"Cannot find version 1" warning preventing validation or restore of V2 backup

Michael, this is most perplexing.

Backups can be configured in a way that over time V1 and the associated incremental backups are deleted. So, having only V2 or a later version of the backup should not be a problem. So one possibility is that when the backup to the NAS was first commenced there was a V1, which was removed a part of the automatic cleanup that you selected (or the default if you did not actively select one). However, in the cleanup process V1 may have been deleted but not some of the slices (incremental slices).

One thing I would check is the setting for the backup task; one option is to keep the initial backup (which would be V1), if that is ticked, does the problem go away if you untick it?

Things can occasionally go wrong - my moto is: What can go wrong will eventually go wrong. I backup to a local HDD, to my NAS and Acronis Cloud.

It is unfortunate that backups stopped, it may have been due to the NAS disk becoming full. I suggest you configure Acronis so that it sends you email confirming the back-up has worked, or warning you that it has not. You do this using a global setting. Open the Acronis App, select settings, and click on the link under "Notification" - it says something about email notifications. You can then set up email notifications.

Please keep us informed of your progress in sorting out this problem.

Ian

Michael, in addition to the comments from Ian, can you provide us with some more information to help us better understand this issue please?

Do you have screen shots you can post showing the actual files you have with their full names on your original external drive and on the NAS drive?

Can you confirm that these are all Disks & Partitions backup images, not just Files & Folders images?

How are you attempting to perform the recovery of your V2 backup file(s) here?  It sounds like you are doing this from within Windows, in which case the Acronis Database information comes into the scenario, and this is where ATI stores details of what backup files have been created etc.

The recommended method for doing any type of Windows OS drive recovery is to use the Acronis bootable Rescue media.  This provides an offline / standalone Acronis application environment where no reference to the database is needed or used, as would always be the case for a bare-metal type recovery.

The Rescue Media needs to be booted using the same BIOS mode as your Windows OS uses to avoid any partition migration taking place.  The Windows msinfo32 command will show what the BIOS mode is for your current Windows OS where this can be either Legacy or UEFI.

Note: it is a little more convoluted to tell what the BIOS mode for the older backup image was if you don't already know this - you would need to explore the contents of the .TIB file and look for indication of an EFI partition being present for UEFi.

If your laptop repair came back with a working Windows OS that you are currently using, then I would strongly recommend making a full disk backup of the drive 'as is' today so that you can get back to this starting point should your backup images prove to be unusable!

Gents, thank you so much for your responses!  Let me try to address each point.

I can’t tell whether the flag was ticked to keep version 1 or not, as the backup task was set up in the ATI instance that was installed on the HDD that I’m trying to restore.

I don’t think the backups stopped due to a full disk.  The NAS is 8 TB, and less than 3 TB were used.  However, I forgot to mention that the last incremental file was preventing ATI from connecting to the V2 backup at all, so I removed it from the directory, and that allowed ATI to access V2.  (The Acronis Agent recommended this approach.)

Also, at one point I was copying the entire set of V2 files from one HDD to another and there were 3 incremental files (labeled “_s202_v1”, “_s202_v1-2”, and “_s216_v1”) that would not copy over, but all had subsequent versions (i.e. “_s202_v1-3” and “_s216_v1-2”).  Not sure if these are contributing to my woes.

I’m (hopefully) attaching 19 screenshot files for your review.  Files “2018-08-06.png” to “2018-08-06 (11).png” show all the files in my NAS backup directory (including the original V1 files from my USB HDD that I have subsequently copied to the NAS directory where the V2 files were created by ATI).  Files “2018-08-06 (12).png” to “2018-08-06 (17).png” show what happens when I try to drill into the V2 backup file through Windows File Explorer.  File “2018-08-06 (18).png” shows what happens when I attempt to restore my V2 backup.

