Restore not working - "An operating system wasn't found"
I have an Elitebook 8570p running Win10, and just recently I installed trueimage 2020 on the machine (although the exe file was downloaded when I purchased the software last year, so the latest version was not used to do backup), and do full image-backup of the system to my network file server.
The laptop SSD just broke down (its a 256GB SES drive original from HP), so I tried to do a restore using bootable
media.
The media (USB and CDROM) created from the application did not work. The CD never finishes booting
(the windows logo appears, and thats it), and the usb image could not detect the new SSD (samsung 860 512GB).
But I downloaded a dedicated iso from my acronis portal, which booted and detected my SSD.
But when I select the backup image, and attempt to do a restore of the image previously created, despite
the program successfully completes the process, it will not boot. The SSD is detected by the machine, it does just not
find any bootable partition on it. If I reboot the rescue CD, the partitions are there, and I can browse files and folders on it.
Why is this? The whole point of this software is to read the whole hard disk image (sectors from start to end), and then copy those back on a new disk. What can possibly go wrong? and why do the software, despite you selecting
sector for sector restore, still needs to confirm where you want each partition to go on the destination disk?
Why all this ambiguity? A one click hard disk image solution would be better for those scenarios.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Do you know whether your HP Elitebook 8570p laptop uses UEFI / GPT or is a Legacy / MBR boot machine?
It is set to legacy in BIOS, and also, during restore, I had to select where to put MBR. It is possible to select UEFI hybrid or UEFI native modes in BIOS though.
See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media
The CD image I downloaded from my profile is clearly the linux one, and it fits the description of the legacy version of the linux version in your link.
Next, do you know if the self-encrypting SSD (assuming you have replaced the original with another of the same type) is using RAID for the SATA controller mode?
It it not using raid (it is set to AHCI), but here I must confess that the replacement drive is not an encrypted one, and this may be the problem?
If yes, then it is best to use the 'Simple' WinPE version of the rescue media and not use the ISO / Linux based rescue media.
The win rescue USB media created from the software itself was slow, unstable, did not detect the hard drive unless it was connected to the esata connector, and took a very long time to detect the network server, if ever, and after restore the disk did not boot.
How are you performing the recovery to the new SSD? Is the new SSD installed inside the laptop or is it being attached externally via USB? It should be installed internally.
With the working linux based boot cd, it was connected inside the laptop. With the win based boot cd, it had to be connected to the esata to be able to do restore. None of the cases is able to boot.
If your backup image included all your disk partitions, as is the default for a Disk backup, then again the key factors for a successful recovery is to match the BIOS boot mode and to recover to the drive installed internally.
The items to be recovered are as follows:
- NTFS (Unlabeled) (C:) (237.2GB)
- MBR and Track 0
- NTFS (System) (300MB)
- Recovery partition (0.982GB)
If my problem is the encrypted drive, do I need to have an encrypted disk to be able to restore, or is there a way
to restore to a non-encrypted disk?
As an additional info, my laptop is purchased in 2012 (but still very capable), but I found there was a BIOS update released in 2019, so I updated it, although it probably wont make much of a difference in this case.
The self-encrypting SED / non-encrypting drive should not make any difference here as far as I understand. The encryption is done by hardware within the drive itself and would / should not be visible to the Windows OS where the backup was made. If there are any settings in the BIOS with regard to setting a protection key to be used with SED drives, then this should be disabled if allowed given the new drive is non-SED.
For you legacy / MBR laptop the Linux based rescue media, booted in Legacy mode should work fine for your recovery.
One late thought: The message "An operating system wasn't found." suggests that you may be using the Acronis Universal Restore (AUR) application and not using the stand-alone Acronis True Image application, which is what you should be using here! AUR is only needed when restoring a backup from PC 1 to a different PC 2, and even then, the restore is done using ATI first before using AUR.
I decided to try with the SED drive that failed. I deleted its partitions, installed it back into the elitebook, and did the bios diagnostics, and it passed both smart and long dst tests, so I wanted to see if I could restore the image back to
the original drive. The restore process completed without problems, but it could not boot, I tried both with the Linux, and the PE disc generated from the latest ATI2020 (I installed ATI2020 onto my main desktop to do this), I still get the operating system not found message (I can see the HD LED flashes a few times after reset).
I can confirm I did the backup with ATI2020, and I am using regular rescue discs to do restore.
This is the first time I have had problems with Acronis, I had an older copy running on my main desktop until I got win10, then it stopped working, and at my previous employer I got them to cover the software cost for all my PC's there, and it saved me a lot of time when I needed to restore a backup onto a new SSD due to hardware failures, and it was also convenient when migrating over to larger hard drives.
Jørn, have you checked the BIOS boot settings for this PC, and if so, what is shown?
