Acronis TI 2017 bootable rescue media cd does not see the 4TB backup hard drive

I think your problem is probably that the 4TB disk is using an MBR partition style rather than a GPT partition style.  The later supports partitions greater than 2TB whereas the former does not.

I see another item in your images you included and that is a partition unallocated space of 27.79GB on your primary system drive.  I believe that should be where your system reserve partition should be located.

This assumes of course that you are booting the machine as UEFI\GPT installation of Windows 10.  Can you verify that you are using a 64 bit version of Windows 10, you are using UEFI boot and what partition style both disk are using?

The one instance I have seen that looks like yours was a user whom performed his Windows 10 install while both disk were attached to the machine and during the installation Windows placed the EFI System partition on the secondary data drive and that prevented the larger from being converted to a GPT style drive.

The boot media would show such a condition as an unsupported device because of partition style.

I am attaching a screenshot of a typical UEFI/GPT Windows 10 install and a secondary disk.  Note the screenshot shows partition style in the top view.  You can do the same by selecting the view tab in disk management, top, then Disk list.

Hi Enchantech, screenshots are missing...

A major difference with 2010 and 2017 is that 2010 was strictly legacy/MBR aware only.  2017 is both legacy/BMR and/or GPT/UEFI aware.  How you boot the recovery media will make a huge difference.  Use your one-time boot menu or boot override menu in the bios, to ensure that the the recovery media is being booted to match the install type of the OS.  Screenshots from this post may be helpful in determining how to look for your one time boot menu and verifying how you're booting your recovery media.  https://forum.acronis.com/forum/121829#comment-378318

Second... in previous versions of Acronis, there was also the extended capacity manager which was essentially a driver to allow drives larger than 2TB to be seen by the OS and/or be a boot drive.  This was removed in 2015 and newer. Shouldn't be an issue for a Windows 10 machine, but just wanted to point it out (just in case).  

OOOP's! Thanks Bobbo!

Alan, in your initial post with the System Report disk data it clearly shows:

A-API report version 3

          PS         Speed IFace Hs-Bs-Tg Model                    
Num  NT    L9NO  Size FSsize Free FS     Type            Label       ABCHSV Error
---- ----- ---- ----- ----- ----- ------ --------------- ----------- ------ ----------
1-   d(1) Corr  3.6T    1K SATA  1-0-0    WDC WD40EZRZ-00W         
                   2T             Corrup                             ------

Where my reading says that this drive is being reported as being Corrupt - this may be due to the use of the Acronis Extended Capacity manager or as suggested if using MBR not GPT for the size of drive etc.

The difference in using the ATIH 2010 Rescue Media versus 2017 media is also a matter of the Linux Kernel version used for the media which will have changed significantly.  See KB document: 1537: Acronis Bootable Media which shows that 2010 used Kernel 2.4 whereas 2016 and later are using a Kernel 3.15 or later.  Linux Kernels tend to drop support for older hardware etc in favour of newer, which is why later Linux distributions no longer work on non-PAE processors etc.

Thanks for the quick responses!

Here's my reply to the posted responses:

1) The system is a slightly older AMD AM3 system that uses plain old BIOS, not UEFI. For the 4TB disk, I just installed it and formatted the disk in Win 7 (if it wasn't already, I cannot recall). Googling, MBR only supports up to 2TB partition and this is a 4TB partition.

I should also mention that my BIOS has both AHCI and IDE modes. I've tried both and gotten the same results for each.

The system is Win10 x64, see attached pic.

2) The 4TB disk is a GPT partition as shown by DISKPART, since the GPT column for it has a '*'. FYI 525GB SSD drive is not, it was cloned from an older drive.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          489 GB    27 GB
  Disk 1    Online         3726 GB      0 B        *

3) The system is legacy BIOS only, not UEFI. So there is no 1-time boot menu to choose the boot type.

4) Enchantech wrote: "I see another item in your images you included and that is a partition unallocated space of 27.79GB on your primary system drive.  I believe that should be where your system reserve partition should be located."

I don't know what you mean and how this would be related to this issue.

5) Steve Smith wrote: "Corrupt - this may be due to the use of the Acronis Extended Capacity manager "

Until mentioned here, I wasn't aware of an 'Extended Capacity manager' and don't think this was used.

