Can't restore system image

Victor DiCarlo wrote:

When I try the rescue disk, I'm not given the option of restoring the partition to the original location!!

Victor, you know that when you use the disk, the disk letters are different from what you see in windows, right?

Make sure your look at the drive labels and the partition characteristics to avoid any error.

Is this the first time you try your recovery disk?

This is not the first time I've recovered my system partion but it's the first time I've tried it using Version 2011. With prior versions it work fine. I've restored my system many times. What I'm saying is that the system partition where my system is located is not showing up at all. Also it does not give me the option of restoring the the original location. It's as if that system partition does not exist as far as TI goes.

Up until now TI has been a very reliable application and as I've said I've restored my system of many, many occassions with previous versions. I have continually paid for upgraded versions as they have been released. I'm probably the best customer Acronis has.

Now this happens. It has really let me down and as such I can no longer trust it. I am stuck with 7 system backups that cannot be restored. This is not a very good testimonial.

Victor DiCarlo wrote:

When I try the rescue disk, I'm not given the option of restoring the partition to the original location!!

This is the weirdest.
Are you trying to restore an entire disk? If you restore your entire system disk (anything more than a single partition is selected for restore), you won't see a partition to restore to, only a disk. In this case, does the recovery disk see all your disks? If not, this could be a driver issue. Burn a new recovery CD with the bootable media ISO in this case.

Are you trying to restore a single partition alone (no MBR...)? If yes, are you 100% positive you are matching the right partitions? Is there any change of disk or partition size in here?

If you are unsure, could you screen capture the restore screens from the Windows interface and post them here?

Victor,
Do you have a backup which included all your partitions including both the recovery and included the non-lettered partitions.

What brand computer is involved?

I stopped using Acronis to backup my other partitions because they are very large - 1 and 2tb. I back them up to an external device using PureSync.

ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA1156 P55 DDR3 2PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 2PCI SLI CrossFireX USB3.0 SATA 6GB Motherboard

I just tried again and it still does not allow me to restore to the original location. When click next I get to the screen where location is showing "NEW" to the right and I can't select orginal location. If I click on NEW I get a popup window which shows everthing, but the original system location.

Pat L wrote:

Victor DiCarlo wrote:

When I try the rescue disk, I'm not given the option of restoring the partition to the original location!!

This is the weirdest.
Are you trying to restore an entire disk? If you restore your entire system disk (anything more than a single partition is selected for restore), you won't see a partition to restore to, only a disk. In this case, does the recovery disk see all your disks? If not, this could be a driver issue. Burn a new recovery CD with the bootable media ISO in this case.

Are you trying to restore a single partition alone (no MBR...)? If yes, are you 100% positive you are matching the right partitions? Is there any change of disk or partition size in here?

If you are unsure, could you screen capture the restore screens from the Windows interface and post them here?

I'm trying to restore just my system partion. It's C:Win7-64 and is a 40 GB partition. It's located on DISK 0 with two other partitions. (screen shot attached) If I remember correctly the recovery disk does not see this disk0, only the others. There is no change in disk size, the backup was done at 4:30 am this morning.

As you look at the attachment in post #4. Look at your disk using Windows Disk Management and does your disk look any thing like the Asus pictured in the attachment? If not, how does is your disk pictured?

Victor,
Ignore this posting. You posted a response above at the same time I was posting. You have answered my question.

Victor DiCarlo wrote:

If I remember correctly the recovery disk does not see this disk0, only the others.

That is a key issue. You won't see the partition if the recovery disk doesn't see the disk at all. Is there anything special about that disk in the BIOS settings versus the others (unlikely)? Is it encrypted?

The system disk is a 2TB disk and this could be an issue.

Victor,
Boot from the REscue CD again and simulate your restore until you get to the screen where you choose the target disk.

Acronis starts its first disk as disk 1 and depending upon how all your drives are attached, the disk you know as disk 0 could have other numbers.

Using only the guideline of the 40GB disk and its name of Win7-64, click on each of the disks listed and see if you can find your missing disk.

Ok, here's the thing. I've fiddled all afternoon with this. I've restored my system partition to one of the other hard drives. In the meantime my original operating system would not boot at all. Kept getting a blue screen. So I've reinstalled win7-64 over top of the un-bootable system. Now that I've install the new Win7-64 OS I get a boot screen where I can select the new OS or a "Win7 - recovered" OS. When I select the recovered OS I boot into the restored system which is on another drive. Now I have two Win7-64 operating systems. The 'restored' os is on C: drive but oddly enough when I look at the new OS I just installed, there is no drive letter associated with it.

