similar approach with an external drive as the target, and has screen images of the steps needed to be taken. I was using a USB dock for the target drive used in the recovery.
Steve
I will look at the documentation, please keep in mind that the machine I am restoring to is ONE AND THE SAME MACHINE I backed up from
I know it gets confusing so here is a breakdown
Machine # 1 HP Folio 13 Elitebook (the ORIGINAL machine I backed up True Image TIB on and the one I am trying to restore the TIB to.)
Machine # 2 2018 LG Gram running windows 10 (no Acronis software on this machine at all, right now it does not enter the equation)
Machine # 3 HP Probook6550b , This machine is the "3rd" laptop you asked me to install Acronis on. The install was successful and I can now see the backup by drilling down to file folder paths within the TIB. THis machine will not be used to restore anything.
So right now I also downloaded the MVP log viewer and noticed that the LAST TIB says it did not complete, I am attaching the log file here, the strange thing is I have a full TIB file. Also I attached the PREVIOUS log which was done back in January. The schema for this machine was to take a FULL backup everytime and then add a sequential version #. After a backup completes it deletes the previous full backup.
Ill look at your info, but if its about restoring to a different machine that does not apply here
I really do appreciate the help!
attached: C:\Users\PHX-RMT\Desktop\Logs\service_2019-03-15-19-53-36.log , C:\Users\PHX-RMT\Desktop\Logs\service_2019-01-07-00-15-29.log
I also read the pdf at the dropbox link
I will attempt that one more time
Jay, the log from January shows a successful backup:
id=62; date/time=07/01/2019 08:31:22; message=The following backups have been successfully created: D:\Recovery\Crucial_CT500MX200SSD3_full_b80_s1_v1.tib
The log from March is truncated before any details are shown as to the success or failure of the backup operation.
id=39; date/time=15/03/2019 23:54:00; message=Writing full version to file: Crucial_CT500MX200SSD3_full_b81_s1_v1.tib
id=40; date/time=15/03/2019 23:54:01; message=Pending operation 160 started: 'Creating partition image'.
id=41; date/time=15/03/2019 23:54:18; message=Locking partition C:...
Start= 15/03/2019 23:53:36
Finish= 15/03/2019 23:54:18
The start / finish details are simply taken from the timestamps in the log messages, not when the actual backup ended in this instance.
If you have both of the above backup files (b80 and b81) then this gives you two options for recovery.
I would not recommend installing Windows 7 on the original laptop just to use the ATI Windows application to recover the backup. This would be a waste of your time doing the install of Win 7 as the first action of any recovery is to wipe the target drive, so best to boot from the Acronis Rescue Media if this is how you want to do the recovery to the original laptop.
My earlier comments were to show that you have another option where you can do the recovery on the third laptop with ATI installed, doing this from Windows provided the target drive is connected as an external drive to recover to.
Steve
thanks for getting back to me, unfortunately this laptop the (3rd laptop) would not be able to handle the restore.
I do not have version 80 of the backup as it was erased when Acronis completed Version 81
I am attempting to recover from "81" on the target laptop (machine #1) inside the boot disk, I even selected "recover disk signature" like it showed in your PDF.
I will give you an update if this also fails soon
is there another log (A console log) i should be looking for to see if this backup ever completed properly?
it failed for like the 8th time, I think at this point it is safe to say that Acronis let me down on getting it restored to windows, though all the files are perfectly fine in the TIB, maybe its just a bug in Acronis. Regardless of what happens with the data I will be moving to a new solution when I get the data back. I need a solution I can trust. I backed up to Acronis 100 times, and the one time I need to restore it, the software let me down.
Here is a screenshot of the log as of now, again you can see its (not) super informative as to what took place.
Ill pick up on this tomorrow
thanks Steve
That error can potentially exist if there are missing files in the backup chain (those manually deleted or not removed through the GUI). We just ran into this for differentials in 2019. Even with the error in that case, the backup completed successfully and I was able to restore the OS from it.
After the restore, what's happening? Have you gone into the bios to ensure that the boot order is correct after restoring and then attempting to boot?
Was the restore started in the correct mode as the original OS (UEFI or legacy) from the bios one time boot menu? This is a recovery requirement - just like a Windows installer disc. If restoring a legacy OS install, you need to be 100% sure you're booting the rescue media in legacy mode and if you're restoring a UEFI OS install, you need to be 100% sure you're booting the rescue media in UEFI mode.
Then check the bios boot order and attempt to boot. If it fails to boot (assuming this is the original OS for this hardware), then try to boot in F8 (safe mode) and if you can then try a regular boot.
FYI - I've had some HP's in the past. When secure boot is enabled and active, you can't boot any USB or external disks. You have to disable secure boot and enable legacy boot (just to boot the external USB). But, then, it is probably trying to boot the USB recovery media in LEGACY mode. So, if the OS was UEFI, you need to make sure you're using the one time boot menu to boot in UEFI mode to do the restore.
Turn on the laptop and press F9 (this may be different on this system - not sure) button to select bootable device after select boot from EFI and select EFI file from boot folder.