All my backups were Disks & Partitions (when I drill into them, I see several partitions; see attached screenshot “2018-08-06 (14).png”).  I have tried recovering V2 both from within Windows (both Windows 8 and 10) and via a bootable Acronis USB key, without success.  (With the USB key attempts, it kept killing my ability to boot back into Windows, leading me to reinstall Windows.  As a consequence, I inadvertently ended up with multiple installs of Windows 10, forcing me to reformat the C drive…aarrgghh!)

I checked my current BIOS mode, and it is UEFI.  I can’t confirm that was the case when the backups were being made (if it matters, since the laptop was repaired the BIOS interface looks somewhat different), but I don’t see an EFI partition in the backup (see attached screenshot “2018-08-06 (14).png”).  If this means anything, I’ve only been trying to recover the C drive, not all the partitions, since the new install of Windows 10 has created a bunch of partitions on its own and I didn’t want to mess that up.

I'll try the next set of screenshots.

And the last ones.

Michael, thanks for all the screen images of your backup files. 

There have been a number of backup problems over the period you have been building this very large incremental backup version chain as shown by the files with v1-2 name ending, and some with v1-2 v1-3 v1-4 etc - this indicates that the backup failed and was restarted but that a partial file was created therefore Acronis created a new one instead of overwriting the existing one.

Perhaps the more difficult issue here is the initial full backup file My_partitions_full_b1_s1_v2.tib where there is no corresponding My_partitions_full_b1_s1_v1.tib, which is most likely the reason for the missing V1 error message even though the v2 file is around 450GB in size.

Unfortunately this might suggest that this backup chain is unusable given the missing file is part of the initial full backup image though I am surprised that ATI went ahead and allowed incremental backups to be created.

From the other screen shots, it looks like your original Windows install was for a Legacy BIOS system rather than UEFI.

I would recommend not creating such large incremental backup chains where possible as it is much too easy to lose data if the chain is broken for any reason.

It is wise to limit the number of incremental backups. I invariably use the default.

I have seen backup chains with 170 incremental backups with only the first backup a full backup that are OK. This is on my mother-in-law's Windows 7.1 Pro PC. There is a daily back-up and weekly one. The PC is still using ATI 2014; never got around to loading a newer version. Every so often I validate the backups and so far so good.

Ian

Thanks again for your responses and your thoughts!  Some questions occur to me: Steve, you say there is no corresponding My_partitions_full_b1_s1_v1.tib file to my My_partitions_full_b1_s1_v2.tib file.  But, I have been assuming the v1 file was the original backup created on the first USB HDD (which I added to the v2 directory on the NAS recently, and which you can see at the top of the first sreenshot I provided yesterday).  When I decided to use the NAS instead, I created a new full backup on it with the same instance of ATI, and I think ATI presumed this was a v2.  Are you suggesting there should be a separate V1 file that would have been created when I first used the NAS?  If so, would ATI have deleted it for some reason?  And, if v2 is a full backup, why should it matter if there is a v1 present or not?  Is there not a way to tell ATI to ignore the v1 and just use v2 (I saw some mention in older posts on this forum of choosing "Ignore" to clear the "Cannot find version 1" warning in older versions of ATI, but there doesn't seem to be such a choice with 2018)?  I just can't help wondering if, rather than my backup being corrupt, ATI is refusing to run the restore due to some intentionally coded process that wants to see a v1, and if that process could be circumvented.  And what would be the purpose of that process if v2 is a full backup?  Does anyone know what ATI is trying to do?

Michael, there are various reasons why ATI will create multiple full backup files using v1, v2, v3 files including when backing via such as FTP where files are split into 2GB segments.

The ATI 2018 User Guide has a section on Backup file naming which links to another section on Backup splitting which gives some of the rules involved, but doesn't give examples of the latter.

In your screen shots, there was 2 different backup version chains with names that are almost identical apart from have an underscore in the more recent chain My_partitions (vs My partitions) but these are unrelated in terms of the full backup files.

Every backup chain has to start with a v1 full backup file, but can have v2, v3 etc if the initial full backup file is segmented for any reason.