So. I guess I've got my old OS (from 4:30am this morning) back but I have another usless "new" os. How can I get rid of this new os and just have one? More importantly how can I get rid of the new os and then put the old one where the new one is?

As a safety precaution, one of the first things you should do would be to open Windows Disk Management and check to see if the volume names are identical on both Win7-64 installations. If yes, then rename the volume names on both the old Win7-64 partition (to Win7-old) and the new from Win7-64 to something like Win7-new.

As our posts were crossing, you may not have had an opportunity to complete post #9. I do suggest you try this suggestion and see have an opportunity to restore your old system back. It might also be helpful if your were to check your old win7-64 partition for disk errors before attempting to restore.

If you are able to restore the old partition and use the Win7 CD and do a repair, then you you should be able to delete the new duplicate but it might require a partition delete in order to remove. Using the Win7 install CD, the repair feature only does one repair at a time. You may need to run the repair option multiple times in order to get your desired result.

If you restored your OS to another hard drive and kept all the disks connected at reboot, that created an issue. You kind of fixed that issue when you resinstall Windows: the installation process created the right boot records to accomodate all your valid bootable OS partitions.

If I understand correctly, you want to restore your Q: partition on your C: partition. Note: you said the Q partition was bluescreening. I assume you already have the backup of this partition and that is the one you want to restore ("Old Backup")

Change the label of C:\Win7-64 to c:\NewWin7. Create a backup of this.

Change the label of Q:\Win7-64 to Q:\OldWin7. This will avoid some confusion later. I assume you already have the backup of this partition and that is the one you want to restore ("Old Backup")

Boot on the recovery CD and make sure you can see all your disks and partitions, and that you can browse to your Old Backup. Remember drive letters are different on the CD. Look at the labels.

Validate Old Backup from the recovery CD.

Remove Disk 0.

Boot on the Windows DVD, using DiskPart list disk (and list partition commands), make sure you have the right disk left inside.

Boot on the Acronis CD. Restore your Old Backup system partition on the NewWin7 partition. Don't restore the MBR and track 0. Set the target partition as active.

Try to reboot. If it doesn't boot:

Boot on the Windows DVD, using the command prompt, move to the active partition C:

Use the bootrec commands to fix the MBR and boot records. This will create the boot files in the active partition and rebuild the MBR. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
This might take several passes with a reboot after each command.

Now you have a bootable system.

Reconnect your disk 0

Using Windows DVD as a boot, use Diskpart to inactivate the OldWin7 partition and/or delete it

YOu should still have a bootable system.

Thanks Pat. You're talking about a lot of work here. Just so I understand. I have 4 disks in my pc. Disk0 is contains the old OS partition, now labeled Q: drive. Disk 0 also contains two other partions. (see screen shot) Disk2 contains the new OS partition labeled C: drive as well as two others. The boot manager is on C: drive. I've instructed the system to boot from C: drive and have deleted the system on Q: drive from the boot menu using msconfig. So you're saying that after I've got a secure backup of my correct system drive I should disconnect Disk2, then erase everything on disk0 and repartition it the way it was - one C: drive for the OS which I restore using TI and then the two others where I'll copy back all my data.

Once I do this and assuming it works, won't there be a problem when I re-connect disk2? It has on it an operating system. Also what happens if I can't restore the OS to disk0 - the same problem I had this morning at 7am?

Victor,

You are right, you have too much content on your disk to go through a clean disk reset, and you probably can just restore onto Disk 2.

I have edited my post to reflect this.

Thanks Pat, but I have worries. Is there any way to accomplish this without removing any of the drives? I'm affraid I'll remove the wrong one. You know the reason I want to do this is that disk0 is a faster drive than disk2. Already I'm noticing a slower system response with the system on this drive.

Just a bit concerned, that's all.

Well, you can try to restore to the disk 0, if you can see it properly with your recovery CD. First you can restore your MBR and your track 0 with the partition and see if it boots.

If it doesn't boot, and you have to go through the windows recovery CD, then disconnect the other drive to avoid issues as you rebuild the BCD and MBR.

Thanks very much Pat for your help. I'll give it a try next weekend. Please stay subscribed to this thread as I may need more help.

Thanks again.

Pat, I've tried today to restore my latest backup to my disk0 but Acronis is not recognizing it. What could be the problem? I used the rescue disk.

It is weird that ATI doesn't see only one disk.

I guess this Disk is connected the same way as your other disks, right?

If you have more ports in your computer, try to change the connection (just the cables) (I doubt this will make a difference, but we'd better make sure this is a disk only issue, not some other weird hardware thing).

If the problem "follows" the disk, it is possible that some data on the disk is making ATI believe it is not a regular basic disk.

