Primary HD Crashed and I cannot see the Acronis back up
Some quick background. My main HD crashed. Prior to the crash, I had used Acronis to create an image on a SATA drive in an external enclosure. The Acronis product that I used was Western Digital's downloadable version (which is a freeware copy of the Acronis True Image). I bought a new 1TB Western Digital HD and I installed it in my PC and I plan to use it as my primary drive. I placed the Acronis Back UP CD in my PC and started the Acronis software. I added the new 1TB drive as a new drive and then I tried to browse to the cloned image on the back up drive in the external enclosure but I could not see the image. I was able to see the drive but not the image. I thought that the external enclosure might be causing a problem so I installed the back-up drive as an internal HD in my system but the result was the same, I could see the drive but not the image.
I ended up reinstalling Windows 7 and I browsed to the back-up drive (as it is still in my PC as an internal drive) and I can see the Acronis image so I know it is there. My question is how do I recover the data? Is there a full version of Acronis software that I can purchse to recover the data? Or is my only hope trying to use the Acronis Recovery CD and figuring out a way to find the image on the back up HD?
Bill,
When you use the Acronis recovery CD, the drive letters are not the same as in Windows. Are you sure you browsed the backup disk, and not the new disk, when you were looking for the archive file?
If the recovery disk sees the drive, it should see the content in it, unless the disk is formatted in a way that Acronis doesn't support:
- it cannot be a GPT disk when you use something else than 2012: it has to be a basic MBR disk,
- it cannot be encrypted or password protected,
- it has to be formatted using a partition format supported by ATI (see the list for your version). Typically FAT, FAT32, NTFS.
If you see any content, you definitely should see the TIB file.
If you still cannot see the TIB file from the recovery CD, you can still double click the file after you have installed ATI in Windows to open it and take files from inside it.
Thanks Pat. I am fairly sure that I looked at every volume and I could not see the TIB file. I was not really paying attention to drive letters, I was just looking at every drive that I could see. In another part of the back up process, I was actually able to find the TIB file and I hit proceed and the program halted saying it could not continue. Wish I had written down the error code but I did not.
Follow up question, you said that the partition has to be formatted in FAT, FAT32 or NTFS. I believe the back up disk was NTFS but would Acronis create a back up volume on a back disk that was not in the right format? That does not make sense. My point being, why create a volumn if it cannot be used for back up? Maybe I am not understanding your bullet point.
I ended up reinstalling Windows 7 on my PC and just browsing to the back up file on the hard disk. I can get to every file so I will just reinstall my apps and move the data from the image to my new HD
I don't know a lot about oem versions, but there could be a little switch (buttons, whatever) 'file backups'/'disk backups' which of course was in the wrong position.
Bill,
The version of Acronis that runs on the CD is different from the one in Windows. The one on the CD is running on Linux. You might have a Linux driver issue. The version in Windows might put your file on a GPT disk and not complain, but then the recovery CD will not work (GTP are not supposed to be supported without the Plus pack for versions before 2012, but sometimes, they work...).