Have had to install recovery manager 3 times due to MBR error
(Acronis 2010 #5055 Vistax64) I have had to on 3 separate occasions reinstall the Acronis recovery manager. I would get the message during boot that their was a MBR error. I don't have ATI installed. I use the recovery manager to do all of my backups and restores. I had ATI 2009 before this release and never had any issues with it. Does anyone have any suggestion as to why this is doing this.
Thanks for the response Mark. I only use the Vista built in Defragger. I have it scheduled to run at the 1st of very month, so the last time it ran should have been the 1st of this month. I upgraded to 2010 last month. The MBR error happened again this morning.
Johnny:
Check the event logs. Vista defragger will occasionally do a boot optimization at a time of its choosing, outside of your monthly schedule. Look in Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application, and search for Event ID 258 (defrag). Look in the details for the words "Boot Optimization" and see which dates this happened on.
For example, I have defrag scheduled for every Saturday. Here are the dates that Windows did a boot optimization run:
Sept. 9, 13, 16, 19, 23, 27, 30
Oct. 3, 8
I am not showing any event id's with the number 258 in either the application or system event logs.
Johnny:
That may be. Windows 7 uses ID 258 for defragmentation events; Vista may use a different ID. I've not had a Vista installation for several months now, so I can't check. Can you find any entries with the text "Defrag" in the "Source" column? Click on the column header for "Source" to sort alphabetically.
No luck, it's not listed in the source column. I did a search also with no luck. Could it be called something else?
Johnny:
It might be. Or, perhaps Vista does not log anything when the defragmenter runs.
Well I turned it off. So unless their is another reason, then I will use the wait and see approach.
I have had disk defrag turned off since I started this thread and I just got a MBR error on my first boot up of the day. Does ATI 2009 build 9796 back up and restore win7 from the recovery manager without problems? I am installing Win7 next week, and I only use the recovery manager to do my backups and restores. I don't install the product. If I keep having this issue I will revert to 2009 if I can or use Win7pro built in imaging.
Johnny:
I still think that Windows does a boot optimization defrag about once every 3 days even if the defrag is turned off. At least it does on my Win7 machine and I'm assuming Vista is the same. I believe that's the root cause of your issue.
You could still do imaging from the recovery manager if you install it to a CD or USB flash drive or hard drive and boot into the recovery manager that way.
Windows 7 imaging is an issue that I'm currently struggling with. I've been doing a number of experiments with it over the past month and while it works, it lacks flexibility in the extreme. For example, restoring an image is limited to one of the following two situations:
1. Restore the system partitions, or:
2. Delete all of the partitions on the disk and then restore everything.
There is no middle ground, the images are in uncompressed .vhd format, and they must be restored to the same size partition or larger. Anyone who has used TrueImage is bound to be disappointed by Windows 7 imaging.
I know what you mean, I found those same restrictions with Vista's imaging, I had hoped their would be more functionality with Win7's imaging. I really like the ATI recovery manager installed because you don't have to insert the cd. Are you having any issues with Win7 and ATI? Did you have to disable anything else other than the defrag to keep from losing the recovery manager from the MBR? I know 2009 isn't officially supported for Win7, but do you know if build 9709 will do the job reliably? I know 9796 does does the same with the recovery manager as 2010.
JD
I forgot to mention that one nice improvement in Win7 is that the image files are in vhd format, and they can be directly mounted in Windows Explorer. So you get the equivalent of ATI's image mounting feature built-in to the OS. Win7 imaging does incremental imaging and always updates the vhd file to the date of the most-recent image; so in effect the vhd file is a full image. Changed sectors for the previous incremental images are stored in VSS shadow copy storage on the disk and are available so that the image can be rolled back to any previous point in time. Therefore, if you restore an image you can restore to any previous image date. However, I've not yet figured out how to mount one of the previous versions to view or extract files from previous dates; something ATI does with ease.
Currently I don't have ATI installed in Windows 7. I only use it from the recovery environment by booting (using the Grub4Dos boot manager) from the ATI recovery ISO that is installed on my boot partition, so someone else will have to comment on how well ATI 2009 works on Win7.
I don't have ATI installed either. I only have the recovery manager installed. That is the way I plan on doing it with Win7 also. With the recovery manager installed on your Win7, did you ever have any MBR errors at boot up and have to reinstall it like I am having to do? Did disabling defrag fix it for you? I know that ATI 2009 build 9709 installed it in the secure zone, I wish the current one did that.
Johnny:
No, I don't have the MBR error because I don't use the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM).
Please see my link below. I'm experiencing they same MBR Corruption. If I boot from the Recovery CD and then boot from my Hard Drive I have a corrupted MBR. This all happens within a matter of minutes with no Defrags in between. Please let me know what you find out. I've not been very successful in getting an answer from Acronis.
Johnny:No, I don't have the MBR error because I don't use the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM).
You stated you have the ATI iso istalled on your boot partition, isn't that the Acronis startup recovery manager?
Please see my link below. I'm experiencing they same MBR Corruption. If I boot from the Recovery CD and then boot from my Hard Drive I have a corrupted MBR. This all happens within a matter of minutes with no Defrags in between. Please let me know what you find out. I've not been very successful in getting an answer from Acronis.
If I find something out I'll let you know. I have reverted back to using the ATI 09 build 9709, because it installs the recovery manager in the secure zone instead of the MBR on the system parition. I have Vistax64 now, but will upgrade to Win7 next week. I am thinking it should image and restore Win7 from the boot up recovery manager even though it is not supported being installed on Win7. If that is the case than I wasted my money upgrading, at least that is the way it looks now.
Johnny: No, I don't have the MBR error because I don't use the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM).You stated you have the ATI iso istalled on your boot partition, isn't that the Acronis startup recovery manager?
Mark has Grub4DOS installed and uses it to directly boot the Acronis ISO file. The ASRM files are not installed.
I have a similar setup except that I use a separate drive with Grub4DOS and boot to it by using the BIOS boot menu. This way, I can boot into any of my ISO files as well as my BartPE/WinPE recovery environments.
Johnny: No, I don't have the MBR error because I don't use the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM).You stated you have the ATI iso istalled on your boot partition, isn't that the Acronis startup recovery manager?
Mark has Grub4DOS installed and uses it to directly boot the Acronis ISO file. The ASRM files are not installed.
I have a similar setup except that I use a separate drive with Grub4DOS and boot to it by using the BIOS boot menu. This way, I can boot into any of my ISO files as well as my BartPE/WinPE recovery environments.
Thank you MudCrab for clarifying that for me. I will be looking at your website and checking into this.
Johnny:
In case you're still monitoring this thread, here is a reply from Acronis Support to another user about the same issue. The response confirms my suspicion that the ASRM boots by looking up files by absolute sector. Running a defragmenter will likely destroy the references, making the ASRM fail to boot.