How to Restore a Full System Backup to a new RAID 10 Configuration?
I need to go from a 2 drive Mirror set of 1 TB hard drives to a 4 drive RAID 10 system using 1 TB drives. Already tried it once but everything failed. It took me 4 days to recover to the original OS on the mirror set. Universal Restore never works and gets hung up at 55% asking for drivers I do not need. If I try to do a system restore it will only let me recover by disks or partitions. Then I end up with a BSOD after the restore with error code "0xc000000e" which means there is nothing to boot into. How the hell do I get this backup on to the new RAID 10 system. Oh yea... the restore is going back on the same server workstation. A Lenovo ThinkServer TS140-70A4. All firmware and BIOS are at the latest revisions. I can't sit here for another 4 days trying to get everything back again if it fails again. Please help. I have 2 external USB 1 TB hard drives with exact same copies of the system just in case I screw one of them up.
-John
John, welcome to these public User Forums.
Some comments...
The ATI 2021 User Guide states the following supported operating systems:
Acronis True Image 2021 has been tested on the following operating systems.
- Windows 10 (all editions, including the October 2020 Update)
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 8
- Windows 7 SP1 (all editions)
- Windows Home Server 2011
As shown above, this only included one server OS (2011).
RAID support is not included as such in the Acronis Rescue Media, therefore this means that any RAID array needs to present to ATI as if it is a single disk drive for the purposes of making Backups or of Recovering the same to the same or a different RAID array.
Acronis Universal Restore is not needed / should not be used when restoring to the same physical system (CPU, motherboard, memory, controllers etc). A change in RAID array drives does not require using AUR.
Steve, I am a bit confused 🤔 by your comment on RAID support. Yesterday created an Windows PE recovery media on PC that does not have RAID capability, used it to boot another PC with RAID 5 array; then RAID “disk” was visible as were the individual partitions.
Ian
Last 2 replies... RE; I am using a pair of Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 HDD's to do the backup's on. When I try to restore the backup to the new RAID 10 Configuration, it only allows me to recover by disks or partitions. When it is finished, there is nothing to boot to. That's when I get the BSOD with "0xc000000e" So... the restore is not boot able. This is where I end up hosed. Oh yea, Windows 10 Version 21H1. I am going to go to H2 if I ever get the new RAID config to work. Someone please tell me why I can't do a full system restore so the damn thing is bootable. There is 10 years worth of critical data in these backups. If I lose both of them, I might as well jump into a volcano.
-John
IanL-S wrote:Steve, I am a bit confused 🤔 by your comment on RAID support. Yesterday created an Windows PE recovery media on PC that does not have RAID capability, used it to boot another PC with RAID 5 array; then RAID “disk” was visible as were the individual partitions.
Ian
Ian, if your RAID is configured in hardware / BIOS, then there are no specific additional drivers needed for the scenario you describe above. Of course, you can inject such as the Intel RST drivers into your rescue media if using it with systems where that is used, i.e. for single NVMe drives using RAID for performance reasons.
John Kalinowski wrote:Last 2 replies... RE; I am using a pair of Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 HDD's to do the backup's on. When I try to restore the backup to the new RAID 10 Configuration, it only allows me to recover by disks or partitions. When it is finished, there is nothing to boot to. That's when I get the BSOD with "0xc000000e" So... the restore is not boot able. This is where I end up hosed. Oh yea, Windows 10 Version 21H1. I am going to go to H2 if I ever get the new RAID config to work. Someone please tell me why I can't do a full system restore so the damn thing is bootable. There is 10 years worth of critical data in these backups. If I lose both of them, I might as well jump into a volcano.
-John
John, can you please clarify what you mean by 'using a pair of Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 HDD's to do the backup's on'?
What exactly are you backing up to these drives, how are you backing this up, what OS is involved?
To achieve a bootable Windows OS recovery, the original OS must be backed up as a Disks & Partitions backup image, then recovered to the new disk drive(s) also as a Disks & Partitions recovery!
Windows OS cannot be backed up & recovered as a Files & Folders operation.
Steve Smith wrote:John Kalinowski wrote:Last 2 replies... RE; I am using a pair of Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 HDD's to do the backup's on. When I try to restore the backup to the new RAID 10 Configuration, it only allows me to recover by disks or partitions. When it is finished, there is nothing to boot to. That's when I get the BSOD with "0xc000000e" So... the restore is not boot able. This is where I end up hosed. Oh yea, Windows 10 Version 21H1. I am going to go to H2 if I ever get the new RAID config to work. Someone please tell me why I can't do a full system restore so the damn thing is bootable. There is 10 years worth of critical data in these backups. If I lose both of them, I might as well jump into a volcano.