Is there a way you can backup/move the data off disk0 for a while as we try to fix this?

Now that I think about it, this problem happened once before when I got a new hard drive. Something to do with the way the manufacturers format them. I'm following this article: http://kb.acronis.com/content/1515

This worked before so I presume it's the same problem. I'll be doing this on Saturday so I'll let you know how I make out.

Thanks for your patience.

Victor.

Yeah, I was going down the path of telling you to clean the disk. You might want to shift the disks around anyway, just to make sure. This is a quick test.

Did you solve your problem?

Pat L wrote:

Did you solve your problem?

It's still 6am here. Give me a few hours and I'll get back to you, thanks.

After many hours I have finally got the correct operating system on disk 0 or disk 1 as Acronis sees it. However I now have on the boot disk a strange 100mb 'system reserved' partition that I've never seen before. What is this? It's not causing any problems and I could just leave it alone, but I'm just curious.

Victor.

Victor,

First, let's try to change this using Windows and see if this works.

In the search, type msconfig, choose the Boot tab. If you see 2 listings there, delete the old one.

Then, launch an elevated command prompt (with administrator privileges).
Type DISKPART
Type List disk
Type select disk 2
Type List Partition
Type Select partition 1
Type Inactive
Type Exit

Reboot. You shouldn't see the other newer OS now.

If you do, we will use the Windows installation DVD to rebuild the BCD records.

I had edited my post Pat. Sorry. All is well with the noted exception of this mysterious "system reserved" partition.

The system reserved partition is a default partition that contains the boot files in Windows 7. It is necessary if you use BitLocker one day. Otherwise, it provides some benefits in being hidden and thus protecting a bit the boot files from user mistakes.

Is the PC booting normally now?

Yes, thanks, booting fine now. Back to where I was a week ago. :-)

Victor.

Hi Pat, If you're still viewing this thread I have another problem. . I cannot restore an image from within Acronis. After my pc reboots I get a blue screen for 3 minutes, then just as the dialogue screen appears I get an Error occurred while opening the file.

I can use the rescue disk to restore, but not the software. This is not good enough as when I want to restore, I want to do it quickly and don't want to fumble around with the rescue disk. How can this be fixed? Thanks.

Victor.

Victor,

It looks like other folks have similar problems. I didn't try myself yet as I always use the CD when restoring a system image.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/11513

Victor DiCarlo, check my post: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/11513, #8 and #12. You cause may not be Acronis Disk Director, but it is sort of related to hard disk partition table.

Hi Pat. Things are not back to normal. Out of curiousity I just tried to restore a backup. Of course using TI in windows didn't work, got the same error message. Then I went to use the recovery disk and wouldn't you know - it won't recognize my disk 0 again !!! This is just not acceptable Pat. I need a backup software that works flawlessly. What do you suggest?

Were you able to see Disk0 from the CD before? I am not clear on how you finally got the restore done...

If you did the restore from the CD, saw the disk, and then lost access to the disk from the CD, then this is weird.

Did you actually clean the disk?

Pat L wrote:

Were you able to see Disk0 from the CD before? I am not clear on how you finally got the restore done...

If you did the restore from the CD, saw the disk, and then lost access to the disk from the CD, then this is weird.

Did you actually clean the disk?

Yes Pat I was able to see the disk, otherwise how could I have restored the system to it? I cleaned it, restored the system then using Disk Director partitioned it to where it was, then copied back all the files. Now two days later Acronis TI and DD doesn't recognize the disk??? What's going on?

So what this means is that I have a system partition that I can backup, but I can't restore it to it's original location.

I've turned on Windows 7 system restore just to be safe. Isn't this a hoot. I've spent hundreds of dollars over the years on an application that is supposed to prevent this very thing from happening. Not a very good testimonial for Acronis!

Victor, it seems you used Disk Director for partitioning hard drive. I know it usually works well, but for some systems like Thinkpad (with its Rescue & Recovery) people found Disk Director can cause subtle issues. You may want to give it a try by using Windows Disk Management rather than Disk Director for partitioning, to see if the problem still exists. At least you can confirm the problem is related to Disk Director or not.

Beichuan Yan wrote:

Victor, it seems you used Disk Director for partitioning hard drive. I know it usually works well, but for some systems like Thinkpad (with its Rescue & Recovery) people found Disk Director can cause subtle issues. You may want to give it a try by using Windows Disk Management rather than Disk Director for partitioning, to see if the problem still exists. At least you can confirm the problem is related to Disk Director or not.