For a Legacy BIOS boot, it should show your SED disk drive make / name.
Otherwise for UEFI boot, if offered, it should show 'Windows Boot Manager' from the SED drive.
I have been through every BIOS setting, and can not find anywhere it lists the drive name and make itself, only various setting for enabling/disabling boot sources, changing their boot order, speed, mode, and such.
There is the diagnostics section, where one can test RAM and HD, but both HD's come out fine there when testing.
boot settings looks just like in the video, not sure what more to do with it, its set to legacy and all, and the same boot sequence as shown.
Jørn, thanks for all your patience with this difficult issue!
The next action that I can suggest is to ensure that the correct partition is set as Active as needed to boot correctly.
Previous you listed the partitions / items to be recovered from your backup image as:
- NTFS (Unlabeled) (C:) (237.2GB)
- MBR and Track 0
- NTFS (System) (300MB)
- Recovery partition (0.982GB)
The 3rd of these, System 300MB is the partition that needs to be set as Active for a Legacy boot system.
To do this, you need to boot into Windows PE and get to a Command prompt window then use diskpart commands.
See webpage: [How to] Make partition Active or Inactive using DISKPART which has a step by step guide to using the diskpart commands.
The following is from one of my Legacy boot PC's showing how to check the status of the System Reserved partition for if this is correctly set as Active / System.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.610 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On computer: TCEDGE71-1 DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 465 GB 0 B Disk 1 No Media 0 B 0 B DISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list partition Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB Partition 2 Primary 100 GB 101 MB Partition 3 Recovery 832 MB 100 GB DISKPART> select partition 1 Partition 1 is now the selected partition. DISKPART> detail partition Partition 1 Type : 07 Hidden: No Active: Yes Offset in Bytes: 1048576 Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- * Volume 1 System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy System DISKPART> list volume Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- Volume 0 D DVD-ROM 0 B No Media * Volume 1 System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy System Volume 2 C NTFS Partition 100 GB Healthy Boot DISKPART>
If your System Reserved partition (300MB) is not shown as System / Active then after using the commands above to select partition x (where x is the partition number of the 300MB partition), you should enter the command active and press enter.
When you boot into the WinPE rescue environment, you will see a black Command prompt window along with the main ATI 2021 application window. You need to close the ATI 2021 window in order to have access to the command prompt in the black window.
Now, you can use the diskpart commands to do the above before relaunching the ATI 2021 application again using "X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
See the following example:
X:\windows\system32>wpeinit
X:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
Terminate batch job (Y/N)? nX:\windows\system32>
X:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
X:\windows\system32>
Jørn, thanks for all your patience with this difficult issue!
Thanks the same for spending all this time trying to help me!
Ok, this partition was indeed not active, so I changed it using your description.
When trying to boot now, I immediately get the Windows Boot Manager telling me that windows failed to start due to recent hardware or software change, and asking me to insert the windows installation disk. The bottom text says "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.
Jørn, sounds like a little progress is being made!
Are you working with the original SED drive or the new drive here now?
When you booted into the WinPE rescue media and were using diskpart, did you see the correct list of partitions and in particular your NTFS (Unlabelled) (C:) (237.2GB) partition?
If the C: partition was shown as present, did it show with the Boot flag when using list volume for diskpart? See my earlier example above showing this.
There are further commands you can try using from the WinPE rescue media Command prompt:
bootrec /fixboot,bootrec /fixmbr,bootrec /rebuildbcd
If these do not resolve this issue, then you will need to use Windows 10 repair or install media to boot the PC and then use the Repair tools provided by that media, i.e. Startup Repair.
See webpage: How to Repair Windows Bootloader Problems (If Your Computer Won’t Start) which has screen images to help guide you.
Are you working with the original SED drive or the new drive here now?
This happened with both drives.
I did a new restore, but in the process I payed attention to the default settings in the restore wizard. It seemed that both the system and the main partition was set as active, and if left untouched, the latter is set to active in the end, leaving the system unbootable. This time I altered it so the system disk was active, and now I got the result I did above after running the diskpart commands.
However, I burnt the Windows 10 install disk, as the additional commands above did not solve my issues, and after the repair action was done, I have a working system again! Hooray!
As this now is my new, larger disk, I used Partition Expert to remove the recovery partition, so I could extend the main partition to utilize the whole disk (though I left a slice of unallocated blocks at the end of the disk). This did not cause any problems at all.
Next, I installed the latest version of ATI2020, and I am now in the process of doing a new full image-backup.
I will then try and restore this backup to see if ATI work as expected, or if I need to use the windows install dvd to repair it again.
To conclude, the new backup and restore came out fine. This whole process took some time to solve, but at least I learned some things in the process. Thanks again for all help!
Always glad to read of success, even when this takes time to be reached! Thanks for the update and feedback.