-John
John, can you please clarify what you mean by 'using a pair of Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 HDD's to do the backup's on'?
What exactly are you backing up to these drives, how are you backing this up, what OS is involved?
To achieve a bootable Windows OS recovery, the original OS must be backed up as a Disks & Partitions backup image, then recovered to the new disk drive(s) also as a Disks & Partitions recovery!
Windows OS cannot be backed up & recovered as a Files & Folders operation.
I am doing a system image backup to both of the USB drives. Just so I have 2 identical copies. Like I already said, Win 10 V. 21H1. Why would I do a Disks & Partitions backup if I want the entire system back? This is very confusing. I am from the mainframe world where everything is simple. The PC is still in it's infancy when it comes to stuff like this. Cripes! Can't anyone make this simple?
-John
John, Windows uses multiple partitions in order to be bootable, so more than just the C: drive (partition) has to be included in the backup image. On modern systems, the EFI System Partition contains information on how to boot the OS - this is a hidden system partition, plus there is a small Microsoft System Reserved partition and also a Windows Recovery partition, which are also hidden system partitions.
If by 'doing a system image backup' you mean you are using the option to backup the 'Entire PC' in ATI 2021, then this is a Disks & Partitions backup image.
When recovering an 'Entire PC' backup, it still has to be recovered as a Disks & Partitions operation, where you should be selecting the top disk box so as to not to have to manually configure all individual partitions contained on the disk drive.
I recently created a short YouTube video showing the recovery of a disk backup (using a VMware Virtual Machine) that may be of interest to you.
OK... I'll give it a shot.
-John
I burned 2 DVD's of the rescue media. One in the simple mode and one in advanced mode. They completed the burn successfully but, when I attempted to test boot them, the system accessed the disk for a bit and then just froze with the blue windows symbol in the middle of the screen and the rotating dots below it. After 15 minutes each time, I just gave up and powered down. The rescue media does nothing! Won't even boot! WTH? Then I tried it with a 16 GB USB thumb drive. Same thing, It just hangs. Does anything by Acronis actually work? I'm ready to uninstall this software and look elsewhere.
-John
John, I rarely use DVD's for rescue media these days as I find USB media to be much more useable / reliable.
Where did you create the rescue media? Was this on the same system where it hung?
My own rescue media does work but can appear to be slow, though that is normally on much older PC's with limited memory - the rescue media has to load fully into memory after which it could be removed.
I don't know the specs for your Lenovo ThinkServer TS140-70A4 system but suspect that you have plenty of memory installed, so waiting 15 minutes should have been more than enough time. There could be driver issues if the media was created on a different system but that is pure speculation!
Assuming that this system is working normally with the original RAID drives, then perhaps trying an alternative application such as Macrium Reflect Free would help show whether the rescue media boot issue is down to the application or the specific system hardware? You can have both applications installed without any issue (as I have myself).
Steve; I have 32 GB of main memory. The max it can handle. And yes, I tried to boot it on a Windows 10 OS that is running right now. I simply did a re-boot and pointed at the DVD or USB drive that had the rescue media on it. Like any system on a re-boot, I hit F12 on mine during the second splash screen that shows "ThinkServer" and it goes to a boot menu directory. Before I tried to rebuild the RAID 10 system, I wanted to make sure the rescue media would boot. Since you think a USB drive would be better, maybe I'll try to build one on one of those spare drives I have available. I'll also try it on a 16 GB thumb drive again. At this point I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. But I will give it another shot.
-John
The spinning wheel issue is because an older version of WinRE is being used. Your system disk probably has an old Recovery partition at the beginning of the disk and Acronis used that one instead of the current WinRE in the Recovery partition at the end of the disk.
You also said you built recovery media using the Advanced method. Did you choose WinRE or did you choose WinPE? You need to choose WinPE and have a current version of the Microsoft ADK and WinPE Add-On installed on your system. If you have an old ADK version installed, you will also get the spinning wheel problem.
Mustang wrote:The spinning wheel issue is because an older version of WinRE is being used. Your system disk probably has an old Recovery partition at the beginning of the disk and Acronis used that one instead of the current WinRE in the Recovery partition at the end of the disk.
