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Cyber Protect Home Office and TI 2021 delete partition during restore

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I first encountered this problem with TI 2021, and then reproduced with Cyber Protect Home Office (trial version).  The net result here is that doing a partition restore destroyed an uninvolved data partition on the destination disk.

I looked for something similar in the forums, could not find anything.  Am curious if this has been seen elsewhere. 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.  

System:

  • Asus Prime Z690-P D4 mobo
  • I9-12900K CPU
  • 32G memory
  • Relevant disk – Samsung 980 Pro NVMe (see below)
  • Disk containing tibx file - internal Samsung EVO 840 SATA SSD
  • Windows 11 Pro
  • Acronis Cyber Protect Home Edition (trial downloaded 2022-04-04) and/or Acronis TI 2021

Backed up disk – Samsung 980 Pro, 1TB

  • Partition 1 – EFI 
  • P2 – 344GB boot/OS volume (C)
  • P3 – Windows recovery volume
  • P4 – Windows recovery volume
  • P5 – 586GB data volume (J)

Backup job is partition backup, backing up P1, P2, P3, P4  (not P5). 

Backup/restore scenario

  • Run backup.  Tibx file is approximately 88GB
  • Run restore/recovery of the 4 partitions using the windows application/program
  • Since I am restoring the system partitions, I am prompted for restart
  • System re-boots into Linux recovery environment
  • The GUI restore window appears, and the restore runs 25+ minutes
  • When system reboots into Windows, 980 now has only 4 partitions (data partition J has been removed/destroyed)
  • P2 (boot, OS) is now 930 GB in size

Alternate restore scenario which works

  • Run backup.  Tibx file is approximately 88GB
  • Run restore using the Recovery Media USB (created with Windows recovery option, therefore is a Windows OS)
  • The restore program boots, and I enter the appropriate source and destination disk info
  • Validation takes about one minute
  • Restore data copy takes under 5 minutes
  • When system reboots into Windows, 980 has all 5 partitions, disk configuration is same as original

Conclusion: on my system configuration, Acronis Linux recovery invoked from the Windows application destroys a partition (and takes a very long time to do it).  Windows-based recovery media works fine.

 

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WaltG, I suggest you submit a bug feedback to Acronis about this issue.

Meanwhile, the lesson is... don't do full system drive disk/partition restores from Windows. Using the recovery media is a better option.

Did you have a good backup of that 5th J: partition so you didn't lose anything?

[I've been thinking about a new build with a similar setup. How do you like it?]

BrunoC,

Thanks for your comments.  I will be using the Windows Recovery Media for sure from here on out, at least for this machine.  Unfortunately, I tend to do restores regularly because of software testing and the like;  it's just far more cumbersome to use the recovery media every time.  This is the first time in 7+ years of using this product that anything like this has happened. 

I verified that the OS partition is expanded to fill the disk on every restart/Linux restore...whether there is unallocated space or another partition.   Fortunately the data partition which was wiped did not have anything that wasn't backed up.  

I will also be working with Samsung on this.  There is a newer level of firmware for the 980...want to make sure that is on.  When I've exhausted this and a few other options, I will open up a bug with Acronis.   

[As far as the machine itself, I am very pleased. I'm not a gamer, so simply use the integrated graphics, but do run a lot of CPU dependent activities.  As such, do not intend to do any fancy overclocking...the default PL1 and PL2 power limits (which are "no limits") seem to allow plenty of room.  I have had benchmarks running with TDP at 243 watts, no issues with stability or thermal throttling (peaked at 95 with only air cooling).  Capping PL1/2 at 220 kept the CPU in the 80's, seemingly with minimal loss of benchmarked performance. But just my specific experience. ]

Walt, you may wish to consider using virtualization for you testing; I use VMware for testing. Some virtualization solutions support snapshots which can be very useful when things go pearshaped,

Ian

Similar to Ian, I use mainly Hyper-V for testing, which does allow for snapshots if needed, but I adopt a simpler approach of just syncing my VM's to an external USB 3.0 backup drive then if anything does go wrong, I just delete the source VM and sync it back from the backup drive again, which takes just a few minutes to reset back to a working state.  I use a third-party sync tool called SyncFolders and have a mix of Windows 11 and 10 VM's along with a couple of Linux ones plus some older versions of Windows 7 and earlier in VMware VMs.

Ian, Steve,

Thank you.  

As a matter of fact, I have been an extensive user of VMWare for 20 years, as well as occasionally using Hyper-V and trying VirtualBox.  (Even have run VMWare on Linux running on VMWare on Windows.  Not so speedy!) There are some things, unfortunately, which I work with (including switching from a VMWare to Hyper-V environment), for which I do a full restore...although I think VMWare can now co-exist with Hyper-V a little better than it used to.  Also do some systems work where a virtualized environment doesn't cut it.  

I always appreciate good thoughts.  Sounds like you both have extensive experience here. And Steve, I plan to take a deeper look at Hyper-V.