[Solved] Cannot recover backup to new WD advanced format drive

PS - previous disk was a 250 GB Seagate SATA, Momentus 5400.5

I believe you should be able to create a basic (disk with mbr) disk when booted from the Acronis CD and using the "Add New Disk" option. Check this link. Be sure to select the WD500 (465.8GB) as the disk to the added.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29142#comment-91096

What type operating system on the laptop and how do you plan on restoring to a new disk?

Be sure to include the option "Recover Disk signature" as part of the restore. This option is found on the same screen where you select the target disk to receive the backup during the restore.

Thanks, Grover. It's an XP system and I need to do a full-disk restore. I'm recovering from a USB drive
Ernie

Unfortunately, that doesn't work. When the Acronis CD loads it gives me the message "Acronis True Image Home has detected unsupported hard drives. Acronis True Image Home does not support Windows dynamic Disks, EZ-Drives, etc." and no option other than to click "OK" after which it reboots and the cycle starts over :-(

Sorry Ernie but I cannot help you. I am not a technician. Maybe someone can help. One solution would be get a different hard drive but there may be other choices.

Thanks anyway, Grover.

Does anyone know if the additional plus pack has tools that can solve this problem?

You might be interested in these two links. As for the plus pack, the only solution it would provide would be to provide the capability for you to create a different bootable media which would be WinPE which would use Windows drivers. A kb article on this is below. Is your disk one of those which has a pinout change to make it compatible with other disk as mentioned in the articles?

http://kb.acronis.com/content/23882

Below are articles about the advanced format drives and the problems it presents for xp users--like you and me.

http://techgage.com/news/windows_xp_will_have_issues_with_advanced_form…

http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/12/23/drobo-xp-beware-4k-advanced-format-…

Thank you. Those are useful articles. I'm not sure about the re-pinning but in any case it seems not to be advised in the third link. That link has a link to a software utility at Western digital that would seem to solve the problem except that in order to run it I have to have Windows running on the machine, and to do that I need to get the OS restored from Acronis backup.

Another option I considered was to boot a Linux OS like Knoppix that runs entirely from CD and then use a Linux NTFS format utility to reformat the disk as NTFS, but I'm not sure if that's legitimate with an Advanced Format drive or if there is firmware in the drive that would be incompatible.

Hi Kent,
i am working with different internal WD-Drives (250GB, 300GB and 500GB).

We have nearly the same problem and i tried booting from linux already before.
My expierence was creating new GPT or MBR partition table doesnt work for us.
Allthoug we tried custom WinPEs euqipped with all needed drivers with no success.

We had to use imagex wich is part of windows 7 recovery services for restore this drives.

Thanks for the information, Daniel. I don't have Windows 7; is imagex available anywhere?

I'm not sure in special about the license but imagex comes although with "Windows AIK" wich can be downloaded from microsoft as an iso. Your will need to burn this on cd.

Sorry i'll forgot imagex is a command line tool but you can us this together with "imagex gui" wich can find for free with google

Well, today I went out and tried to buy a different disk without advanced format. It turns out you can't get one anymore for this machine - not for the last year. I am not happy with Acronis about this. If they knew that Acronis 2012 wouldn't work with XP and an advanced format drive they should have warned me when I upgraded to 2012 and not let me go on with a false sense of security believing I was adequately backed up using their product. If they had I could have taken steps before disaster struck. Into the bargain, support on the issue has been less than useless.

Ernie,
I would still consider the use of the pinout change. It will not do permanent damage to the drive and can be undone. As long as the disk is being used with this computer, I cannot see any harm in at least testing whether it works. But that is just my opinion.

Thanks, Grover - I'm still investigating that, but it appears to have a four-pin jumper block.

Ernie

Usually, there is a schematic above or below block or on the chassis and/or in the user manual pamphlet.

Are you using bootable media from build 6154 (the latest)?

I don't understand how cleaning the drive of all MBR/GPT info would not fix this problem for you. My guess is that the new hard drive uses GPT instead of MBR. You could remove GPT and set up the partitioning to be MBR and it should work fine. The clean command in the command line command diskpart should do this easily. The disk management GUI interface may allow you to do this as well. (You'd need a boot disk with diskpart on it or hook up both drives at the same time.) Either that, or I believe I've read that ATI will switch between MBR and GPT, you'll need to see the FAQs manual, but to do this you'd have to get Plus Pack.