You also said you built recovery media using the Advanced method. Did you choose WinRE or did you choose WinPE? You need to choose WinPE and have a current version of the Microsoft ADK and WinPE Add-On installed on your system. If you have an old ADK version installed, you will also get the spinning wheel problem.
OK, I just downloaded the latest versions from Microsoft. I'm going to build rescue media on a 3.0 USB Flash Drive 16GB in size. I'll let you know what happens. As soon as I get it built, I'll restart and let the system boot to it.
-John
WELL.... Finally! I have a bootable DVD and a Bootable Flash Drive. They both come up right away with the rescue program. Now I got to get a pointer to (Or a Video) how to get my system image backups to go from being created on a 2 disk mirror (Raid 1) system and migrate it to a 4 disk RAID 10 configuration on the same computer. I am scared at the prospect of sitting here another 4 days like last time trying to get my system back. I think you all know that once I delete the mirror system and config the RAID 10 system, all my data goes away due to the reformatting of the disks. I will only have 2 identical image backups on 2 different USB HDD's. I really need to know that this is going to work. Thanks in advance to whomever can give me a pointer.
-John
John, glad to hear you are making some progress. Did some research on the Lenovo ThinkServer TS140-70A4. It looks like the onboard RAID is Intel RSTe (Rapid Storage Technology enterprise) RAID, assuming you are not using an add-in controller card.
I would be inclined to try installing Windows 10 on the RIAD 10 array - if that works then I would have greater confidence that I could restore the backup to the new RAIS configuration.
Ian
The only thing you need to do is make sure the driver for the RAID controller on your system in added to the rescue media. The driver will be the same for both the 2 disk RAID 1 and the 4 disk RAID 10 system. Since you're currently on the RAID controller you can get the driver straight from your Windows system.
Follow these directions:
You can also download the driver needed from the Intel website. All you need to know is the version number of the IRST driver. Get that from Device Manager/Driver Details. When you get to the IRST download page get the floppy image and the driver will be in the correct format.
I recommend you use the MVP Tool available here to build the media:
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2019-forum/mvp-tool-custom-ati-winpe-builder
There is an IRST driver included in a folder named \Drivers_Custom\x64\IRST. If that isn't the correct version for your system, just replace the files in that folder with the correct driver files for your system.
When you build the media, you can select build from WinRE or build from an ADK. Both will work fine.
Once you have the media with the RAID driver you can backup the full disk Windows system with ATI in Windows and restore it to the new RAID 10 configuration with the rescue media. It will work like any other backup and restore operation.
IanL-S wrote:John, glad to hear you are making some progress. Did some research on the Lenovo ThinkServer TS140-70A4. It looks like the onboard RAID is Intel RSTe (Rapid Storage Technology enterprise) RAID, assuming you are not using an add-in controller card.
I would be inclined to try installing Windows 10 on the RIAD 10 array - if that works then I would have greater confidence that I could restore the backup to the new RAIS configuration.
Ian
Yes, that's what I plan on doing. I have a Windows 10 IOS on a flash drive. i can install the system off that. There is also another reply I got to look at after yours. Thanks!
-John
Mustang wrote:The only thing you need to do is make sure the driver for the RAID controller on your system in added to the rescue media. The driver will be the same for both the 2 disk RAID 1 and the 4 disk RAID 10 system. Since you're currently on the RAID controller you can get the driver straight from your Windows system.
Follow these directions:
You can also download the driver needed from the Intel website. All you need to know is the version number of the IRST driver. Get that from Device Manager/Driver Details. When you get to the IRST download page get the floppy image and the driver will be in the correct format.
I recommend you use the MVP Tool available here to build the media:
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2019-forum/mvp-tool-custom-ati-winpe-builder
There is an IRST driver included in a folder named \Drivers_Custom\x64\IRST. If that isn't the correct version for your system, just replace the files in that folder with the correct driver files for your system.
When you build the media, you can select build from WinRE or build from an ADK. Both will work fine.
Once you have the media with the RAID driver you can backup the full disk Windows system with ATI in Windows and restore it to the new RAID 10 configuration with the rescue media. It will work like any other backup and restore operation.
Thanks for all that detail. Too late to tackle it tonight. I'll get started on it tomorrow. Let you all know how it worked out.
-John
John, before trying a clean install of Windows 10, obtain the drivers indicated by Paul (Mustang) and place them on a USB stick in case they are need for the installation - you will be prompted to install them.
Ian
IanL-S wrote:John, before trying a clean install of Windows 10, obtain the drivers indicated by Paul (Mustang) and place them on a USB stick in case they are need for the installation - you will be prompted to install them.
