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How to restore Window 7 OS to raid 0 NVMe SSD

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Hello, I just bought Acronis True Image 2017 yesterday

I have a MSI laptop with window 7 on raid 0 NVMe SSD.

While the backup and restore seems easy enough in the window enviroment, it will not help me if the OS get corrupted and I cannot boot into window enviroment.

I attempted to create bootable USB memory stick to boot and overwrite the entire OS in raid 0 if things goes wrong.

I successfully create a ISO file with the rescue media builder but when trying to boot with it the computer is stuck in a "Loading, please wait..." screen.

I then try using the Acronis True Image native backup. Under Advance, Removable Media Setting I select

Place Acronis Universal Restore (64 bit with UEFI support) on media and

Ask for first media while creating backup on removable media

This time with I boot I see the Acronis Logo, but it will stay in "Loading, please wait..." screen for a few seconds then reboot the PC, repeat "Loading, please wait..." screen. then reboot PC for an endless boot.

I tired changing my boot mode to UEFI with CSM, and UEFI. Both gave the same problem.

I select Legancy mode and it lead to a blank screen.

 

What should I do and thanks in advance?

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Secret, welcome to these user forums.

The key to doing a successful restore of your OS is to understand how your Windows 7 OS boots, i.e. does it use UEFI or is this a Legacy boot system?
See webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS - this is key to how you need to boot the Acronis bootable Rescue Media which has to match with how the OS boots.

The next question is how is the RAID supported on your MSI laptop - is this transparent (integrated into the system firmware) such that no specific RAID device drivers are needed?  If drivers are needed, then the standard (Linux based) Rescue Media will not work in this scenario as it does not include any support for RAID devices.

Assuming that you have a UEFI boot system, then you may also need to disable Secure Boot in the BIOS settings to enable the standard Rescue Media to boot correctly.

Acronis provide an alternative Windows PE form of Rescue Media which has greater compatibility with modern devices such as NVMe and RAID, and where this can also be customised to inject additional device drivers if needed.

To create the Windows PE version of the Rescue Media, you use the same Bootable Rescue Media Builder program as for the Linux media but take the second option.  If you do not already have the Windows 10 ADK software installed (required for Windows PE), then the program will direct you to the Microsoft download site to get this.  When you install the ADK you only need to select the top 3 items from the list shown.  Note: this is a large download of around 6GB (3GB installed for the options needed).  The Windows 10 ADK is fine to use on Windows 7.

I would recommend creating the Windows PE Rescue Media on a small USB memory stick, size 1GB minimum to 32GB maximum, this has to be formatted as FAT32.  Test with the PE USB stick for booting and if all looks OK you are good to go further.  If you need additional device drivers to support the RAID requirement, then see the MVP Tool - Custom ATI WINPE Builder tool link in my signature below, which can add in the Intel RST RAID drivers very easily just by answering the questions prompted during the build process.

If you're booting from an NMVE drive, you're using UEFI.  NVME is only bootable on a UEFI machine.

1) you need to ensure you're booting the rescue media in UEFI mode instead of legacy - as Steve mentioned, you may need to play with bios settings to set teh priority.  I'm assuming MSI has a one-time boot menu as well (my Gigabyte board is F12) which should let you specifically pick your boot media in UEFI mode instead of legacy mode.

2) because you're using PCIE NVME and RAID as the SATA mode, the default LInux rescue media is no good for you - it doesn't have current drivers for modern RAID controllers - not even INtel ones that are found on most home custom boards/systems and/or OEM systems.  You will have to build WinPE rescue media to support the RAID setup and NVME drives in this setup.  

I would encourage you download and install the Windows 10 ADK on your Windows 7 machine (link below - pick the top 3 items only for the install which is 3.4GB).  Once installed, download and run our MVP winpe builder advanced 11.1 version (linked below as well).  It's easy to follow and it will build WinPE rescue media for you, while automatically, including the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) drivers needed for RAID support on your system - just make sure to select yes to add custom drivers when it asks if you want to and  they will be added automatically from the tool since they are already provided with it.

 

Thanks Steve and Bobbo.

I tried the Advance version of the MVP winpe builder and fail to write the files into the USB memory stick.