Do you mean I must go through that whole seven hour rigmarol again! When is Acronis going to fix Disk Director so this doesn't happen? Who ever heard of a disk partitioning software that doesn't partition properly? I want a full refund not only for TrueImage but for the Disk Director that I just purchased. This is deplorable.

I don't think they will refund you. We can only hope they fix the bug. See my post: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/17539, they do have this bug and still can't fix it at this time. I had to give up True Image 2011 and go back to 2010.

Testing the Disk Director issue may take just an hour. For example, you use Windows 7 DVD to boot and format disk 0, create a 40GB or 50GB partition, then install Windows 7 (not necessary, but I recommend you let it finished), and create partitions on the remaining space of disk 0 using Disk Management, this takes 25 minutes; Then boot up with Acronis Rescue Disk to restore your image to the 50GB partition, which takes about 15 minutes, and you can boot into the restored Windows; Then from Windows run True Image again to restore the image, which will reboot the system and hopefully it can open the image file, and it takes another 15 minutes. If it works, it is worthy; if not you lose one hour.

Thanks, but please explain more fully the proceedure to format disk 0 and create a 40GB partition with the Windows 7 dvd. I thought that dvd was only used for installing or repairing an installation? Also how do I use disk management to create partitions? I've never done that. Always used DD.

Victor,

You can use the DISKPART function after you boot on the Windows 7 DVD.

Before we go there, why do you want to partition your disk prior to the restore? Is it possible for you to clean your disk, restore your system. Then, let's verify you don't lose Disk0 again...

If it works, we can use windows disk management to create the remaining partitions and you can copy your other files back into them.

Windows 7 DVD can do partitioning: On the “Where do you want to install Windows?” partition screen of Windows 7 Setup, click on Drive options (advanced) to delete existing partitions and create a new partition. If you want 50GB, type 51200 MB (=50x1024). By default Windows 7 will create a 100MB hidden system partition, if you don't like this hidden partition, follow this article "Method 3: Trick to Remove 100.00 MB System Reserved Partition During Setup" at http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/08/20/hack-to-remove-100-mb-system-r…

To use Disk Management, right click "computer" in Windows 7 and choose manage, then find Storage -> Disk Management, you will see your disk 0 and the unpartitioned space, right click to see the options for making new partitions.

Thanks Pat but I've changed my plans slightly. My system supports 2 SATA 6GB/s drives. Right not I'm not using them so I'm purchasing a new 6GB/s drive and am going to install it and use it for my system drive. I presume that when I install it I can partition it within windows using disk management and Acronis should recognize it, no? Then it will be just a matter of using TI to restore a backup of my current system to this new drive. Or should I do it a different way? At this point my main concern is that I do it in such a way that Acronis will recognize and continue to recognize my new system disk. Then I can fiddle with my old system disk once the new system is up and running.

So what I would need is your advice on the easiest and correct way to doing this. Thanks again.

If your want partitions to be different on your new disk than in your backup, yes you can use Windows Disk Management or the Windows installation CD to partition it and then restore partition by partition from the backup, mapping each partition to the ones you want on the new disk.

Verify that the Acronis recovery CD sees your new disk. New faster SATA controllers might require new drivers. You have to try.

Don't forget to remove disks that contain windows OS the first time you boot the system, except your new disk.

Thanks but I'm not sure I understand Pat. I'm transfering my system to a new hard drive. I want to install the new hard drive this time and make sure it's 'initialized', 'formatted', and has the correct mbr so that Acronis recognizes it and will continue to do so. I just don't want to have to go through this a third and fourth time after I get my system restored to this new hard drive. So right from the start, what are the correct steps?

As I understand it, disk manufacturers ship new drives with boot records, that sometimes Acronis does not recognize. This is the very crux of the problem that I must address. So please correct me if I'm wrong.

- First I shut down my system and install the new hard drive on to one of the sata 6 ports.
- I boot up my system and at some point I'll need to go into the bios to add this new drive to the boot sequence.
- After boot up I go into disk management and locate this new drive and somehow install a new boot record. There is a procedure to do this from the command prompt using DISKPART but can I do this right from disk management?
- once that's done, I'll have a new drive with unallocated space. At this point do I do any any partitioning? I am now uncomfortable using Acronis DD since that's where the problem started. Which begs the question, why are they selling a disk management software that does not do what is advertised? If I have to use windows disk management from now on to partition, then I definately want a full refund on Disk Director.
- So now I have the new hard drive installed with a new boot record, but no partitioning.
- I start Acronis TI in windows and restore to this new drive the backup of my system partition. I don't restore the 100mb 'reserved' partition.
- When that's finished and before the system boots, I open the pc and remove (or disconnect) the old system drive. Then I boot the system. But at this point, the system may not boot, so I'll need to boot with the windows repair disk or the windows install disk and do a system repair which may or may not succeed the first time. Why, I'm not sure but that's what they say.
- If the system still won't boot, for whatever reason, I'll need to install windows from scratch on the new drive. The when that's done I use the Acronis rescue disk to restore my system backup over top of this fresh windows install.
- Once that's done, the system may still not boot, so I'll need to boot with the windows repair disk or the install disk and go through the process of repairing the startup.
- If that doesn't work and the system still won't boot, I'm screwed and I'll need to open up my pc, remove or disconnect the new drive and re-connect the old system drive and hope that system will boot. At which point I'm back to square one.