Ian
OK, good point. I'll do that before I get started.
-John
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that none of us had suggested the problem of the non-booting restore may be due to booting the recovery media in the wrong mode. I suspect we all assumed that the PC uses UEIF rather than BIOS/legacy. [It did not occur to me that a high level system such as yours would use anything other than UEFI.] In the former case when booting the recovery media you need to select the boot device which includes UEFI. If there is a UEFI partition on the drive then it uses UEFI rather than BIOS/Legacy.
Ian
IanL-S wrote:I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that none of us had suggested the problem of the non-booting restore may be due to booting the recovery media in the wrong mode. I suspect we all assumed that the PC uses UEIF rather than BIOS/legacy. [It did not occur to me that a high level system such as yours would use anything other than UEFI.] In the former case when booting the recovery media you need to select the boot device which includes UEFI. If there is a UEFI partition on the drive then it uses UEFI rather than BIOS/Legacy.
Ian
OK got it. I never got around to it today. It's late so I'll test that in the morning.
-John
OK, I now have a WORKING Raid 10 system with 4, 1TB hard drives, The mechanical kind. WD 7200 RPM Blue drives.
But anyway, this is the part I don't understand. In the picture below, it shows the image backup that came from the 2 drive mirror set. I did not make all those drives and partitions. The RAID configurator did that back in 2014 when I bought the system.
Well... forget that last post. I can't figure out how to upload photos even when I went to a low resolution .gif picture.
During the restore, the image backup showed 3 different disk drives. I could not choose them all. So I took a chance and just restored Drive 1 which had the C: drive on it. So everything got restored and all my data came back. It took nearly 3 hours for the recovery. Someone give me a pointer on how to get pictures on here because when i try to do it, It says my file exceeds the 2Mb limit. I really need you all to see the screen shot.
-John
John, download a copy of IrfanView and use it to resize your images so that they are much smaller, ideally in either .JPG or .PNG format. Most cameras produce far too large sized images for web use purposes!
To be able to embed images, click on the Imce File Manager icon (to the left of YouTube) which will allow you to upload valid sized images and show them inline with text, or else use the File - Upload option but the size must be under 3MB for both.
Sorry but, I'm lost. I can't figure out what to do with that IrfanView program. It created a image the size of a postage stamp that I could not see but it was still over 5Mb in size.
And I really need to figure out what happened because I restored disk 2, and 1 and 3 were left un-checked but I still got my system back.
-John
John, I have created a short YouTube video showing the basic steps for using IrfanView to resize the image file.
In essence the steps are:
- Open the image in IrfanView
- In the View > Display options - select 'Fit only big images to Window' then size the IrfanView window to a suitable size.
- Look at the bottom status bar and note the percentage value for how the image has been scaled in order to fit the window.
- Press Image > Resize/Resample in the top menu or press Ctrl+R
- Enter the percentage from 3. in the option to 'Set new size as percentage of ...'
- Press File then take one of the Save options to save the resized image ready to be used in the forum.
Sorry for the low resolution but, I had to take a picture of a picture to make it work.
Well, that didn't work. The picture came out all black. I'm a member of many different forums and none of them have these dumb restrictions on photo size. I simply can't get that IrfanView program to work. It's like working with a PC in the 1970's. I guess I'll never know about those extra drives that should not exist.
-John
John, put your images in a cloud share such as OneDrive, Dropbox etc and send me a link to that location and I will resize them and post them here for you!
John, please see the following guides in online web pages:
How To Resize Images And Photos In Windows
How To Quickly Resize Images In Windows 10
10 Free Tools to Batch Convert and Resize your Images
[ ] Disk 1 Flags Capacity Used Space Type
[ ] NTFS (Unlabeled) (K:) Pri 884.0 GB 231.5 GB NTFS
[ ] MBR and Track 0 MBR & Track 0
[ ] NTFS (System Reserved) Pri, Act. 346 MB 267.9 MB NTFS
[ ] NTFS (Unlabeled) Pri. 47.13 GB 506.7 MB NTFS
[ ] Disk 2
[ ] NTFS (Unlabeled) (C:) Pri 930.7 GB 250.6 GB NTFS
[ ] MBR and Track 0 MBR & Track 0
[ ] NTFS (System Reserved) Pri, Act. 350 MB 267.3 MB NTFS
[ ] NTFS Recovery Partition Pri. 47.13 GB 506.7 MB NTFS
[ ] Disk 3
[ ] NTFS (Unlabeled) (M:) Pri, Act. 17.58 GB 231.5 GB NTFS
[ ] NTFS (Unlabeled) (N:) Pri. 867.3 GB 29.66 GB NTFS
[ ] MBR and Track 0 MBR & Track 0
It was easier to just do this then screw around with those re-size programs. This is what the screen shot showed exactly of the 2 drive mirror set backup. The program would not allow me to select all the drives because it complained there were no partitions allocated.
