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Unable to restore disk backup, system drives not seen by True Image 2017

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I recently purchased and installed Acronis True Image 2017. I have been doing some other troubleshooting for some issues with some other software and they suggest I try a clean re-install of my OS. Understandably, I wanted to have a backup image of my system in its current state before doing so.

I installed True Image 2017 and created a disk backup, sector by sector to an external USB drive. Which seemed to have worked just fine.

I restored a factory fresh image that came with the system using the backup software that came with the system (not Acronis) which all went fine.

I was able to do my troubleshooting and determine that the problems I was experiencing with my other software don't seem to be related to my prior operating system install.

I made an disk backup of the system in this "clean" state using True Image 2017, just the "C" partition to the same external USB drive in a separate folder.

Next I selected my prior True Image disk backup of my system in its previous state. I just need to recovery the C: partition, so I selected it from the list and chose to begin the recovery.

The system restarted and Acronis started and showed a window that said "preparing". It did this for a little while, saying the same "preparing" message, but no progress bar. The system rebooted and just brought me back to the desktop of my "clean" image...apparently, not restoring anything.

I did this twice thinking I might have done something incorrectly, but the same thing occurred.

I had made a recovery USB stick, so next I booted to it using the UEFI option and it started the Acronis software. I could select my recovery image, choose my C partition.  The next step was the "Settings of Partition C" "Specify recover settings of Partition C" and under "Partition location (required)" it says "Not selected" and a link for "new location". When I click this option, it only lists 2 disks, my external USB drive which contains my True Image back up images including the one I'm trying to restore from and the USB flash drive I just booted from. Undestanably, neither of these options is what I want.

The True Image 2017 software seems to be unable to see the disks and partions installed in the system.

Windows disk manager just shows the drives as healthy, NTFS, basic drives.

How can I get True Image to see my drives when recoverying in order to correctly restore my disk image?

 

 

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Erik, welcome to these user forums.

The most common reasons why disk drives are not shown in the Acronis bootable Rescue Media is that the drive is using RAID mode for the SATA controller they are connected to and/or are of a type for which additional device drivers may be required, i.e. some NVMe / M.2 SSD drives.

If you are using the standard, Linux based, Rescue media, then this does not have any RAID support included in the Linux OS used, so you would either need to switch the controller mode from RAID to AHCI, or build the Windows PE version of the USB media and inject RAID support.

The MVP Tool - Custom ATI WINPE Builder tool will create the latter and can also inject the Intel RST RAID drivers for you if you choose to add device drivers.  The WinPE media will require that you first download and install the Windows ADK which is about a 6GB download but where only the top 3 options are needed to be installed.

Thanks. Just after writing my post I discovered another thread here where the Win PE option was mentioned. I'm pretty sure that the drives are connected via SATA in RAID mode. I've downloaded the entire ADK. Had to run to the store to grab another USB flash drive and made the recovery media using the WinPE option.

I just booted to the USB flash drive which started correctly. I can choose my backup file from the external USB drive and even see my other drives listed when I'm browsing, however, when I choose my drive to restore from the backup, it still doesn't list any of my internal drives in the specify recovery settings.

Guess I'll try the MVP tool next.

The MVP Tool seems to have done the trick and I can choose the correct drive from the list.

Thanks for your help.

Erik, glad to hear things are going better with the MVP PE Tool, thanks for the feedback.

Glad to hear it!

The key difference with the MVP tool vs the standard Acronis media builder is the driver injection (which only exists in the MVP tool at present).  To see the drives in RAID, you must provide the RAID controller drivers.  In most cases, that is the standard Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver.  We include that in the builder and it will inject it automatically when you select the option to inject custom drivers.  Alternatively, if the driver is in your system already and you select to inject the system drivers, it will get it that way too.