Backup Failure
Attempting to create Acronis image
Notes:
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Essentials
The destination for the backup was a 1 TB USB stick.
The source disk is a 919GB disk with 302GB used and 616GB free.
The source disk was formerly 1/2 of a RAID 1 mirror volume. The onboard Dell RAID controller failed and was replaced by a non-raid PCI controller card. It has been running as a single disk for a few months.
I am attempting to migrate from a Dell Precision T3610 to a new Dell Precision 3660 with a NVMe 1TB Raid 1 Mirror. Obviously, the new Dell is completely different hardware so my plan was to use Universal Restore to accomplish this.
Attempt #1 From bootable USB media
Initial attempt to create image on normal settings. Had a “failed backup” at the very end after going through 3 hours of seemingly normal image creation. I was quite disappointed/flustered and unfortunately did not look at the log.
Attempt #2 From within Windows:
Quickly got a “Failed to create volume snapshot.”
Attempt #3 From bootable USB media
On a sector-by-sector attempt to create an image. The backup failed and below was what was in the log.
- 9/16/2023 1:25:52pm - Operation “My Disk Drive Backup” started.
- 9/16/2023 6:22:14pm - The backup has been created but its data is inconsistent with the source backup will be automatically restarted.
- There WAS a backup that happened, and it is 84 files that totals 333GB
- 9/16/2023 6:22:14pm - Failed to read the temporary file.
- 9/16/2023 6:22:14pm - There is not enough space on the disk.
- At this time the destination 1TB USB stick had 543GB free space
- 9/16/2023 6:22:14pm - Backup operation failed.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Alan B
I have not heard from support. I can add that on the 16th when I tried to do these backups I checked the disk from within Windows. The "Error Checking" tool reported that there were no errors. I did NOT select scan anyway, should I run the scan? Is this the same as running chkdsk from a DOS prompt?
Alan
As soon as I posted a reply came in from support. How long might it take for VSS Doctor to run??
AB
Alan Bridgeford wrote:As soon as I posted a reply came in from support. How long might it take for VSS Doctor to run??
AB
Hello!
The VSS doctor it's a basic tool. It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to get the results and report.
Thanks in advance!
Pursuant to the suggestions in support ticket [ ref:_00D30Zcb._500Hs1w8d20:ref ] I’ve done the following.
- Ran chkdsk c: /r at the next boot and then restarted the PC. I ran it at the end of the day and did not see if it had any errors since it finished overnight. When I got in the following day the PC was back at the login screen.
- Ran VSS Doctor. It found 1 error as shown below. VSS Dr was run a 2nd time and the error was gone.
|
VSS Shadow Storages Status (BEFORE VSS Dr) |
VSS Shadow Storages Status (AFTER VSS Dr) |
|
Status: Warn |
Status: OK |
|
Description: Some VSS shadow storages are misconfigured |
Description: All VSS shadow storages are configured correctly |
|
Storages: |
Storages: |
|
ForVolume: C:\ |
ForVolume: C:\ |
|
OnVolume: C:\ |
OnVolume: C:\ |
|
Used: 0 B |
Used: 0 B |
|
Allocated: 0 B |
Allocated: 0 B |
|
Maximum: 10240 MB |
Maximum: 92 GB |
|
Minimum: 320 MB |
Minimum: 320 MB |
|
VolumeSize: 919 GB |
VolumeSize: 919 GB |
|
Available: 616 GB |
Available: 616 GB |
|
TargetMaximum: 91 GB |
TargetMaximum: 91 GB |
|
MaximumGreaterThenMinimum: True |
MaximumGreaterThenMinimum: True |
|
MaximumIsEnough: False |
MaximumIsEnough: True |
|
MaximumIsNotReached: True |
MaximumIsNotReached: True |
|
AvailableIsEnoughForMaximum: True |
AvailableIsEnoughForMaximum: True |
|
IsOk: False |
IsOk: True |
|
Description: Recommended Maximum storage size is 10 percent of volume size |
Description: |
Attempt #4 From within Windows:
Received a “Failed to create volume snapshot.”
I think I'm going to try a disk to disk clone. Not sure if I'll succeed in generating an image.
Alan B
Attempt #5 From within bootable USB (Window PE) media:
- Another failure the error was unable to lock c: try Linux based media. I probably should have made a new Acronis 2023 USB Linux boot media but I already had a Acronis 2019 USB boot disk so I used it.
Attempt #6 From within bootable Acronis 2019 USB Linux base media:
- The image creation succeeded.
Restore Attempt #1 using the image created about using a Acronis 2023 bootable USB (Window PE) media:
- When I booted into the restore, I was expecting to restore the whole image from the source disk to the new PC. I was presented with a choice of which partition to restore from the source and to which partition of the destination disk to restore it into. I picked the Windows 10 partition from the source and restored it into the Windows 11 partition in the source. The restore completed w/o errors.