Hey Gork your right.
GPT means the kind on how partitions (in GPT partition are called volumes) are managed and comes up with new hardware as a replacement for MBR tables.

But this is only an software configuration at the head of your drive.
For real acronis does support GPT-Tables only in plus pack.

But this is realy hard to fix.

If don't have any posibilitys to work on windows you can alltough use a ubuntu life cd.
There you can start GParted und System-Administration.
If you startetd this you can simple choose your harddrive, then click on device -> create Table in menu.
Then select MS-DOS Table and you have an MBR-Table.

All, thanks for the various ideas.

First, I'm not certain which build the bootable media was made from, probably not the latest, but recent.

Second, the disk is described as an "Advanced Format" drive, not a Dynamic Drive. I have not been able to find any clear statement on whether or not those are the same thing, but from what I read about them it doesn't sound like it. The MBR/GPT distinction appears to relate to dynamic drives, but not so far as I have seen to Advanced format drives. Does anyone know the answer to this?

I was able to get the system report function of the bootable media to run and save the file to a USB stick. Here is how the report describes the disk:
PS Speed IFace Hs-Bs-Tg Model
Num NT L9NO Size FSsize Free FS Type Label ABCHSV
---- ----- ---- ----- ----- ----- ------ --------------- ----------- ------
1- d(0) UNSUPPORTED 466G 1K SATA 0-0-0 WDC WD5000BPVT-00KPFT0

Disk 1 properties:
BIOS number: 0x80
Geometry: 60802 255 63
Total sectors: 976773168
Logical Sector Size: 512
Physical Sector Size: 4096
Logical Sector Offset: 0
BIOS extension properties:
Extension version: 2.1
Functions supported: Ext. EDD
Transparent DMA: 1
CHS information: None
Removable drive: 0
Write with verify: 0
Change-line: 0
Lockable drive: 0
Geometry: 16383 16 63
Total sectors: 976773168
Sector size: 512

Table 1-*:
Sector 0 (0 0 1) - All 00
Sector 1 (0 0 2) - Sector 32 (0 0 33) - All 00
Table 1-*: of type 00 Unused
First physical sector: 0 (0 0 1)
Table extended structure
Extended boot sector: 0
Extended hidden partitions: 00 Unused
00 Unused
00 Unused
00 Unused
Extended boot disk: 0x00
Extended patch flags: FAT16(-) MS-DOS7+(-) FAT32(-) OS/2(-)
Extended OS/2 patch: 0x00
Extended checksum (0x00): 0x00
Extended size (14): 0
NT signature: 0x00000000
Extended serial number: 0x0000
i f Start C H S End C H S Start Size Type
- - ---------- --- -- ---------- --- -- ---------- ---------- ----
0 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 Unused
- - ---------- --- -- ---------- --- -- ---------- ---------- ----
1 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 Unused
- - ---------- --- -- ---------- --- -- ---------- ---------- ----
2 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 Unused
- - ---------- --- -- ---------- --- -- ---------- ---------- ----
3 - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00 Unused
Boot sign (0x0AA55): 0x0000
Free space 1-*: of size 466G
First physical sector: 1 (0 0 2)
Last physical sector: 976773167 (60801 80 63)
Total sectors: 976773167

Ok sorry learned something new today take a look at "WD Align" ...

WD Align is a software tool to manage Advanced Format by WD self.
Maybe your drive has alltough a jumper to disable this feature.

Advanced format is used to support harddrive capacitys greater than 2.2TB but this should not mean somrething to you.

For real your problem don't comes up with GPT/MBR.

While GPT/MBR doesn't necessarily have anything to do with dynamic, I did a quick Google search for "advanced format drives" and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format. This wikipedia entry indicates an advanced format drive is one which uses more than the conventional 512-520 bytes per sector.

I guess rather than trying to guess what WD means by "advanced format" those of us trying to help should have either looked into it first. As should have Acronis support, if they didn't...

Here's a site which provides more information on the issue with regard to WD drives:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/WDs-1TB-Caviar-Green-w-Advanced-Format-W…

And lastly, Acronis' own site indicates they support advanced format drives:
http://kb.acronis.com/content/16200

From what I've been reading on the WD site, Acronis (WD edition) is actually available for use with these types of drives, which leads me to believe that ATIH, as stated on the above kb article, does in fact work with advanced format drives.

