System partition wont boot after restore
Hi,
I restored an system drive-image (without MBR and Track 0) and marked it as "primary" and "active" within Acronis before restoring.
After reboot, the partition wont get booted. I have to write a new MBR in order to get it started! Whats wrong with it? Shouldnt it be marked as boot partition by Acronis? As I'm choosing "primary" and "active" in the restore-menu? Besides, the drive only contains this single partition. But no boot.
Please advise
- XP with sp3 and using the 2010 version of TI
- restore out of BartPE
- blank HDD
No boot. I thought defining the restored partition as "primary" and "active" writes the MBR in a correct way onto the HDD?
Active is a partition flag, nothing to do with MBR code. On a blank drive, the MBR code may be empty or garbage until one is written.
Is this restore problem on a normal, unencrypted system or are you restoring the TrueCrypt image you posted about?
Did you try restoring the MBR with TI (assuming it was a normal MBR)?
its an image done under Windows, so the Truecrypt system drive was mounted - therefore the image is unencrypted. This is why I deselected restoring the MBR/Track 0.
WTF? I am supposed to write a MBR myself, after I restore a system image on a blank HDD?!?! Isnt that some kind of capability, Acronis should have?
I agree with your point and (as far as I know) TI is supposed to write a standard MBR if one does not exist. However, it's possible that it's being confused by TrueCrypt and the restore MBR option not being selected. I have not run any tests on this. To be clear, I doubt it's because of the partition being unencrypted during the imaging. I would guess it may be because of the TrueCrypt loader/code at the start of the drive.
In any case, there are situations where the MBR must be written manually to a new drive (or even an old one). There are too many scenarios for an "automatic" function to get them all. It would be very nice for TI (and DD) to include the option of writing a standard MBR. I have mentioned this to Acronis before, but they have not implemented it.
have they given you any reason for missing out on that? What a shame... - what kind of "restore" is this then?
Writing a MBR is quite an advance task for someone unfamiliar with PCs. Funny thing is, even the WinXP recovery console with its fixmbr and fixboot commands isnt working. I really had to fire up BartPE and Testdisk, in order to write a working MBR to the "restored" (haha) system drive...
moronic!
>I would guess it may be because of the TrueCrypt loader/code at the start of the drive.
but the TC bootloader lies *within* the MBR - and the MBR is deselected for restoring. So how should this mess up things? Put simply, theres no MBR anywhere to be find during boot as Acronis wont write a standard MBR to a blank HDD if MBR restoring is deselected. I cant believe it.
If you wish, you can still perform a single restore of the MBR/Track 0 plus choose the Recovery Disk Signature option to the Target disk as I mentioned in my posting above. It may or may not solve your problem but what do you have to lose>
Another option might be to perform a disk option restore (if your backup had everything checked to include in your backup.
During a disk option restore,you checkmark the disk as to what is being restored.
No reason that I remember. Most other imaging programs include this feature -- and it's one that can really help.
If "fixmbr" wouldn't work either, it may be that TI had the same problem with it. Some SSD's can be difficult. Very difficult, judging from some of the threads I've read.
The TrueCrypt booting/loading code is in the first track of the drive. It is not completely contained in the MBR. This is really just a guess on my part. As I said, I have not tested it. There may have been somthing else that caused the problem.
@Grover
huh? how should that help? The MBR contains the TC bootloader, it wont work with the (after restore) unencrypted system partition.
Plus: If I had to do a second step anyway, I prefer the BartPE/Testdisk/new MBR method anyway, as this is working reliably so far
>Some SSD's can be difficult. Very difficult, judging from some of the threads I've read.
well, writing the MBR via BartPE/Testdisk works pretty straight forward. Cant be that difficult to include such an ELEMENTARY recovery feature in Acronis. I still cant believe that I have to do this manually after restoring every time...
SH21,
I think Grover missed that.
However, if you had another image around that had the standard MBR code in it, that would have been an option. This, of course, assumes that TI didn't then run into some problem writing it to the drive.
@MudCrab: If I have to do a time-consuming *second* step anyway, I prefer the BartPE/Testdisk/new MBR method anyway, as this is working reliably so far. I'm really pissed... - but thank you anyway for commenting
The problem with including certain features is not always tied to their level of difficulty. Many factors may exist. Only Acronis knows what, if any, those are.
You should not have to do it after every restore. Once it's on the drive, you should be set. Unless you're doing the same TrueCrypt setup on the SSD too.
@MudCrab: If I have to do a time-consuming *second* step anyway, I prefer the BartPE/Testdisk/new MBR method anyway, as this is working reliably so far. I'm really pissed... - but thank you anyway for commenting
What about creating a TI image now so it has the correct MBR? Then you could just restore the image you want and then immediately restore the correct MBR, all while in TI.
well, I have to redo the encryption after restoring too. This makes three steps then out of "restoring a TC system drive with Acronis True Image". And the MBR worthless again for future backup/restore procedures....
What about creating a TI image now so it has the correct MBR? Then you could just restore the image you want and then immediately restore the correct MBR, all while in TI.
Its an option, yes - but still three steps to take...
Have you tried doing a backup in the encrypted state? Backing up the entire drive?
erm, this is what I've done. An encrypted system drive results in an unencrypted image, as Windows is running while doing the backup
or do you mean from outside? Like from CD?
From the CD or from Windows with the drivers set to the necessary order. The second method used to work, not sure about now since Acronis changed how the drivers are inserted into the system. I'll probably try it later and find out.
from CD is no option. I want to do incremental backups out of a running, TC-encrypted Windows in regular intervals. So I guess theres no way to handle restoring in a faster manner than this:
1) booting BartPE or CD
2) restoring image
3) writing new standard MBR (or restoring standard MBR)
4) booting unencrypted windows
5) encrypting again
shit...