- As expected, it did not boot and I rebooted using the Universal Restore bootable USB media. I had copied the “driver” folder from the new PC. This is a folder that all Dell PC’s have that contain drivers for the machine. When I selected that UR did not get far and stopped with a :There are activities that need user intervention” error. Whether I choose retry or ignore I ended up with a error list or a blue windows screen.
- From a screen shot of Device Mgr on the new PC when it was running Windows 11 I noted that the Storage Controller as a “Intel RST VMD”. I went to dell and got the latest 64bit Windows driver and extracted then to a folder.
Restore Attempt #2 using the image created about using a Acronis 2023 bootable USB (Window PE) media:
- I booted into UR and tried to only load this specific storage controller.
- It is odd that UR detects that it is a Windows 11 machine. Note that when I launch the A43 explorer from within UR I can see the restored data on the NVMe RAID 1 disk on the new machine. This ends up the same as the previous attempt.
- Here are some screen shots from this process.
I'm having trouble uploading pictures...
Alan B
Hello Alan.
I have informed our support to prioritize the ticket raised by yourself.
As far as I can see now the issue is with the blue screen during the recovery so it's a different issue.
You can expect a reply over there as soon as possible.
Best regards.
I wanted to see what the original disk configuration was so I restored the new PC back to the way it was as delivered by Dell. There is a EFI partition at the beginning of the drive. As I understand it that is for EUFI BIOS booting. It directs the boot to the correct partition. The new PC started as a Windows 11 Pro. The image I restored was from a Windows 10 Pro MBR partition.
Is it possible to restore the MBR based Win 10 Pro image into the partition formerly occupied by a Windows 11Pro install?? Restoring this image was the only change. Will that cause problems for the EUFI booting process now that the Win11Pro was replaced by the Win10Pro??
Alan, if your new Dell PC was originally a UEFI BIOS boot system then that is exactly how you keep it and was most likely required to work correctly on Windows 11 and for the internal hardware it has.
You can restore your Legacy / MBR based Windows 10 backup image but you need to do this as a whole disk image restore performed after booting from Acronis rescue media in UEFI Boot mode which will perform the conversion from Legacy / MBR to UEFI / GPT where the correct EFI system partition and contents will be created.
What you cannot do here is to just restore your Windows 10 OS C: partition to replace the existing Windows 11 OS C: partition - that will never work or boot.
On a further note, you may not need to use AUR for this type of Windows 10 / 11 recovery unless there are very specific disk controller drivers that need to be added.
You could also do a test by doing a clean vanilla install of Windows 10 Pro on the Dell PC from the Microsoft installation DVD which you can download from Microsoft directly. This would tell you whether further drivers would be needed. You should also go to the Dell Support website and check if they actually provide any Windows 10 drivers for your specific PC model?
I was thinking what I did (I’ll call it a partition restore) was the problem. The thing is, when I did the restore, I didn’t get the option to restore the whole disk. My only option was to select a partition from the image and tell ACPHO what partition to restore it into. Not sure if this was a result of using Acronis 2019 to make the image and using the latest ACPHO for the restore. I’ve made a ACPHO Linux based bootable USB disk that I plan on attempting to create a new disk image from the old PC. I initially was having problems getting an image to complete. It will not complete from within Windows but hopefully ACPHO Linux boot disk can get a successful image.
If I deleted all of the partitions on the new PC with diskpart, could I force ACPHO to give me the option of the whole disk restore??
Does the UEFI boot mode in the ACPHO happen automatically or does the USB boot disk need to be made that way? I had to make a WinPE boot disk because the stand Linux boot disk could not see the disk on the new PC. That probably means that I WOULD need special drivers to load Win10Pro.
I noticed that you answered my last question about EUFI boot mode.
Alan B
Alan, if you make a full disk backup of Windows 10 (with just the OS disk selected along with all its partitions if you have more than one drive installed), then you should be able to restore this as a full disk too.
Normally if you just select the top 'Disk' tick box on the recovery panel, this will automatically select all lower tick boxes and not ask for where each item is to be recovered to. Those questions only arise if selecting individual partitions / items below that level.
Any disk / OS recovery should be done from bootable rescue media, not from within Windows. The reason for this is simply that from within Windows, you will restart into a temporary Linux based environment which in turn has a number of known limitations, especially for newer NVMe M.2 SSD's, RAID and BitLocker encryption which are not handled by this Linux environment.
Windows 11 requires UEFI for Secure Boot and TPM so your Legacy Win 10 system would get the warning message on the Windows Update panel that it does not meet the requirements for upgrading to Win 11.
KB 46250: Acronis Linux-based Bootable Media: Troubleshooting USB HID Devices Detection Issues
KB 45330: Acronis Bootable Media Does Not Detect HDD, RAID or NIC
KB 45331: Acronis Bootable Media(Linux-based): Troubleshooting NIC Detection
Just to reiterate:
Old PC = 9 years old, Win10Pro, MBR config, No EUFI
New PC = EUFI booting, NVMe SSD in RAID 1 config, currently on Win11Pro, ACPHO WinPE rescue media w/ special drivers needed to see the disk. I have an image of this PC that I’ve used a couple of times to put this PC back to where it started on Win11Pro.