Jay, the log shows that the failures all occurred just 9 minutes in to the recovery which is probably too soon for it to have been successful.
Where is the .tib file being stored and how is this connected to the laptop for the recovery? I am assuming you are using an external USB backup drive for the .tib, but is this USB 2.0 or 3.0, and if the latter, is it connected to a USB 3.0 port or does it have a separate power source?
Do you have a different laptop drive (than the Crucial SSD) that you could try restoring to?
Rob, ref the missing files issue, this looks to be a Single Version backup scheme from Jay's comments that backup b80 was deleted after b81 was created, so all deletions should have been done by ATI 2015 rather than via Explorer. This should also suggest that b81 was completed successfully for ATI to delete b80.
Jay, are you able to confirm whether this is Legacy or UEFI boot per Rob's comments? A look at the BIOS Boot settings should give a good indication, i.e. does it show Windows Boot Manager as the priority boot device (UEFI) or does it show the Crucial SSD drive (Legacy), and does it show as Legacy first or UEFI first etc.
hey everyone, i need to expedite a decision on what to do about this matter as time is running out for me. Ill take everyones suggestions and answer then one at a time.
1.Rob? We do not use differentials, only full backups, that once successful delete the previous version, only one full backup is ever kept at a time
2. there is never an "after the restore" as it fails everytime, see the screenshots in this thread
3. Rob, I am aware of UEFI and legacy (Also known as ACPI I think) but the bios for this machine does not have that option, same goes for the secure boot, it had not been implented as of this machines date i dont believe. the NEW laptop has all those options in BIOS however.
4. F9 just brings up the BIOS, explained above
5. STEVE, the TIB file was originally backup to a USB 3.0 6TB backup drive, the drive is functioning fine and all files are normal, including the TIB (That USB drive is now plugged into the 3rd laptop, the one you had me setup TI on, again the TIB is navigable.) That drive is plugged into a secure wall outlet, and uses the power adapter to get its power from. The TIB file was then COPIED (using a secure file copying app) to another external drive. For some reason Acronis REFUSED to see the original backup drive. I know what your thinking that the copy corrupted, however I will test that other drive TIB and see if it is also navigable.
6. I do not have a different drive, however the laptop drive (crucial) is as healthy as a horse so to speak.
7.the boot order shows nothing about legacy and whathaveyou, its simply to old a BIOS
Standing by guys
CONFIRMED both TIB files on both drives are viewable
BTW i just checked this HP Probook 6550b does have a 500gb drive (Although not SSD) I am going to "attempt" to restore the TIB file from the other HP onto this drive, I think Ill have to use UNIVERSAL restore since its a different hardware set.
I will back THIS one up fully prior, most likely knowing Acronis ill end up with two unusable machines lol
Jay, the ATI 2015 Rescue Media which is Linux based, will not have support for USB 3.0 drives and won't support a 6TB drive when booted from a Legacy Windows as this needs GPT which in turn needs UEFI.
BTW i just checked this HP Probook 6550b does have a 500gb drive (Although not SSD) I am going to "attempt" to restore the TIB file from the other HP onto this drive, I think Ill have to use UNIVERSAL restore since its a different hardware set.
Universal Restore is only needed if you are wanting to boot into Windows on the different hardware platform, and the 500GB drive will be migrated from Legacy/MBR to UEFI/GPT if that is how Windows boots on this HP ProBook computer.
One other option that you could try is: Download a 30-day Trial copy of ATI 2019 and create the Acronis Rescue Media for this, then boot the original laptop from that media and retry the recovery to see if this still gives you the error messages about the backup being corrupted?
See KB 2768: Trial version limitations of Acronis products - for information on what can / cannot be done with trial version products. The trial version will give you access to Acronis Support for the 30-day period.
hey Steve!
Just for giggles I backed up the PROBOOK and am attempting to recover it to the HP Folio, just to see what happens.
As for the 6TB drive i suspected something like that was happening
As for the trial, if you are referring to JUST using the TI bootable, it seems the trial would allow me to do so, not sure what behavior I will get from trying to restore a TIB from the 2015 version on a 2019 bootable
I will let you know how I progress
Jay, per the Backup Archive Compatibility document in my signature:
| Acronis True Image 2019 Standard, Advanced and Premium on Windows |
backups of Windows computers created with: * Backups can only be restored. Other operations can be limited. It is necessary to create a new backup plan / archive. |
There should be no issue with ATI 2019 and your backup from ATI 2015.
Steve
Thanks
I just successfully restored a full backup of the HP probook (two partitions in one bootable windows 7 OS) to the Hp folio. Obviously this does me no good but shows that ACronis DOES work sometimes. This probably means the backup (#81) of the original crucial from the HP Folio is indeed corrupt, though Acronis refuses to show me HOW its corrupt, I am trying your ATI 2019 "workaround" now, will keep you updated
EDIT: universal restore does not do anything but tell me it cannot find drivers, of course it cant its a different set of hardware. I honestly can put the drivers in myself lol
Ok everyone, SUCCESS, though Ill never know why, do we EVER??? I find it hard to believe that 2019 restore went ok but the 2015 didnt, maybe its true what they say about the software companies always having to change things, this time for the better.