So, this leaves me with nothing if this isn't a MBR vs GPT issue... Unless by saying ATI supports advanced format drives they simply mean they can take an image of one and write the image back to one (but not necessarily make an image from one and write the image to a "normal" hard drive)...

EDIT:
One last thing... WinXP doesn't play nicely with these types of drives. I Googled several pages with workarounds/ solutions. One such example is here:
http://techgage.com/news/windows_xp_will_have_issues_with_advanced_form…

This site mentions a switch (referred to by other posters in this thread as a possible jumper) which will "trick" the OS into thinking it's a normal drive. This site also talks about the WD software which was previously mentioned in this thread.

You can also find more information about this on the WD site itself. So, this isn't sounding like an ATI issue at all, but rather an issue running an OS and a HDD which are not natively compatible.

Thanks, Gork.

I couldn't get that second link you provided to work.

Yes, Acronis does support advanced format, just not for XP apparently, which since I am trying to restore an XP system, might be the issue. However it's not clear how the bootable media could know what the operating system is since there is none on the new disk yet, and it bails out before I even get to tell it what I want to restore to it. It seems to think the disk is unsupported hardware regardless.

WD has a tool called "WD align by Acronis" which sounds like it might be intended for the job. It seems to rejigger the disk so the sector counting is shifted down by one or something similar. I have a support request in to them for a few days now asking if it is correct for my case and if what it does to the disk can be undone in case I need to forget about my Acronis recovery and upgrade the machine to Windows 7. It's not clear if it's only intended to allow Acronis to read and write an Advanced format disk in normal operation once there is an operating system, or if it will let the bootable media recognize the disk as supported. They say: WD Align is only necessary for users who have:
Installed Windows XP to a WD AFD
Cloned a source bootable hard drive with any Windows OS to a target AFD
Created single or multiple partitions on an AFD using Windows XP

They also have another tool that will supposedly let you clone an existing drive to a new AFD. Perhaps I could restore using Acronis to some old drive and then use the WD clone tool to clone that in turn to the AFD.

I got an email from Acronis support last night telling me to use the Plus Pack to recover to a dynamic disk. No mention of Advanced Format. If "WD align by Acronis" that WD is offering has anything to do with Acronis you'd think Acronis support would know about it.....

Sorry, I fixed that broken link - copied the link in twice somehow and mucked it up. That link points to the following information:

The good news is, Western Digital has already solved the problem. Those of you who want to use an AF drive in Windows XP can either install a hardware jumper (if you plan to use a single, simple partition) or run a software tool called WDAlign. Either solution will restore the drive's full write performance, but WDAlign is what you'll need to use if you've created multiple partitions on a single disk.

Sounds like the easiest way to fix the problem is to use the drive with a single large partition and install this hardware jumper ("switch") - which is the solution others have previously noted in this thread.

My guess would be that Acronis WD edition does nothing different than a full version, other than it's "dumbed down." I don't think you'll find this software will work any differently on your system than a full version. What I've read indicates to me this is a problem between WinXP and the drive. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like it. heh

Thanks, Gork

Unfortunately my drive doesn't seem to support the jumper option. It has only pins 1-4. I found a reference to the jumper option being on "early" AF drives, so the docs may be old on that.

There seem to be three options developing:

1. I took an old drive out of a junk laptop and put it into the machine and the bootable media restored the disk to it, so I now have a running version, even if it's not a drive I want to rely on. I am thinking I could put the AF drive into a USB enclosure and use the WD Acronis Edition to clone the currently running version to the AF drive. Then I could put the AF drive in the machine and use the WD align tool to jigger the AF sectors for decent performance with XP. I think this might work.

2. Acronis support responded to my inquiry about their last response by saying that dynamic drives and AF drives are "almost" the same thing and that the plus pack should work. Coincidentally I filled out their survey and they are supposed to be giving me a plus pack on the 20th when the survey is finished as a reward, so I'll wait until then to try that.

3. Western Digital support suggests that I could try running the WD align tool on it since trying to transfer an XP system to the AF drive might be causing problems. I don't have much faith in this since the recovery program just looks at the disk and refuses before even asking what system I want to recover.

Can you partition the new disk using windows installation CD and then try to restore again? The software may be confused by some garbage in its MBR.