6) Somewhat a side note:

Enchantech wrote: "I am attaching a screenshot of a typical UEFI/GPT Windows 10 install and a secondary disk.  Note the screenshot shows partition style in the top view.  You can do the same by selecting the view tab in disk management, top, then Disk list."

I cannot get Win10 x64 to display the Partition Type column in Disk Management. This system is Win 10 PRO and was updated from Win7.

Reference point number 4 from your last post: You can disregard since your machine is a Legacy bios only and lacks UEFI capability.

Reference point number 6 from your last post:  The reason you cannot get the partition type display is because of how you are opening Disk Management.  In Windows 10 if you right click on the Windows Start button you will get an expansive context menu from which there are many choices.  In that menu you will see Disk Management.  Opening Disk Management from that menu will allow you to access the Disk list view as I described and is seen in the screenshot provided.

If you can provide a screenshot that looks like the one I posted we can see partition style as well as Device type and other information which may help here.

At this point I am not sure what to make of your issue.  I'll do some digging for you.

Alan, see webpage: Frequently asked questions about the GUID Partitioning Table disk architecture which may help with your understanding of GPT and MBR.

I have another thought here, When you boot the recovery media to you see a choice of 32 bit Acronis True Image and also 64 bit Acronis True Image?

If yes which one did you boot from?  The 64 bit version would need to be used for GPT support.

Enchantech wrote: "You can do the same by selecting the view tab in disk management, top, then Disk list."

"The reason you cannot get the partition type display is because of how you are opening Disk Management.  In Windows 10 if you right click on the Windows Start button you will get an expansive context menu from which there are many choices.  In that menu you will see Disk Management.  Opening Disk Management from that menu will allow you to access the Disk list view as I described and is seen in the screenshot provided."

"When you boot the recovery media to you see a choice of 32 bit Acronis True Image and also 64 bit Acronis True Image"

Regarding Disk Mgmt, did you mean View menu item? Anyway I opened Disk Mgmt via the Win10 Start Menu's right context menu, and didn't see a disk list option, See attached.

Also, I did try both the regular TI2017 and the TI2017 menu option from the Rescue Boot CD, w/ the same results for both.

You're almost there in dismanagement.  Click "top" and then you'll see "disk list".  See attached.

In your screenshot look and you will see in the open View menu the entry titled Top.  Hover your mouse there and you will see another menu appear, click on Disk List.

To confirm when you boot to the recovery media you do have as choice number one True Image 64 bit correct?

Hi. It seems that the 4TB disk is being seen by TI 2010 Rescue Media CD as consisting of unallocated space and a dynamic volume. This is showing in TI 2017 Rescue Media CD as unallocated space and unsupported space.

I'm confused.

In Win10 Disk Mgmt, the 4TB drive is showing as 1 4TB Primary Partition, and as 'Basic', not a 'Dynamic Volume'. (I do not know if this means anything, but Disk Management is showing 1MB of unallocated space in the top part of the window, but no unallocated space in the bottom portion of the window.)

So why is TI showing/seeing the disk like this?

I have attached pics showing all of this, see below.

I have attached some pics:

1) 2 pics: 1 pic showing the disk properties using the TI 2010 Rescue Media CD, the other pic showing this via the TI 2017 Rescue Media CD.

Via TI 2010 I see that the 4TB disk is showing as 2 portions, 1 unallocated and 1 as a dynamic volume.

Via TI 2017 the 4TB disk's dynamic volume shows up as "unsupported".

Again, however, Win10 Disk Management is showing this 4TB drive as 1 Basic Primary GPT partition, as exepected. (I do not know if this means anything, but Disk Management is showing 1MB of unallocated space in the top part of the window, but no unallocated space in the bottom portion of the window.)

2) TI 2017 Rescue Media CD main menu. "True Image (64 bit)" is showing up after "True Image". Again, I've tried the 64 bit and it is not seeing the 4TB disk.

3)Yep, choosing View->Top-> was the secret to displaying the partition style in Disk Mgmt. I have attached a pic of the Disk List from Disk Mgmt. Win10 Disk Management is showing this 4TB drive as 1 Basic Primary GPT partition, as exepected.

I do not know if this means anything, but it is showing 1MB of unallocated space in the top part, but no unallocated space in the bottom portion. 