The only real way to tell would be if you had the backup task logs that went back to the date when the initial full backup file was created in 2016-12-30, when you were using ATI 2016 ??  The log file would have been named as Service_......log using the Legacy log file naming format.

There is no way to be able to tell ATI to ignore the missing V1 file here as we have no idea what data was captured in that file that ATI needs to make a complete Full backup image when combined with the V2 file.

The only other option here that I can see is that you look to have a full backup version chain with the older files shown below covering from 2013 through 2015-10-25, but that will still be 3 years adrift.

What is missing above is the file My_partitions_full_b1_s1_v1.tib as the first file of the new chain.

I had a browse around on my NAS and found a similar situation for a set of backups for an old Vista laptop where I had v1, v2, v3 files on the initial full backup (from 2016...!).

where the initial Full backup was split into 3 different size segments for reasons unknown but where all 3 of these files would be needed in order to recover this backup chain.  Looking at the time stamps for these 3 files would suggest perhaps a network drop / reconnect during the backup to the NAS?

Ah, thanks...that really helps explain things to me.  The lack of a second v1 file had me flummoxed.  And in spite of reviewing the backup file names repeatedly, I confess I never noticed the missing underscore in the original file names!  

I'll have a review of my HDDs one more time to see if, by some miracle, there's a v1 file somewhere in another directory (admittedly a long-shot).  But if not, it does look like my v2 backup is toast and I'll have to go with the earlier one.

Again, many thanks for your help and patience with my issue!

Further to my issues above, I’ve been trying to restore the original backup I made, consisting of the full backup in 2013 (file “My partitions_full_b1_s1_v1.tib”) and subsequent incremental backups until late in 2015 (files “My partitions_inc_b1_s2_v1.tib” to “My partitions_inc_b1_s17_v1.tib”).  I was able to validate this set of backups in ATI 2018, so there should be no issue restoring them.

I first attempted to restore through ATI running in a fresh install of Windows 10.  This restore ran its full course and declared itself successful, but on reboot, Windows went into the blue screen and launched repair mode.  I attempted the repair, but after diagnosing it went into the attempted repair and hanged, with the standard Windows 5 dots rolling in a circle perpetually.  I eventually shut down and restarted, but all I got was the Windows logo and the 5 dots again circling endlessly.

So, I attempted to restore the backup from the ATI bootable USB flash drive.  The installation ran its full course again, and again declared itself successful.  When I rebooted, Windows did launch, but it had only restored the original full backup from 2013, and ignored all the incremental backup files.

This is so far back as to be barely worthwhile, so I decided to try again.  I rebooted via the ATI USB flash drive, and re-ran the restore, this time taking care to select the most recent incremental backup file.  When I selected the location to restore (the “OS” drive), I got the following error:

“Partition Error – The selected partition contains the following error: Block bitmap corrupted.  Please note that you cannot change the file system and size of this partition.  It is recommended that you check these partitions after recovery with your operating system disk tools.”

(Looking online, this does not seem to be an error that should affect the success of a restore, but I’m not sure of this.)  The restore again ran its course and declared itself successful, but upon rebooting, I again got the Windows logo and the 5 rolling dots and it failed to actually boot.

The system was currently set to UEFI mode, so, since the system was in Legacy mode when the backups were made, I change the mode in Setup to Legacy.  Now, when I rebooted, it said there was no boot device.  I rebooted into the BIOS and noticed there is an option to select “Windows Boot Manager” under the “UEFI Boot” option while in Legacy mode.  When I tried this, I again got the Windows logo/5 rolling dots.

So, I started over.  I deleted, recreated, and reformatted the partition as NTFS.  (Oddly, I noticed before deleting it that the partition, which I had originally created as 1.82 TB, was now 1.53 TB, the exact size of the combined backup files.  Trying to resize it through “Change Default Settings” under the bootable version of ATI was not allowed.)  I rebooted into the ATI USB drive, and reinitiated the restore.  I again got the “Partition Error” noted above, but carried on and the restore again declared itself successful.  I rebooted again, and again got either “no boot device” if in Legacy mode, or the logo/5 dots if in UEFI mode.