How does this sound?

note: to avoid errors, you can connect only your new drive to the system. In this case, boot the computer on the Windows installation DVD and use diskpart from there (recommended).

You cannot create the boot files if there is no OS installed on the disk. The clean operation just creates a new MBR on the disk.

PATH A: You can create the partitions you want before restoring your system.

- connect your new drive in the system
- boot the computer
- from an elevated command prompt (right click on command prompt, choose run as administrator)
- DISKPART
- LIST DISK
- SELECT DISK 0 -- assuming 0 is the number of the target disk you saw after the LIST DISK command
- CLEAN (this will erase everything)
- exit
- launch Windows disk management
- use it to create a basic disk (not dynamic)
- create new paritions with the size your want
- reboot on the Acronis recovery CD, restore your system partition on the new partition. In a second path (no need to reboot), restore your MBR, track0 and disk signature.
- disconnect the OLD system disk,
- reboot, if Windows complains, reboot on the windows installation DVD to repair the start up. It might take a couple of passes.
- once your system boots normally, copy your data over.

PATH B: do everything from the Acronis recovery CD

- boot from the CD,
- from ATI running on the CD, go to tools, select drive cleanser. Cleanse your new disk
- launch a restore of your system partition only, select the size of the partition ATI will create for that first restore, complete the restore.
- without rebooting, restore your MBR, track 0, disk signature.
- boot your computer. If windows complains, use the windows installation DVD to repair the startup. It might take a couple of passes.
- once the computer boots, you can use disk management to create additional partitions and format them,
- copy your data over

"- reboot on the Acronis recovery CD, restore your system partition on the new partition. In a second path (no need to reboot), restore your MBR, track0 and disk signature."

Thanks very much Pat, but this is the part the bothers me: "restore your MBR, track0, disk signature"

You must understand that I'm a non-IT professional and up until TI2011 I felt very comfortable using TI to restore operating systems. After the problems I'm having with TI2011 I no longer have that same degree of comfort. As a matter of fact I have lost a great deal of faith in this software.

Here me out. Currently I have an operating system that recognizes my disk 0 - boot, system disk. TI2011 and DD does not recognize this disk. Hense the problem. If I restore the current MBR to my new disk won't TI2011 continue to "not recognize" this new disk after I get the OS installed and boot back up ?

Victor,

Frankly, it is hard to know what is going to happen, as ATi doesn't backup or rewrite all the bytes in the MBR/Track0. If there are bad bytes in there, I cannot tell you that ATI will not carry them over.

If you are concerned, you can first try without restore the MBR and track 0, and rebuild the MBR with the installation CD from Windows, using bootrec
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

Thanks Pat. I understand. But you know, it's unfortunate that in this day and age when many people move systems, hard drives and transfer stuff to new pc's, that Windows or Acronis has not produced a product that will do all of this with ease. I think there is a definate demand for this. Perhaps an application that burns all of the necessary files to a dvd then all you have to do is swap drives or pc's or whatever, then just boot with this dvd telling it where you want your system, etc and then it makes all the necessary changes. Wouldn't that be great!

Oh, and by the way - you say : "Frankly, it is hard to know what is going to happen, as ATi doesn't backup or rewrite all the bytes in the MBR/Track0. If there are bad bytes in there, I cannot tell you that ATI will not carry them over" "If there are bad bytes" ????? There are no bad bytes. As windows very easily sees all the disks and partitions, this is totally an Acronis problem. If Acronis can't see a disk that windows can, then there's a serious problem with the Acronis product. This is what needs to be fixed and I've said this all along. When will Acronis fix this, so countless users won't have to jump through hoops in order to install a new system hard drive? I'm certainly not the first person to experience this and I won't be the last.

I agree with you Victor. So that you know, we have seen cases where ATI found data on a disk that other software didn't see, don't use or just dismiss. Basic disks appear to be dynamic disks for ATI. When you actually check the sectors with an editor, you can see erroneous data.

Maybe ATI is wrong or too stringent. I don't know.