Well, because the 2017 media is recognizing the disk as dynamic that in turn makes the the disk unsupported in the clone disk tool as dynamic disk and raid volumes are not supported by the come tool.

I cannot say why the difference between the 2010 and 2017 versions exists except for possibly a difference in Linux kernel versions of the two versions.

I think you should contact Support about the issue.  There are others whom have experienced issues with the 2017 Clone tool in the recovery media and your issue might just be another piece of that puzzle.

Have you tried the 2017 WinPE media instead of the default Linux media to see how it detects the drive as well? If not, I'd give that a shot to rule out the Linux kernel between the two versions. Build your PE media with our MVP tool linked below. You'll need windows ADK as well but the tool will do the rest. See links below.

OK I'll plan to contact support about the issue.

I haven't tried the 2017 WinPE media yet. I'll check out the links in the above posts, plus I know there is a Acronis WinPE ISO Builder utility included with TI 2017.

I preferred to stick w/ Rescue Media CD because I'm used to it and it was infallible in TI 2010, plus it was really easy to create. But I'll check out the WinPE method.

If/when I have an update, I'll update this post.

If anyone can further assist though, please do.

Alan,

Roger that, look forward to hearing your results.

Yes, there is a default WinPE builder in Acronis as well.  It still requires Windows ADK to be installed to be usable though.  Our MVP tool does the leg work with adding custom drivers (particularly IRST RAID controller drivers that are needed for many newer systems but also makes it easier to add other drivers if they're in the correct folder during the build).  It will then use our custom build and start the Acronis media builder to inject Acronis into it :) It's just a lot easier to customize the WinPE with your own drivers and we add in some goodies too (web browser, file explorer, 7zip, PDF support, etc). 

I did create a Acronis ticket on 1/1/17 and got a response from Acronis, just asking for more info, on 1/7/17.

Alan, I would still recommend giving the WinPE Rescue Media a try while you are waiting for Acronis Support, getting this on a USB stick is pretty simple and USB boot devices are a lot more common these days than using CD's, plus you can update a USB stick when and as needed instead of making coasters (or bird scarers!).

Hi, I did try the WinPE boot CD approach. It started Acronis TI2017 on the CD OK though it took much longer to boot. Still didn't find the 4TB, BTW.

Here's the main issue I have with WinPE at this point: I have/will have Acronis on multiple computers. In the past, with the Rescue Media CD, it would work over the network using the NIC drivers on the CD. But I'm finding that the WinPE boot CD only works with the computer on which it was created. I don't want to create a separeate WinPE boot CD for each computer. Maybe there is a solution to it, perhaps somehow installing more NIC drivers on the WinPE, but I'm not familiar with WinPE.

Alan, there should be very little difference between the CD and USB versions of the Rescue Media, though there may be differences between the Linux (standard rescue media) and Windows PE versions of the media.

With the MVP Custom ATI WINPE Builder (link below in my signature) you can very easily add in any additional device drivers for NIC's (ethernet only) that you need for different computers, so that you have one USB media capable of being used on multiple different computers.

One point that I hadn't realised in this topic is that your wd40ezrz-00w 4TB drive is actually a SSHD drive, i.e. a hybrid SSD and HDD combined drive, which may be why you are seeing some of the problems.  The drive is described at https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-771436.pdf where it states:

Pair a larger capacity drive with an SSD to give your desktop a performance and storage boost. The SSD maximizes speed of data access, while the WD Blue drive stores up to 6 TB of movies, games, files, applications and more.

Not sure why your ATIH 2017 Rescue media doesn't see the 4TB drive, as I am using a Dell laptop with a 1TB SSHD drive that is seen just fine by both types of rescue media.

Just for clarification, from your post #13 and the screen images posted there, these show you using the Acronis Clone Wizard, where the 2010 image would appear to suggest that the 4TB drive could be selected, whereas the 2017 image says 'not supported' - this says that the rescue media does see the 4TB drive in order to say it is not supported, and is the correct response for hybrid media, which is not supported for cloning, plus the image also shows the drive is dynamic, which again is not supported when cloning.

Steve,

I think you are misreading the spec sheet on this drive.  It is not an SSHD, just a standard HDD.  I noticed before that the disk shows as dynamic so that brings me to the following questions:

Is this a new disk or a repurposed disk?