I booted into the command line, and ran the “diskpart” utility.  This showed me that my Windows Recovery partition was set as the C drive, whereas the partition I restored to (“OS”) was listed as the D drive.  So, I reassigned the drive letters such that the OS partition was now C, and rebooted.  Still no luck.  I ran “diskpart” again, and the drive assignment had reverted so that the Windows Recovery partition was again C.

I again set the OS partition to C, and tried the “active” command to make this drive the active drive in the hopes that that would make the boot work.  Unfortunately, I got the error message:

“The ACTIVE command can only be used on fixed MBR disks.”

Again looking online, it seems a partition only needs to be an MBR disk under Legacy mode to boot, and should not be an issue if using UEFI.  Nevertheless, I thought that if I made the OS partition an MBR disk, that might solve the problem.  However, I apparently cannot make this partition an MBR disk without data loss (i.e. my restore) unless I use a tool like EaseUS Partition Master, which runs in Windows, and I can’t get Windows to boot.  I could go back, delete the partition again, recreate it and attempt to make it an MBR disk, and then once again run the restore.  But, ATI tells me each time I run the restore that it is first deleting and then recreating the partition I am restoring to, so I don’t see how this is going to help.

I have now tried these various steps multiple times, with the same frustrating lack of success.  I can’t get the OS partition to be the C drive, I can’t do a restore without the “Partition Error”, I can’t get Windows to boot after a supposedly successful restore in either Legacy or UEFI mode, and I can’t get the OS partition to remain at 1.82 TB.  And the restore doesn’t work whether I launch it from within a running instance of Windows 10 or via a USB drive.  I doubt I could even restore the original full 2013 backup again, not that it would be much use to me.  This is ridiculously difficult for a software product whose sole purpose is to backup and restore your system.  I have an old validated backup that restores but won’t boot, and a newer backup that is corrupted because the original full backup v1 file magically disappeared.  I am profoundly disappointed with ATI, and I fear that I am facing at best 5 and a half years of lost data…this should not be this difficult!  I have been working on this for nearly 3 months, have sacrificed every weekend this entire summer, and have nothing to show for it.

I would greatly appreciate any advice and help to get me to a successful restore.

Time for lateral thinking. The key thing you wish to do is to recover your data. Presumably you want the data from the most recent backup. Under windows the default location for data files is under the user profile. If you just used the default location (something I only do as an interim step), I would try to recover that information to a USB storage of some type. This will require a full backup + increments (with none missing). From you post you managed to validate such a set, but it is not clear to me if it was a recent set.

Next do a clean install of ATI, attach the USB device with the backup on it, and the open ATI. Hopefully the backup will be listed. I would then try to validate the backup. If that works, select the back and do a files and directory recovery. Alternatively, close ATI open Windows Explore, select the backup file and hopefully you are in business. 

It would also be possible to do this using the recovery media, but it may be a bit more complex. I have only do disk recoveries using recovery media.

Before doing this I would wait to see what Steve Smith thinks of this.

Ian

This problem is giving me a headache. You have shown extraordinary perseverance in attempting to recover your data. 

Michael, earlier in this thread you looked to say that you had done a new install of Windows 10 on this computer, and if this is true, then restoring it back to the ATI images from 2013 would put you on a different / older version of Windows and with 5 years of OS updates to catch up on!

As Ian has said, perhaps it is time to consider a different approach here (aka lateral thinking).

For myself, if this were my own system, then my approach would be to start with a clean install of Windows 10, so that I have an up to date platform to work from.  Given your computer supports both Legacy/MBR and UEFI/GPT modes - I would also take the opportunity to install Windows 10 in UEFI / GPT mode, as this gives greater flexibility for the future, especially if you want to use disks larger than 2TB in size.

