Images not booting
I have been a Home Image user for the past three versions of the software, and only recently have I been experiencing a very frustrating problem.
I have downloaded the latest software and patches for 2011. I use it to create an image of of a 500GB hard drive using the disk and partition backup. Fine.
It creates a 3.8GB partition backup off of the 500GB drive. Fine.
I go to restore it to another identical brand-new 500GB drive, it restores flawlessly according to the software, no problem. It even comes up with the Windows auto-browse drive letter when it finishes, allowing me to browse the partition on the newly imaged drive. Fine.
I take the old drive out, put the newly imaged drive in, Nothing. No boot, NADA! it just sits there with a blinking cursor not seeing the boot record.
The image was a Windows XP image, and I booted to the repair console trying fixboot and fixmbr, nothing. I hook up the drive again, scan it with Western Digital diagnostics, no problems obviously. It is a brand-new drive, and I can browse the newly imaged drive with no problem. It just won't boot.
And no need to flame me here, I am not exaggerating, but i have tried this on over 20 identical brand new hard drives, all with the same result, the imaging software simply does not work, even though Acronis reports it as a success.
Figure this one out.
Pat,
Thank you for your response.
Here is what I am doing. I built a new system, installed the O.S. (WinXP SP3) and all software that I wanted on it. I then removed the disk and inserted it into a Cavalry external drive duplicator, executed Acrnois True Image Home 2011, selected "Disk and Partition Backup", and created a new complete partition image of that disk.
Next, I put another new identical drive in the drive duplicator, (I actually rebooted the entire system and everything just in case), ran Acronis again, selected the image I just backed up, and restored it to the drive.
I was under the understanding, according to all of Acronis documentation that this should work. And as a matter of fact, SOMETIMES it does, but not all the time.
Joh9356,
Your approach should work. Just to double check:
- are you positive that when you backup you select the entire disk and not only the c:\partition?
- when you restore the image, do you actually restore the entire disk or just one partition?
If you are sure you select the entire disk each time, then let's verify something: when you are done with the restore on the second disk, use disk management to verify that the partition that contains the boot file is correctly marked as active.
I will check again to make sure
Thank you Pat, that is what the problem was. The new version was too "pretty" and I could not see the functionality, I missed the hyperlink at the upper right where you can "Switch to disk mode" and "Switch to partition mode".
Creating a new image now. Will see how that does.
Image worked fine, thanks for the suggestion.