If repurposed did this disk once belong in a RAID array?

If the disk was part of a RAID array and that array was not dissolved using the proper tools to do so then it would indeed show as a dynamic disk and is why the 2010 media shows it as a dynamic volume.  I also note that the disk has a fairly large portion of unallocated space.

I think that the disk needs to be cleaned and then reconverted to a basic GPT partition style disk which should fix it.

Alan,

Are you familiar with Windows Diskpart utility?  Can you answer the questions I posed above in reply to Steve? 

It looks like a standard WD Blue 4TB drive - shouldn't be a hybrid drive unless the motherboard itself is using some type of caching SSD and was made dynamic that way, or was set to dynamic at some point or came from a RAID as Enchantec suggested as a possibility.

What I'm seeing is that the original drive is MBR and the new drive is GPT and the new one has to be GPT because it's over 2TB in sized. You can't clone from MBR to GPT because a clone is just that (an exact duplicate) and it would want to parition the drive as MBR, but not possible because 1) pretty sure the original drive sector size is 512Kb and the 4TB drive is 4K sector size.  I guess techncially, you can convert it in Windows, but but then you lose 2TB of space so not really an option or worth doing anyway.

Only way this is going to work is to take a full disk backup and then restore the image to the 4TB drive in hopes that it would successfully convert the original OS from legacy/MBR to UEFI /GPT.  But this adds yet another layer of complexity as it would be critical to boot the rescue media in UEFI/GPT mode (he's using legacy mode based on the screenshots with the Blue GUI) that the restore process would convert the system from MBR/Legacy to GPT/UEFI.  This would only be possible, assuming your motherboard supports UEFI/GPT booting and the bios is properly configured to do so.  A lot of moving parts - doable, but only if the motherboard supports it and he can set up the bios correctly.

That said, personally, I'm not sure why you'd want to go to such a slow 4TB drive for your OS (it is a spinner and only goes 5400RPM - slow).  If you can afford it, get yourself a new SSD for the OS.  A 500GB SSD  (a good one) is about $120 and will be LEAPS and bound faster than ANY spinning drive (hands down) - you'll be amazed by how fast the SSD responds compared to a standard hard drive.  I'm not sure how much space is actually in use on your current 500Gb drive either, but you might even be able to get a 250GB (just make sure that your OS can fit on a 250GB drive with at least 20% room leftover as you need that free space for a hard drive to function well - especially SSD's.

Then, regardless of with size SSD works the best, use your 4TB drive to store all of your data (music, movies, pictures, shows, etc) or use it for backups instead and keep the data on the existing 500GB  hard drive.  A 5400RPM spinner is just fine for accessing content that's already on it, but not ideal for an OS.  

Enchantech asked:
"Is this a new disk or a repurposed disk?
If repurposed did this disk once belong in a RAID array?
Are you familiar with Windows Diskpart utility?"

This was purchased by me as a new disk from amazon. It has not been in a RAID array.  I believe I partitioned and formatted it. It is not a hybrid drive, it is a Western Digital WD40EZRZ. Yes I've used the diskpart utility some, if/when needed.

Steve mentioned:
"With the MVP Custom ATI WINPE Builder (link below in my signature) you can very easily add in any additional device drivers for NIC's (ethernet only) that you need for different computers, so that you have one USB media capable of being used on multiple different computers."

Thanks! I will look into this.

This disk is used to contain backup images and other media content.I'm not trying to do any cloning with the disk. I only referred to cloning in my posts because the Clone utility provides more info about the disk than the Restore, which just doesn't see the disk.

I don't know why TI 2010 and TI 2017 are showing 'funky' things about the disk. It's just single sole 4TB GPT partition on the disk. I just bought it to store backups. A post above contains the Win10 disk management view of it: ti_2017_win10-diskmgmtcompleteview.jpg.

BTW my main OS disk is a 525GB SSD.

At some point I could try reformatting it and see what happens but I would need to get my offsite 4TB USB drive to hold the current content before I format the drive. Somewhat time consuming.