So... I just picked Disk 2 because it showed Partition C: was there. To my amazement, it backed up into the new 4 drive RAID 10 configuration. Everything is working perfect. Has been for a week.
Here is what I don't understand;
The new Raid 10 system only shows drive C: with a 1.7 TB capacity.
It also shows a D: drive with a very small partition.
All Normal.
So how did the old mirror set contain all those other drives? If there was data on them, how was my restore from only Disk 2 work? I am lost to explain this. Any ideas anyone?
-John
John, your Disk 2 details look normal for a Windows OS drive & partitions.
Disks 1 & 3 look to be additional 1TB drives in your system that should be separate from your RAID array.
This begs the question about how many actual drives are installed in this PC and are not included in the RAID array?
One method you can use here is to create an Acronis System Report zip file, then extract the 'disks.txt' report file from the zip archive. This text file has a table at the top of the text showing all identified disks & partitions including identification details.
Steve Smith wrote:John, your Disk 2 details look normal for a Windows OS drive & partitions.
Disks 1 & 3 look to be additional 1TB drives in your system that should be separate from your RAID array.
This begs the question about how many actual drives are installed in this PC and are not included in the RAID array?
One method you can use here is to create an Acronis System Report zip file, then extract the 'disks.txt' report file from the zip archive. This text file has a table at the top of the text showing all identified disks & partitions including identification details.
I ordered the system back in 2015 with 2, 1 TB hard drives. When I configured it, I decided on a RAID 1 mirror set so I would have redundancy. NO other drives! Been that way until now when I decided I needed another bit of storage and a 4 drive RAID 10 config looked like the best way to go.
Other than that bit of strangeness, since my original drives are still in the system and I have 2 more new drives, does it seem reasonable to swap them out one at a time, let them re-build and then I will have 4 new drives? I'm thinking because the originals are 6 years old and the system is NEVER shut down, it might be one less thing to worry about.
-John
John, my own experience with RAID arrays is fairly limited as only my Synology NAS uses this approach, but mixing new and old drives doesn't sound like the best recipe, especially if some of those drives maybe around 6+ years old.
If you have access to the SMART data for your drives, then this should give you some indication of any potential issues or latent problems, plus also confirm their age.
I agree with Steve that it may be time to replace the original drives as they go back to 2015. While I have some AV drives that go back to 2009 and 2010 that are still in great shape, I do not use them for mission critical work.
One risk in replacing all drives at the same time is that if they come from the same batch they may all fail at the same time. Not that I can recall such being reported in recent years.
Ian
PS I am having my own problems with a PC which contains RAID (unrelated to the RAID 5 array). Seem to be a physical problem that prevents things working. One stage thought it was power supply, but may in fact be the UPS the unit is attacked to. Also could be a RAM problem, removing on module and many issues went away. The only "good" thing was that it allowed me to test restoring system disk from the Acronis Cloud.
Tomorrow, I'm going to swap in the new drives one at a time. It took about 3 hours each last time for the RAID controller to rebuild 1 drive. So, that will take up most of the day. However, I will have 4 new drives in the system.
-John
Thanks for the update John.
Ian
Well, I finally got 4 new drives installed into the system. Even though the last 2 drives I put in had data on them, they were still new ones. It's important to note because when I put in virgin drives, the controller saw them, asked if I wanted to integrate it in, and then it rebuilt the drive after the system booted. The rebuild for each drive took about 3.5 hours. However, when I put in the drives with data on them, the RAID controller showed them in an offline state. Nothing in the documentation addressed this condition. I finally had to figure out that I had to delete the volume from the configuration and suddenly the controller placed it back online and asked if I wanted to integrate it into the RAID 10 configuration. WOW! NOT DOCUMENTED! I actually had to take the chance of destroying all data on the array of 4 drives but what could I do? So, it all works now and I hope someone else can benefit from this info. Again to act as a reminder... TS140-70A4 with Intel V. 121i Chip Set Running latest version of firmware on their web site.
-John
John, really glad that you have finally got thing working as they should.
Ian