Restore has failed

How did you do the restore - started from witin Windows or your recovery media?  Please make sure you're using the recovery media to start the process.

Also, on my Z170X motherboard, after a restore, I must always go into the bios and check the boot order.  I'm finding that the "windows boot manager" must always be first.  However, afer a restore, my UEFI bios, usually sets the new drive last by default so I have to move it to the top.

Make sure that you're booting your recovery media to match how your OS was installed too.. if the OS was installed as UEFI/GPT, boot the recovery media in UEFI mode and if it was installed in Legacy/MBR mode, that you're booting the recovery media in Legacy mode.  Sometimes, it's easier to do this by using your onetime bootmenu or boot override menu at the bios level (F12, Esc, F1 or whatever your system uses to get to the one time boot options). 

"Unallocated" is not good.  That means that there's nothing on that paritions (as far as Windows is concerned).  When and where did you see it was unallocated if the OS was not booting?  

Thank you Bobbo. I always restore from the bootable media. I have the 'Legacy BIOS' UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 0806 07/27/2012. I did have a problem some time ago with the boot order but I couldn't seem to be able to change it then something happened and it worked again. I'm sure the OS was installed as Legacy/MBR mode so how do I get my recovery media to boot in that mode? I have never had that choice or problem in 2014. When I was trying to recover the 2017 image I was asked where to install the new image and 'unallocated' was observed then. Yet when I restored a 2014 image all was restored and in working order. Of course after that restore I am back to running 2014 again.

Hi Peter,

Hopefully this will help out, but how you get to your one time boot menu or boot override menu varies from system to system.  Normally, When your reboot, tapping F12 will get you to a one-time boot menu. On some systems, instead of F12, it can be ESC, F1, or DEL though.  Alternatively, if you go into the bios (usually F2), the last tab may have a boot override menu there too that has similar options to what would be seen in your one-time boot menu.  Pictures 07-11 below show what a bios one time boot override menu can look like with both a legacy and UEFI options using an Acronis offline recovery media that was created on a USB flash drive.  They also show how the Acronis menu will look when booted in either legacy or UEFI mode.  

I'm still a bit foggy on the unallocated look of your C drive after the 2017 restore.  Perhaps, with your recovery media, you can naigate your 2017 backup and make sure it shows all of the hard drive partions via a full disk restore, but then cancel out of the restore once verified.  Then start a file/folder recovery with teh recovery media and navigate the contents of the C: drive in thes same backup and make sure it shows the data that should be there.  

Unallocated space could be the result of a drive not being full paritioned (blank space purposely not provisioned - I do this on SSD's and purposely leave 10% unallocated on all SSD's to make sure there is always space for caching in case the drive gets pretty full).  Or, if you restore an image from a smaller drive to a larger drive, if the settings are not automatic, you may have a bunch of unallocated space that you would need to go into computer management to extend out to the full capacity of the new drive.  

If you give it a shot again, maybe take some cell phone shots of the steps you take along the way to post back in case you end up with a non-bootable system still.  

Hello Bobbo,

I think I have discovered the problem. I just left my PC to do some shoppiing, when I returned it had switched itself off, I rebooted and had the screen in attach1 so I rebooted again whilst pressing F8 and had the screen in attach2, my Samsung 850 SSD 'C' drive was nowhere to be seen, there was a 190gb drive listed but it was not attached to the PC, so I rebooted again and as you will see in attach3 my Samsung SSD 'C' drive appeared in the list. So somehow the BIOS is losing my Samsung SSD 'C' drive. How can I solve this problem? Is the BIOS running out of battery power, it is four years old, or is the SSD failing?

Thank you again for your efforts to help we dummies.

The attachment rule is no more than 20mb, the three I initially tried to post were only 15mb but said they were too large!

Your attach1 jpeg is a normal error displayed when no OS boot device can be found attached to your mobo.

Your attach2 jpeg confirms that the OS disk is not for in the boot order set in the bios.

Your attach3 jpeg shows the OS disk and can be selected for boot from the menu display.

Note that the WD Elements drive is now not in the list in attach3.  I presume that the Elements is an external drive.

I note that you have a DVD/CD drive and a BD drive as well.  By default the machine bios will look to such drives first when looking for boot media.  In your case since you have 2 such drives so they are persistent in displaying themselves.  This normally is not a problem as when no boot media is found there the next disk in the boot order is read searching for a boot loader. 

In your case your bios has the ability to have 4 devices populated in the boot priority order settings.  As long as your 850 is in the top 4 it should boot to that disk.  When it is missing there however you will get the screen in attach1.

Some suggestions would be to make sure that no external disks/drives are attached to your PC when you are changing back from boot media to the OS disk.  Another is when you boot the machine again after using the boot media do so straight into the bios and adjust the boot order of deivices so that the OS disk is first in the list prior to attempt to boot to it.

Thank you Enchantek,

Why should the BIOS suddenly decide to 'lose' the SSD, whilst booting and whilst running, after months of working with the external HDD attached. Before this episode I just booted normally after a restore without having to enter the BIOS. Something else must be going on!

I have seen this happen. It is most lilkely to occur when the boot drive is not attached to SATA port 0, which is the default for booting from a HDD/SSD. I have also had instances where the the first boot device is USB and it incorrectly gives an error message that system is unbootable (there is a non-bootable USB stick) because it fails to look at the second and third options (in my case Bluray and SSD).

Ian

IanL-S points are valid here.  I should have mentioned that you should insure that your SSD drive is attached to port 0 or 1 as this will help. 

I think what you have seen here is that your SSD got pushed down the list far enough to drop off the Priority list.  Insuring that it is attached to port 0 or 1 should eliminate that possiblity.  On some board the priority list only allows for 3 devices this can be a lot more troublesome for user whom have mulitple optical drives as once they have booted to a USB flash drive for example upon reboot the OS drive may fail to be included back into the priority list.  Your board allowing 4 devices allows for a bit more wiggle room.

Agree with all. It's not uncommon for the BIOS to change the boot order automatically based on the drives that are detected and the order detected. Normally, in a UEFI system the "windows boot manager" must be priority #1 to boot straight into Windows. After a recovery, the original Windows bootmanager entry no longer exists so during POST, it scans the drives and adds the newly recovered drive as the last priority now that it's been redetected by the bios. This behavior really depends on the motherboard and/or hardware though - it's not related to Acronis. Moving the Windows boot manager back to the 1st priority should get things to boot properly again, but again, this is a BIOS/firmware behavior with the boot priority being changed after a recovery, due to how the bios scans the drives after the recovery has been completed - it's not unique to Acronis.

And, your main bootable drive (SATA drive), should be connected to SATA port 0 in most cases (1st connector on the board). If not on 0, then 1 usually works too, but regardless, of the one you choose, if the bios changes the boot priority of the disks after a recovery, you need to go in and set it back to the first option or the bios will go through the list and may hang on one of the other ones (like a CD rom that has a movie DVD inserted, or a USB attached drive that only has data and no OS on it).

Thank you all for your efforts. I think I shall have to take my PC back to the fellow that built it to have all those suggestions checked out. They would be beyond my capabilities. Appreciate all suggestions offered.