Glad you're (possibly?) getting somewhere. What a pain! This sounds like a chicken/egg fiasco... It almost sounds like you'd have to use a regular (non AF) drive to install WinXP on, then install the WD tools software, then install ATIH, then restore your initial image to the image to the AF drive. But at that point, would the image on the AF drive actually boot? I mean, does the WD tools software have to run in the backround at all times, or does it just make a change once to the drive? My guess, if this is anything like experiences I've had in the past with HDD software that allows drives to work on older systems, is that the software has to run in the background.

As far as Acronis WD edition, I'd be surprised to learn this would do anything different for you than the full version. I don't think this software is specifically for AF issues; simply a dumbed-down version of the ATIH software that WD includes for free with drive purchases. My guess is that "Advanced Format Software" is what's going to make a difference here. But I think I was supposed to learn from my "assumption mistake" earlier...

Downloads from WD for this drive:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=702&sid=3&lang=en

Yes, you're right - the most likely solution looks very chicken-and-eggish unless the Plus Pack works. I'm not sure if the drive alignment software is a one-off or if it needs to run all the time. That's one thing that worries me; I don't necessarily want to do anything irreversible to the drive in case it doesn't solve the problem but I don't want to take a performance hit.

However, I think I've just learned a somewhat expensive lesson that may also point a way out. For years since drives have become so cheap I've just viewed them as a commodity and not done any research - just bought whatever was on the shelf. Now digging in to it I've discovered I should have been paying more attention. For example, the WD drive I bought is getting knocked because it apparently spins down after 8 seconds (perhaps as a power-save feature) and that can't be changed. Now when I asked the guy at the computer store he assured me that Seagate and everything else available since 1/1/2011 had advanced format, and that's true, but it seems there's a difference.

Seagate uses a technology called SmartAlign that implements advanced format internally in the drive and makes it invisible to the computer:
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/mb6101_smartalign_technology…
It looks as if Acronis wouldn't even know it was an AF drive.

Further, Seagate has a really nice drive with this feature:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=70f4bfafecadd110VgnVCM1…
That gets good reviews and test out with super performance specs:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/967/1/
and it is nearing the end of its product cycle and hence is available for lower prices.

I've ordered one to see if this works. If so I'll use the WD elsewhere. If not I'll try the other options. In either case I learned something, and perhaps before too long Acronis will catch its software up to the current technology. (If Plus Pack can do it, why wasn't the capability part of 2012?)

I'm still sitting back with my guess that in the end this isn't an Acronis issue at all, but rather an AF vs WinXP issue - get the AF hdd working with WinXP and ATIH would be fine. BUT, I recognize that I could be completely wrong as well.

I've taken the same thing from your experience that you have - must pay more attention when purchasing drives in the future. I did some research when I last purchased hardware, enough to know to stay away from anything "green." BUT, I will definitely pay more attention to tag lines and spend more time researching before making a purchase because of your experience. Kind of as you've said, I tend to spend hours upon hours researching processors, monitors and many other computer parts/peripherals. But when it's come to hard drives, it's always been a relatively easy purchase. Stay away from Seagate 'cuz they keep failing on me, and beyond that get the biggest bang for the buck with regard to size, at a spindle speed which makes me smile.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your feedback and your help.

Ernie, I apologize for the inconvenience. I updated the engineer working on your case with your findings and should you have additional questions about your case feel free to contact me directly.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

You may be right, Gork, but in that case I am puzzled how Acronis bootable media knows WinXP is involved. It bails out after looking at the AF disk, which has no OS, and before asking me what or where I want to restore from, so it can't know the OS I intend to restore. I think then the only possibility is if the bootable media knows what OS created it and assumes that is what it is going to restore.

Thank you, Anton. I appreciate any help.

Ernie

Yeah, true, if the ATIH bootable media doesn't recognize the drive there's something else going on. I wonder if it's possible that the version of Linux they're using is too old to recognize AF HDDs, just like WinXP? Or perhaps it's totally an issue with ATIH after all, or perhaps a combo of an issue with WinXP and ATIH. /sigh

I'm out of ideas now... But please post back with whatever you come up with - I know your experience is going to help me down the line. If I do come up with any other thoughts I will, of course, post again...

Hello Ernie,

Would it be possible for you to get back to me with two system reports collected from Windows and the bootable media. You can send them to me via a pm if you like.

Thank you.

Thanks, Anton - sent by PM
Ernie

We now have two solutions. I am posting details here for the benefit of others who may encounter the same problem.