I was thinking that there might be a problem with the image I made with Acronis 2019. This is the image I used in my failed attempt to restore to the new PC. I made a Linux based bootable USB stick from the latest ACPHO to get this 2nd image. I started it yesterday at about 4:00pm and at 7:00am today, 15 hrs later, the progress bar showed only about ½ done and 14 hrs to go so I cancelled that image.
I checked my WinPE rescue media to see which way it boots and found that it boots in EUFI mode.
Alan, the first suggestion I would make to you based on the further information provided above is to download a copy of the New MVP Assistant Version 2.7.4 Available tool on your Win 11 system and use this to identify what device drivers are in use for your NVMe SSD plus network adapter then to make Win RE / PE rescue media from that system including any required device drivers.
If your 9 year old Win 10 system is also 64-bit, then you could try booting the new rescue media on that system to create an offline backup disk image in that way.
From a personal perspective, I would be reluctant to try to migrate such an old system on to new hardware when you would be potentially carrying over lots of accumulated 'dross' from 9 years of use. Windows 10 will go End of Life in October 2025.
One option to consider here would be to keep Windows 11 and use Hyper-V to import your Windows 10 OS and installed programs as a Virtual Machine, where if needed you could create the VM as Generation 1 (Legacy) or as Generation 2 (UEFI with Secure Boot & TPM). This will give you continued access to installed applications for which there is no available install option, while maintaining the benefits of being on a new clean OS install where you can make a fresh install of other updated applications as needed.
I hear you... I'm just trying to avoid reloading from scratch, setting up all users, reinstalling software and getting that configured, and transferring data. I appreciate that a fresh load of Windows is better than a 9-year-old install with all the Windows debris that has surely accumulated. I have considered that I’ve spent as much time trying to go this route and that I could have re-invented the wheel by now. During this process every time it seems like I take a step forward it ends up 2 steps back.
I'm very close to the re-inventing the wheel route..
Alan B
I successfully loaded a standard install of Win10Pro on the new PC. To get it installed I had to provide some drivers in order for the install to even see a disk. So I now know that the drivers I’m tell universal restore to use should work. When I finished the install there were about a dozen devices that needed drivers. All of the drivers were in a directory on the new Dell PC from the factory. I used all of these drivers to update the devices. At the end there were no items that needed a driver in Device Mgr.
I used MVP Assistant to get a list of the components that go into the drivers. During the universal restore process I’ve only told it to load storage drivers, that I know are correct. There are errors that I haven’t noted. I going to go through the process again to see exactly what the errors are. Does UR have a log of the errors that it encounters??
Alan
Alan, sorry I don't know if AUR keeps a log of any errors it encounters, I don't recollect seeing any sign of a log from my own limited encounter with using AUR.
Did you make a backup of the working Windows 10 clean install on the new PC - worth doing if it is still an option?
Yes I made a image of the Win10Pro clean install. I restored the old PC image and tried AUR mainly to get the exact errors that happen. They are listed below. the first one is odd since I have the latest driver for the Intel RST VMD Controller. Hopefully the others shed some light on what's going on.
AUR completes with the following errors. I click on "Ignore" on each error to get AUR to complete. It is 5 seperate errors.
-
- Cannot find the driver for the following device:
- PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A77F&SUBSYS_0A9F1028&REV_00
- ID:ACPI_HAL\UEFI
- ID:ACPI\VEN_INTC&DEV_1046
- ID:ACPI\VEN_INTC&DEV_1056
- ID:ACPI\VEN_INTC&DEV_10A0
Alan
Alan, if I recall correctly there are several drivers needed for Intel RST VMD which are found in different folders.
See the following forum topics for a lengthy discussion on this topic!
Topic: Intel VMD Raid0 drive wont show up in the True Image 2021 BootStick!
Topic: Unable to backup drive as drive can't be found
Topic: Inaccessible boot media
BREAKTHROUGH!!!
The DISM command was the ticket. Steve thank you so much for the help you've been. The system has booted now a couple of times. My plan will be to run the old PC to a convenient stopping point then take an image. I will restore that image to the new PC then run the DISM command shown in https://forum.acronis.com/comment/601546#comment-601546 to get it to boot. Then go about determining how to get a few programs re-activated.
Again much thanks goes to Steve Smith!!
Alan B
Alan, glad to have been able to point you in the required direction and hope the remainder of the migration exercise will go more smoothly for you.
Initially the command did not run. I had booted to the AUR disk and run the A43 tools to see where things were. The Windows install was on E: (different than the post) and the root folder of the boot media was F: (same as post). The windows install was in a different place than the forum post so of course, I typed in the command exactly the same as it was in the post. I was like said %#*& it did not work, now what!! Then I looked a little closer and saw my mistake. Thankfully it was just a little oversight. Thanks again!!
Alan B