Having established the Windows OS platform, then the next task would be needing to reinstall your programs / applications - these too will have had updates over the years since 2013 - where these updates will focus on security and patching vulnerabilities - very much more important in 2018 than it perhaps was in 2013 with the rise of malignant ransomware etc.

The key elements that your ATI 2013 backup images can offer to you is the ability to try to recover your user data, i.e. documents, photos, music etc.

Unfortunately, due to the missing V1 full backup file, it seems unlikely that you will be able to recover any data from the later incremental backup chain, and unless you have any other backup images stored in other places or on other media, then that data is lost.  I can't remember whether you had any luck in trying to open this backup chain by double-clicking on any of the files in Windows File Explorer - if that was possible to do, then you may have a chance of trying to use Copy & Paste to recover files & folders from that  backup chain.

If you really want to try to recover the 2013 backup as a working / bootable OS image, then my recommendation would be to use the K.I.S.S. principle and keep this as simple as possible!  As your 2013 backup was made from a legacy/MBR system, then this is also how you should attempt to recover it.  This in turn means that you need to boot the ATI Rescue Media in Legacy mode on your UEFI capable system.

Again, personally, I would get hold of a spare disk drive to attempt this type of recovery on - this would have several benefits:

1. You can keep your working Windows 10 OS intact and have ATI installed on this.  You should take the opportunity to upgrade from ATI 2013 as that is not supported for use as installed on Windows 10, but Acronis are offering upgrades to the new ATI 2019 product just announced last week.
2. With a new / spare (empty) disk drive connected to your computer along with your backup drive holding the images, you could perform the recovery from the Windows ATI application without the need to reboot the computer.  When doing this you should see messages / options to keep the restored OS on the drive as MBR.
3. Having successfully recovered the MBR ATI 2013 backup to the spare drive, you then can try swapping out your working Windows 10 drive and replacing it with the restored OS drive.  You will need to go into the BIOS and select the OS drive as a Legacy boot device, not using Windows Boot Manager (which implies UEFI), and then test to see if the restored OS will boot while having the safeguard of being able to swap back to the working UEFI Windows 10 drive with the UEFI BIOS boot change.
   This would also allow you, assuming all boots OK, to see the scale / scope of the challenge you will be facing to bring the 2013 OS, applications & data back to 2018 status.

Gentlemen, again thank you so much for taking the time to think through my issue and provide such detailed suggestions.  (I should probably thank you for reading my long and winding description of my woes at all!)

Steve, to your latter points:  I currently do not have a working copy of Windows 10 installed.  I overwrote the partition it was installed in when I attempted to restore my backup from the ATI USB flash drive.  When I did this, I didn't get the option to restore as an MBR disk.  I understand your suggestion to have a second hard disk and recover to it from a Windows 10 install on the existing disk.  But I'm wondering: if I completely wiped the existing disk of all partitions and ran ATI from the flash drive, would I be able to restore all partitions from the backup (not just the OS partition), and might I then get the option to restore the OS partition as an MBR disk?

If not, I guess I'll have to shell out another $120 for another HDD, and try your suggestion from a new install of Windows 10 and ATI on the existing disk.  (It might be worth it anyway, as I'm considering running a periodic clone of my HDD in future to avoid all this hassle.)

Michael, if you want to try to restore you whole backup then you need to do the following:

Check your BIOS and check that you have both Legacy/CSM and UEFI options enabled, this is needed to allow you to boot the Acronis Rescue media in Legacy mode, so that your restored backup will retain its MBR partition format.

Next, check that you can boot the Rescue media in Legacy mode.  If you see duplicate options for the device where the media is stored being offered, ensure you select the one without having UEFI in the description.

Providing the above are OK, then booting from the rescue media and restoring the backup to a wiped target drive should allow you to do a successful restore of all partitions (assuming the drive is of sufficient size to allow this).

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image 2017: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media for what you should be looking at with the boot media.