 

I then tried to use the basic version of the MVP winpe builder and successfully create the rescue media in the memory stick.

I then tried to boot with it. I am able to backup and recover. However there is one problem. It does not recognize the raid 0.

 

I then think it may be an issue of driver, so I put the Samsung NVM Express Driver 2.2.exe (NVMe SSD is 2 X 250GB 960 Evo) into the folder

02)_User_Tools-20170426T121931Z-001\02)_User_Tools\ATI_PE_BUILDER\Basic\MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v59\Drivers\x64

And try building the rescue disk again.

Building halfway the system crash and go blue screen.

 

When I try to boot it cannot boot again. Going to the boot menu the selection becomes [Hard Disk:Windows Boot Manager] instead of [Hard Disk:Windows Boot Manager (Intel Volume1)]

So I have to create the rescue usb memory stick on another PC. I did not put in the Samsung NVM Express Driver 2.2.exe and just try building. It is successful and when using the rescue disk, it can recognize Raid 0.

So I just recover the Raid 0 SSD with a Single version scheme backup I already made.

It is successful and in the boot menu [Hard Disk:Windows Boot Manager] becomes [Hard Disk:Windows Boot Manager (Intel Volume1)] and I can boot on that. However when booted, windows does not recognize the window system image and ask for me to find it or install driver or recover.

I cannot find the system information and the only backup is from Acromis. Hence I try to restore from another Acronis backup from a different date (this is incremental backup) After I did that I cannot boot the raid anymore because the bios see the raid as failed.

 

I then try to use the rescue usb memory stick to change the raid 0 to the Single version scheme backup as stated earlier, however the rescue usb no longer work. It will keep looping into boot up and come to a "your PC run into a problem and need to restart screen."

 

Now I am wondering what went wrong.

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The standard version of the MVP tool does not format the USB drive as it leaves the actual creation to the Acronis media builder and it does not format the drive. The advanced builder does attempt to format the USB before building, but only attempts a quick format using standard diskpart commands. You can do a full format ahead of time and try the advanced again. Or, just run it and copy the .wim file and rename it to boot.wim on the existing winpe USB flash drive in the source folder as that is what is being booted up and it sounds like your flash drive can boot already now with winpe.

In any of these Mvp winpe builds, you must say yes to add custom drivers. The IRST drivers will then be added automatically. That is the key driver needed for 99% of home systems using RAID. The second key factor is booting the USB in uefi mode here for your setup because restoring in legacy mode will change the os to legacy and your nvme drives will never boot in legacy.

i can't say why your raid failed. That is in the bios and outside of the OS and application layer where the imaging is happening. On my system, I must disable legacy mode in the bios completely for RAID to be usable with the onboard m.2 pcie slots. PCIE add in cards are not allowe for raid booting either.

I recreate the rescue USB memory stick again and can boot into the Acronis backup screen now. However as the raid fail there is not much I can do.

 

Since I bought this PC recently, I will ask the manufacturer what to do.

Do you have a good backup? 

If so, it looks like you probably need to rebuild the raid in the bios as a new RAID set and could then restore the backup image to it. Unfortunately, if the bios is showing the raid as failed, that's at the motherboard level and needs to be fixed first. A failed RAID 0 means your OS and data on that raid are likely toast since RAID0 has no parity or mirroring.

FYI. I was going to use a raid 0 my nvme drives as well and had original purchased a couple of smaller BPX NVME drives, but real world performance showed that there is no real performance increase with RAID 0 there and having to use both of my M.2 ports in RAID shut off my SATA ports on this board so it wasn't worth the theoretical bencharmark. RAID 0 looks good in benchmarks, but doesn't seem to really benefit like SSD's do since PCIE speeds are already through the roof with the good drives. Unless you need the size of the larger drive in raid 0, you might just want to keep the drives separate and use one for the OS and the other for data or something like that.

You are corrent, I use raid 0 because at that time it is more cost effective to have two 250 GB 960 Evo NVMe SSD instead of a Single 500 GB.

I use it for high speed process and the Visual studio already cost 80+ GB.

 

I have one more 128 GB SSD which I plan to install Linux on and two more 2TB SATA for storage.

 

I will see how it goes first, If Raid keep failling I will have to get a larger NVMe SSD.

