Acronis9 Image File Will Not Restore
After literally years of making image files for backup using my original and never upgraded Acronis 9, the C drive (WinXP eMachines desktop) gave up the ghost (clicking sounds on boot start). Installed new C drive, ran bootable media, and selected the tib file from the external drive. I initially selected the entire disk but after 9 hours, I aborted, and tried partitions and MBR individually. MBR and 4G FAT32 were restored quickly and the disk booted (and wanted to go to the Recovery Program which was copied back from the FAT partition). (I do not remember why, 5 years ago, I set up the hard drive with a FAT partition.). But trying to restore the 100G NTFS partition resulted in nothing after 6 hours of running overnight. I think I am up the creek, but wondered if there are any suggestions. I am currently copying the tib file from the external to the newly recovered C drive (using the computer recovery program). I saw this in one of the troubleshooting charts on this site. Not sure how it can restore from a file onto the same drive but will try until and if I get any other suggestions from here. I found a copy of my original Acronis9 install file but no evidence of the original disk and serial numbers, so I can not even "mount" the file to extract some important files. Looks like it is off to the store for a new Win7 desktop and reinstallation of many of my favs. Any thoughts?
Also, how likely will a newly purchased Acronis (11?) be able to "mount" and see all of the files in the tib, or does the fact that it will not restore mean it will also not be able to "mount" the file and display the individual files?
Finally, I have about four past image files (earlier than the one that did not restore). Is there any value in trying to restore older and older files, or could the reason it will not restore be built into every image file I have left.
Sorry for long post but I am really in bad shape on much of what I have lost.
Thanks,
Ken
Thanks, GroverH, sounds like useful options.
Can you answer this: I tried the Restore Files options. I thought I would get the option to select the files I wanted to restore but it just began after a few questions (overwrite if older, etc). It began and listed each file it was restoring but after 45 minutes it (again) did not look like it was making any progress (I have usb 2.0 external hookup), so again I aborted. I happened to click on the C drive explorer and noticed many folders were present that came from the file restore operation, as they were obviously not there from my recovery operation.
Question: does file Restore just copy in all the files (similar to "mounting" the image file) but...does this result in an operational hard drive. I assume the registry is a file or series of files that would be copied in, but also assume they would not work all the programs. Correct? What is the difference in Restoring Files vs Restoring the disk (when you get no choice on which files to restore)?
Thanks for being so helpful. I will try your options once I see if the file restore step produces anything useful.
Ken
The file restore will not produce a bootable disk. In order to have a bootable disk, you will have to either have to choose to restore the Disk option or the c partition option.
I do have a guide available written a long time ago. Click on the first line of my signature below and locate index item 3A which covers a disk backup and disk restore and 3B which covers moving to a larger disk. If you choose the disk option restore and the disk is larger, this is ok and we can assign the additional space later as a separate transaction.
Curious observation, and not so trivial: i started the restore program on the CD and selected "Restore files" with "original location" and "overwrite only if older". The program ran slower and slower, with the lite on the target disk having "no activity" for longer and longer intervals. The estimated time remaining got LONGER each time I checked. So I restarted the program, same settings, and it seems to be faster having skipped the files already copied in to the target. Obviously some programming anomaly on the write code, or at least that is what it appears to me (with this limited information). Also curious, the Internet page from which to download the 2011 or 2012 program for a trial was corrupt and would not start, although I received the unlock code by email. We will see what tomorrow brings.
Ken
yes, retry the download but the file size is huge.
162 MB was the size of mine.
Most of my backups are at the disk level so I rarely use the file backup option. I can restore any files or folder I need from the disk image.
GroverH: I salute you Sir!! My computer is back up and running, thanks to you and your suggestion to download and use the 2012 free trial. Amazing!! I owe you the proverbial glass of wine, box of chocolates, stogy cigar. Yesterday, I tried individual file replacement and it took 18 hours !!, yes 18 hours. I just walked away and finally it was done. I had expected a failure. So, I put another new hard drive into the C drive position and tried the Recover the whole disc and it was done in 90 minutes! Not much more to say except a sincere thank you. I never would have thought to try what you suggested.
I read through most of those pdfs you prepared. I confess to becoming bewildered. The order of restoring multiple partitions was complex, at least for my mind. Kudos to you for putting it down in a readable form. I had tried and succeeded with a June tib file that contained only a single partition but I have a mid Sept tib that captured three partitions. I plan to copy off some key files from my now-working computer that were unavailable until now and then redo the restore with the more recent tib. I will check the "Disk" option and hope that it goes all the way through to the end. Do you think that will work?
Thanks so much for all the help you provided me and seem to provide to many others. Very kind of you.
Ken
Thank you for the update. I am pleased that you found my guides helpful. Your success is what make the time I spent in their creation to be worthwhile.
I have found that the checkmarking the disk as to what is to be backed is the best type of backup to have regardless of which version of Windows you are using.
Likewise, should you need to create a new disk, checkmarking the disk as to what is to be restored has the best chance of success. The disk restore method does not enable the user to adjust partition sizes but there are other ways of getting this done--which are not difficult. An alternate to the disk restore method is to restore each partition individually and change the partition sizes at the same time. This is a little more difficult because it requires that the user obtain some data from Windows Disk Management as to partitions sizes, partition sequence and which partition is the active partition. If using either of these restore methods, user should checkmark the "Recover disk signature" option located on the target selection screen.
of course, if you only need to update/restore one partition, that you can also do. If you have not assigned names to your partitions, you should do this without delay so your next backups will include the new disk names.
After performing a disk option restore, you need to adjust partition sizes or have unallocated space, there are some easy ways to accomplish this space reassignment.