ANyway I would not say my faith is restored in Acronis after this heart stopping event, But I will research 2019 to see if their are any benefits. I am going to be careful in the future and ALWAYS verify the log prior to assuming a backup is golden, which is more time consuming however but if the extra step needs to be taken, I might also setup email notifications. In the past I trusted Acronis blindly, not so much anymore. I wish I could figure out if it was something I did or the instability of the program itself. Alas Ill never know for sure
I do appreciate everyones help, and for the record of research if your backup is saying its corrupt on an older version, try steves suggestion and upgrade to the newer version, if only to get your files restored. Again what worked for my scenario may not work for yours.
I will post back here when I figure out how to migrate the windows 7 install over to 10 without issues, but I think that is for another forum ;)
Jay, always pleased to hear of success in these situations and glad that the suggestion to try the ATI 2019 media has resolved the recovery issue for you. Thank you for the update confirming this and best wishes with the next step of upgrading to Windows 10!
Personally, I would be tempted to invest in a spare HDD or SSD to do another recovery to, then do the upgrade on that spare drive, keeping the original safely aside! The costs of drives being relatively low these days!
Steve
If it had the new M.2 ssd i would i have like three of them lying around now (from the LG Gram and the upgraded drives I installed) alas this one is the old ATA setup
Ill back it up completely with Acronis 2019 (in progress now) and then push to 10,
If worse comes to worse its a few hours wasted if i have to revert (As long as 2019 doesnt do anything weird)
Anyone know of any good "windows 10" forums that I might get help in any gremlins that Arise?
Take a look at Windows Ten Forums which look comprehensive and active!
totally NOT acronis but I just found this. For anyone who is trying to migrate a windows 7 system to a new laptop running Wndows 10, without having to smash Win 10 into the existing system, this might be useful. Again I am not trying to advertise anyones stuff, just trying to help others. Acronis may offer something like this, however I am not aware of anything.
EDIT: its $39.99 so NOT free like the article suggests if you want to do anything of value, the process takes forever, I will post back here when its complete to let you know how it went for me.
I backed up the new Windows 10 install with Acronis 2019 just in case ;)
Jay, Acronis does not offer any similar Windows application migration tool to the Easeus one you referenced. The nearest option is using Universal Restore for migration an installed Windows OS complete with all applications to different hardware, but that tool has been less needed with the greater flexibility brought to the table by Windows 10 for handling hardware differences.
There have been a few different application migration tools over the years but I have never had any need to use them, preferring to make a clean start and get rid of all the accumulated dross that builds up in any OS over time!
Steve
I second the " getting rid of the dross" comments. If it wasnt for the fact we had like 50 LOB apps from Windows over the years to migrate, I probably would have done the same.
If anyone is still reading, heads up on that tool I talked about earlier. While it does do what it says its extremely slow, and not foolproof. In my experience if your going to PAY for software it should at least do the job it advertises. Microsoft office products that get pulled over with it lose their licensing and so do some adobe products.
I would say its about a 75% conversion to migration success. I cannot really recommend paying for it as it leaves a lot of stuff undone. Basically its good for having a "reference" of everything you will have to reinstall to get it to function again. Your really paying for a real time inventory list on the new PC :)
Anyway today we will redoing 10 AGAIN, as one of our older softwares had a trojan bomb and I have not seen that many popups and programs auto install in forever. I am guessing Windows 10 has no native protection. It hosed the system so fast we barely had a chance to pull the ethernet cord.
Ill keep everyone updated on the progress
Anyway today we will redoing 10 AGAIN, as one of our older softwares had a trojan bomb and I have not seen that many popups and programs auto install in forever. I am guessing Windows 10 has no native protection. It hosed the system so fast we barely had a chance to pull the ethernet cord.
Jay, sorry to hear about the trojan virus! Windows does integrate its Windows Defender protection but guess that it takes a little time to be updated when no other antivirus application is present, otherwise it is disabled automatically by that other application.
ATI 2019 includes Acronis Active Protection which can help detect & prevent ransomware type virus activities but I have been fortunate to never have to test this in any real situation, and not looking to do so either!
Yikes! You can get offline AV software to scan and hopefully kill an infection there so you can safely boot the OS later. Problem is, once infected, you never really know what's lurking for an opportune time or not.
Windows 10 has Windows Defender built in, which actually isn't too bad of a tool. However, on my main system, I supplement it with MalwareBytes and then True Image and Malwarebytes both offer Ransomware protection too. Protection programs are always a step behind the actual malware though so if you're "lucky" enough to be someone who has a "new" infection, well, you're still hosed.
Checkout clamwin portable or stinger portable. They can be run in a WinPE environment (like one built with the MVP custom rescue media builder). Then you can update them in the WinPE (they just are stand-a-lone apps you can launch from a thumb drive or something) and scan the physical disks. They aren't 100% foolproof (as some viruses only launch from a specific user profile or after a service in the main OS has been kicked off).