Good luck with the RAID repair and restore - let us know what the end result is.

The technician found that one of the NVMe SSD failed. He says maybe due to the way Acronis writes the data in the opposite way. For example 010101 instead of 101010 it may cause damage to the SSD. Given the fact I just bought the laptop last month, I think it may be possible that Acronis restore image may not adept with the new technologies yet so problems may occur.

Or maybe the SSD comes from a bad batch and it is not Acronis fault that it failed, currently I don't want risk buying a new SSD again.

If I am to try Acronis restore again, it will be a few years later when Acronis will have adepted to the new technologies and the value of my SSD / laptop is low and I should be getting a new SSD / PC.

 

Anyway thank you for your help.

Sorry but the technician is making up stories with this tale of Acronis writing data the opposite way!  Both 010101 and 101010 are perfectly valid binary codes as are any combination of 1's and 0's, so there is no wrong way to write them!

It seems that you just had a bad SSD here which is always a possibility with any hardware technology, I have had the same with normal spinning drives that were brand new out of the packaging.

SSD's have been around for quite a while now, I have a couple that must be 3 or 4 years old and have given no problems at all.  I dealt with a friend's computer recently which was less than 2 years old and the HDD 2TB drive died a slow death.

Yes, as I said that NVMe SSD may come from a bad batch so even I just bought it last month it fail with no fault on Acronis.

 

However NVMe technology just come out in 2014 and gain market traction 1 or 2 years ago. It use 4 PCI express lanes and may be a different beast from the AHCI drives, and putting them in Raid 0 may make matters more complex. Plus I am using window 7 instead of window 10 which does not have native support for NVMe.

https://www.osr.com/nt-insider/2014-issue4/introduction-nvme-technology/

 

 

I also see that Acronis just added NVMe express last year, so the new technology may be not stable with NVMe express in Raid 0. I may be wrong though and Acronis had did heavy testing on this configuration before.

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/you-spoke-we-listened-acronis-t…

 

I don't know for sure, it may not be Acronis fault at all and the manufacturer fault. However currently I am not confident to risk testing it on a new computer. Maybe after a few years when the value of my PC drops will I test again.

Secret,

In building WinPE using the MVP tool you are asked if you want to add drivers.  You should select yes to that question as doing so will automatically add the RAID drivers necessary for the NVMe RAID setup.  I note that you added the Samsung driver which is an NVMe driver for the drives but lacks RAID support.  So when you restored the image you had what happened was that True Image wrote to a single drive instead of both drives in RAID setup.  This in effect broke the RAID so that it now reports failed.

Are you certain that one of your NVMe drives is in fact failed?  I question that given what your technician told you.  If he is the same one that tokd you a drive had failed I would be suspicious of his findings.

Treu Image fully supports NVMe drives.  Where it gets complicated is when an OS is installed onto a RAID set of drives.  In this case the RAID drivers must me available for the recovery media to work correctly with the RAID set.

If you still have the failed drive and can attach it to your PC somehow to test if you can see it, format it, etc. you should do so.  If these operations can be performed to the drive then the drive is fine.

Hi Enchantech,

Yes the technician show me before my eyes. To make sure it is the NVMe drive failure instead of the motherboard / software failure he plug in only one good NVMe and the bios can detect it. Then he swap the good NVMe with the bad NVMe and the bios cannot detect it.

 

And yes when I try to create a rescue media with the Sumsung Driver the creation fail and make the PC goes blue screen and my PC cannot boot again. After that I don't use that driver again and use another PC to make the rescue media. And I did use the MVP tool and select yes to add driver it show that it can restore the backup as raid.

When I try to restore that, it is successful. But when booting the OS it goes to the window startup screen and says it cannot detect the window image.

I then tried to restore with another backup (this is incremental backup instead of Single backup). After the restore the bios says the raid fail and I cannot recreate new raid. This is when I engage the technician to help and he found that one of the NVMe fail.

Ok, fair enough, I believe you have a failed drive.  I do not believe that True Image or WinPE caused the drive to fail. 

If you can come up with another NVMe drive like the good one you have, same capacity I believe that you could resore the image you have, the full image not the incremental, to the drives after you rebuild the RAID array anew.  You should be able to find out how to do that from MSI support.