Problem: Acronis 2012 recovery medium will not recognize a Western Digital Advanced Format drive. It gives an immediate error message of "Unsupported Hard Drive" and offers no options to proceed. This drive was a WD Scorpio Blue 5000 BPT. The Acronis 2012 was build 6154, without Plus Pack. The operating system was WinXP, although that would presumably not be known to the recovery disk at the time of the error.

1) It was recommended that I try Plus Pack. I did, and this failed in the same way with the same errors.
2) Anton provided a new ISO, ATH2012_6154_en_US. I burned this to a CD and it successfully recognized the WD advanced format disk and behaved normally.
3) I installed a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 drive. This drive was recognized as supported by all versions of Acronis 2012. After recovering to this disk it was able to use the originally installed Acronis 2012 successfully to back itself up.

Conclusion: The difference between the WD and Seagate drives is that the WD drive presents the advanced format scheme directly to the system. The Seagate drive uses internal "Smartalign" firmware to present a standard interface to the system and makes the advanced format translations internally. From the above results it appears that neither ATH 2012 6154, nor the Plus Pack are able to recognize the WD advanced Format configuration. However, the special ISO sent by Anton can, so Acronis is in possession of a fix for this. The Seagate advanced format drive is recognized as supported by all Acronis software, presumably because it presents a standard interface to the system.

Thanks to Anton and to all who helped.

Ernie

Good news and thanks for the posting. If the plus pack has no value to you, consider asking Acronis for a refund--if within the 30 day limit.

As @GroverH posted - thanks for posting your conclusions.

Why is this thread marked "solved"?
These are NOT solutions. These are workarounds for a glaring defect in True Image software.

A backup & restore program that only recognizes ONE brand of hard drive after the entire industry has moved to advanced format hard drives over two years ago is a joke!

And, when you go to restore your backup to new, bare hard drive and find that Acronis True Image has FAILED you at this critical moment, contacting support and going back & forth in forums for a workaround which ends up being a "customized" recovery cd sent from the secret basement of Acronis is not acceptable for a paid software program like True Image.

ANTON: Either post this "magic" revised recovery cd where ALL of us registered users can get it BEFORE we go nuts trying to restore to a new hard drive or bring Acronis True Image up to minimum acceptable standards and revise it to recognize the only kinds of hard drives we have been able to buy for the past two years, advanced format hard drives!

An additional note in response to flyprivate:

Anton had me run some tests on the CD created from the ISO he provided and on the CD I created from my installed Acronis. They seem not only to be made from the same build, but to use the same Linux kernel, etc. It is not clear what the difference between them is. In my opinion it is probably not a flaw in the burning since the CDs I tried were burned on various machines, including the one that burned the CD from the ISO Anton provided. My only supposition at this point is that perhaps the fact that my versions of the ISO were created by Acronis running on XP machines may have made some difference if in fact his were not.

Ernie

Ernie, great post (#36) . Nice summary of problem and solution. Like you, I basically figured Seagate & Western Digital were essentially the same thing and just went for the best price at time of purchase. I've had a few problems with one brand lately and was starting to lean away from it. You're thread has confirmed for me that drives from these 2 companies are not equal and I also will have to pay more attention in the future. Thanks for summarizing this all so well.

Ernie, it's not because of XP or your burn process. It is because Acronis is aware of the problem and has chosen to NOT fix the recovery cd except in a case like yours where Anton sends you a customized .iso file. I suspect that AFHD support will be a "new feature" in the next PAID upgrade to TI which is what Acronis has done in the past many times before to keep you coming back to spend more money to get what you already paid for.

I don't want to beat a dead horse but this kind of Acronis failure to perform a basic and critically necessary function, to restore an image to the same type of new drive it was created from, is unforgivable and grossly negligent.

It's even more outrageous that registered users have to turn to FREE imaging programs to get the functionality they should have gotten from True Image.

Hello everyone,

Thank you very much for your posts, we really appreciate your feedback.

flyprivate, I am very sorry for the inconvenience and I understand how frustrating this issue is. We have a case in our system and we are working on this issue.

I am very sorry, if this was a known issue we would have provided our Customers with an update, created a Knowledge Base article or fixed it. We will need to investigate this problem within our support system so that we can provide our users with a fix.

If you feel this is not the case you can always contact our Management team at managers@acronis.com or submit your feedback from this link.

I would really appreciate if you could refrain from making such statements in the future because they violate our Forum TOU and will result in a two week ban.

Should you have additional questions about your case, feel free to post in a special dedicated thread here.

Thank you.