Not that I will do this too soon, but if I format the 4TB disk, I'd do the following:
-Run Win10 disk management. Then in it...
-Delete the sole partition/volume on the 4TB disk.
-Create 1 new partition/simple volume for the entire disk. Use the default options.
-Format the disk (non-quick format), using the defaults (NTFS of course)

Alan,

I have read through this thread again taking note of all screenshots and relative points.  I now have another question, when you are booting the recovery media and in reference to your screenshot in post number 13, ti_2017_rescuemediacd_mainmenu.jpg which Acronis True Image menu entry are you selecting to boot into?  The first, Acronis True Image, or the third Acronis True Image (64-bit)?

If you have been using the first entry does using the third entry change what you see?

Here is the latest. I might be done with this saga. The delay in this post was that I needed to wait until I got my backup of the 4TB backup drive I'm using. Based on the earlier posts about dynamic disk and raid volumes not supported by the clone tool, I've been thinking: what if I never partitioned the disk because it already arrived paritioned, maybe it was a returned disk that had been setup some funky way?

So I ended up deleting the 4TB volume and created a new one via Win Disk Mgmt, then partitioned and formatted it as 1 simple GPT paritition.

Now the Acronis boot media CD sees the 4TB drive OK using either the TI2017 or TI2017-64bit. And the WinPE boot I created works OK (still just using the one created from Acronis, not the MVP PE Builder tool), it sees the 4TB drive too.

Also, on another topic, TI2017 is able to read and access files in TI2010 backups, though Acronis states it cannot. But this is a good thing. Perhaps doing a full image restore won't work though.

Yeah, never know how they come formatted or if it was a return or just a weird format from teh factory.  Never hurts to do a quick format with a new drive (diskpart /clean and then initialize and format quick yourself to be sure).  Either way, you got that sorted out so kudos to you as that seems to be the culprit based on the format fixing the issue.

I've heard others state that the rescue media is backward compatible - I have a hunch it is, at least if all your backups and current system are using legacy mode.  The trouble is mostly within Windows as the applications themselves are coded differently with different drivers, features and new methods of handling items that are probably tagged in the backups.  It might work, to use 2017 to restoer a 2010 backup with the media (worth testing, but make sure you have a good, current backup with 2017 first - just in case... and if possible, test with a different disk, pull the original and put the test disk in it's place to ensure you don't accidentally do something to the original data for the purpose of testing).  If it works - cool.  If not, then you can still use your old media for those and your new media for the newer backups.  

The biggest advantage of the MVP winpe creator is teh ability to automatically inject custom drivers into your WinPE (not a feature in the current Acronis WinPe builder ... also, we can build 32-bit winpe for those who need it and the current media builder does not).  Plus, we include the latest IRST drivers for those that are using NVME PCIE hard drives as it's almost guaranteed to be needed, but users can also put their own custom drivers in the driver folder and those will get added at build automatically too.  Other than that, the "advanced" builder does things like add a file explorer, web browser, 7zip integration and a few other things that make working with the WinPE a little bit more handy.  For the purpose of Acronis usability, other than the driver feature of the MVP tool, the functionality of Acronis within it is exactly the same. 

Alan, thanks for the update and great to hear that you have the 4TB drive visible and usable in the product.

Thanks all for your MVP help too.

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote: "I've heard others state that the rescue media is backward compatible - I have a hunch it is, at least if all your backups and current system are using legacy mode...."

Actually I confirmed the Windows version TI2017 can read and recover files from TI2010 backups. Haven't tried to restore. I actually didn't try the Rescue Media CD for that yet. Using Win10 x64.

Anyway this means that I'll continue to upgrade to TI2017 and will continue to recommend it to others.

Alan, I think that the Acronis backward compatibility document is purely a statement of those versions that they have actually tested / proven the restore will work from, but the statement is intended to cover the scenario where it doesn't work for older versions.  Other users have reported success in accessing data in older backups that officially were 'unsupported'.

It is always prudent to keep a copy of the older ATIH Rescue Media 'just in case' something changes this status in the future.  You can always download the rescue media ISO from your Acronis Account too.

I tend to agree when restoring older older images with newer rescue media but perhaps not the other way around. I wouldnt trust 3010 rescue media to restore a 2017 image as 2010 doesn't have UEFI support and that could be an issue. As the OP is wanting to use newer rescue media for old images, should be fine. Just remember it's not officially supported so if things do go badly at some point, keep your old rescue media handy and use it instead for the older backup files.