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Recovering MBR In 11.7.44421 Acronis Backup PC Wants To Convert NTFS To GPT - WTH ???

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I have Acronis Backup PC 11.7.44421

I made a backup before trying to install MS Office 2010 Home and Business. It was a Differential Backup on a base set created a few months ago.

The installation of Office was a complete failure and I tried to do a restore.

When I tried to set Acronis to recover the MBR, it told me that since I was running from the Restore DVD and was booted UEFI, it would convert my two NTFS hard disk partitions to GPT. WTH!!! I never had this happen with 11.5.xxxxx

I set the MBR back to Automatic - recover only if different. Then I get the message that the recovery will be bios oriented and I need to turn off UEFI in my bios. WTH ??? I never saw this before in 11.5.xxxxx either.

I chose the Automatic setting, so as to avoid the NTFS to GPT conversion. Acronis did the recovery. I shut down, removed the DVD, powered down the backup drive and rebooted.

All seems okay except my blood pressure.

What's this ruckus about UEFI and conversions to GPT and how do I avoid all of this in the future? Do I need to roll back to 11.5.xxxxx ?

Any help appreciated.

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Hello PutItInReverseAnd,

Thank you for your posting! Are you recovering a BIOS-based system to the UEFI platform? Please refer to the following table that summarizes all cases of recovering disks of a BIOS-based system to UEFI-based and vice versa. If the deeper investigation is needed, it's better to raise a support ticket.

Thank you, 

 

Dear Ekaterina,

Thank you for your reply.

In my circumstance I was restoring a Windows 7 Pro 64 bit two primary partitions backup of a 1TB drive to the exact same hardware.

Both partitions are NTFS. The external drive storing the backup is 4 TB and is also formatted NTFS. The connection to the system box is eSATA.

Ever since I started using the 4TB external, the Linux Rescue disc of both 11.5.43994 and 11.7.50058 boot as UEFI

I think that during restore Acronis Backup PC sees the 4TB drive in the system and boots UEFI.

Then for some reason if I choose to restore the MBR explicitly, it says that since the restore operation was booted from UEFI it insists on converting the restored partitions from NTFS to GPT. If I leave the default option to only restore the MBR if it has changed, 11.5.43994 leaves the partitions as NTFS.

Conversion to GPT should not be a mandate in 11.7.50058. There should be some option to leave the partitions as NTFS.

If I remove UEFI as a bios boot option, will I be able to access my 4TB backup drive?

TIA

Ekaterina,

The ticketing system will not allow me to file a support request due to the age of my purchase.

Can you please pass my inquiry along to the appropriate engineers on my behalf.

Thank you.

Sory to add my comment to your problem.

First - the NTFS may be either GPT (which goes with UEFI normally) or MBR (the old format).

I suggest you cancel the UEFI boot option in BIOS and I suppose that unless you already have the boot disk in GPT format instead of MBR you will not be bothered by Acroniis changing your boot hard disk to GPT ...

There is no connection whatsoever to your external 4TB HD.

I think Acronis will boot as UEFI only if your BIOS is set with UEFI option.

 

Regards

 

Moty

Thank you Moty.

I will try canceling the uefi option in the motherboard bios when I do my next backup and I will see if your suggestion solves the problem.

I just wonder if some motherboards now mandate the use of uefi ?

The answer is: the default setup for all  comuters or workstation I touched those last 4 years was UEFI.

Yet it is not mandatory and if you do an install from scratch with BIOS in setup you will probably get an MBR disk and a bios install.

If you just put the DVD in the drive and do a default install - probably you will get a GPT drive and a GPT install.