Restored Drive-Backup does not boot
Hello Friends,
I'm back with another problem: Some time ago I made a drive-backup of a Windows7 system. Now, hdd defective, I wanted to restore the backup to a new hdd. The restore seemed to be successful but the system does not want to boot anymore. Examining the drive shows all the data of the former system partition is there, only the boot sector seems to be missing.
I know I did the backup with a rescue media stick, but I wasn't quite sure if I used the Acronis2018 MVP stick (you guys helped me to create) or my old Acronis2015 Linux based stick, so I tried restore with both of them. Both restore the data successfully but the new drive won't boot.
I tried to restore the boot sector with the windows system media, but wouldn't succeed. I'm at my wits end here. How can I make the restored system boot again properly?
Wolfgang
Hi Friend, thanks for responding.
First, the old drive does not work anymore, that's why I tried the drive restore with the Acronis stick. Also I'm quite confident I left the boot mode in legacy, because I wasn't sure about UEFI when I installed the system some years ago
Of course, the old drive is removed after having restored the system from the USB disk backup file.
I thought the drive restore will restore all partitions as were found on the source disk, when the backup was made. I was using Acronis successfully this way for years now and got always a bootable system when restoring a drive backup. Only this one is giving me problems.
Andreas, what partitions are shown inside your backup .tib file when you double-click on this in Explorer? This may help show whether the failed drive used Legacy or UEFI boot mode?
The Acronis rescue media is capable of booting in either mode but for a successful recovery, it needs to match the mode used for the OS involved.
Another check is to look at the BIOS on the computer to see what modes this supports? If it is an older system that only supports Legacy, then there will be no mention of UEFI in the BIOS panels, but if it is newer, then it may offer both modes where Legacy may be shown as CSM (for compatibility mode with older legacy systems).
Hello Sorry for not responding so long. I didn't have access to the computer in question for a while.
The backup contains 3 parts. 1: Track0, 2: a partion of 100MB, 3: the system partition of 240GB.
I suppose (can't remember for sure) that the boot was an MBR type, the motherboard being an older make from Supermicro. When assigning the target for the parts, I always give them to the new, unallocated drive.
I used to work with Acronis a lot, be it 2012, 2015, 2018. When restoring a drive I was never asked to assign a part to a disk. I prompted a destination drive and Acronis put all parts on that drive showing that it looks exactly like the source. I don't know, why it asks for a destination for each part individually. Maybe this gives a clue?
Andreas, if you believe that your backup image is from a Legacy / MBR system, then you need to restore it to a new drive of a similar or larger size (if you intend to use in a Legacy boot system) by booting from the Acronis Rescue Media in Legacy mode.
When doing the restore of your backup, this needs to be done as a Disk & Partition restore and at the top Disk selection level.
Please see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document which shows a step-by-step tutorial for doing this type of recovery / restore.
Don't forget to go into the bios when you're done restoring and make sure the restored disk has the first boot priority too. You'd be surprised by how many people restore, but the disk is lower in the priority and not picked up... instead it tries to boot to an internal CD or another USB drive that has a higher boot priority, but is not actually bootable.
Bobbo, at boot time there was no other device than the restored hd, so it couldn't run into booting from a different device.
Steve, I read the PDF and that's exactly what I wanted to happen and how I recall it should work. But what happens is, after choosing the disk to recover, it doesn't continue like described. Instead it asks for the destination of the partition for each partition to restore. So I specify the same empty drive for each partition individually, partitions being an NTFS (ith the system) a FAT32 with 100MB and the Track 0.
When I used to work with Acronis earlier, everything always worked exactly as described in the PDF. Why is this different?
Meanwhile we helped ourselves by installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 and after ensuring it will boot, we restored the data partition only, overwriting the windows system partition. This works in a way, but I'm intrigued why it behaves like I have described.
Bobbo, at boot time there was no other device than the restored hd, so it couldn't run into booting from a different device.
Andreas,
You still need to verify the boot order to be certain; humor me to be on the safe side. Some bios will move the hard drive priority down after restoring. If the first priority is DVD or USB, even if nothing is there, some bios will fail to book the hard drive. I know, it sounds dumb, but it happens all the time because different bios firmware behaves differently. And, in some cases, when using UEFI bios and needing to boot the OS in UEFI mode, people pick the actual hard drive listed (which is what we do with legacy/MBR OS installs and are used to doing), but actually need to find the new "Windows Boot Manager" entry. Better to check to be sure - it would be pretty lame to keep spinning wheels if something as simple as this was preventing boot up, but not actually checked.
For your question to Steve, have you tried deleting all partitions on he disk first? True Image has the "add new disk" feature in the rescue media that does this. It's not just for adding a brand new dis, but essentially for initializing the disk you tell it too. Personally, I usually just wipe it with mintool rescue media, but Acronis is fine. I've never run into an issue where taking the default full disk restore did not work, so long as the destination disk was big enough to handle the restored image once expanded.
Are you 100% sure that you should be restoring in legacy mode and not UEFI mode? Now that the OS is booted up, check to be sure
https://www.eightforums.com/threads/bios-mode-see-if-windows-boot-in-uefi-or-legacy-mode.29504/
Steve, I read the PDF and that's exactly what I wanted to happen and how I recall it should work. But what happens is, after choosing the disk to recover, it doesn't continue like described. Instead it asks for the destination of the partition for each partition to restore. So I specify the same empty drive for each partition individually, partitions being an NTFS (ith the system) a FAT32 with 100MB and the Track 0.
Andreas, if I remember correctly, the times when I have seen the behaviour you describe have been when the backup wasn't of the whole disk, i.e. I had omitted a partition / not selected the whole disk for the backup. Where I have done a whole disk backup, then the PDF remains true for the way recovery at a disk level works.
Bobbo, we sure wiggled the entry to the top of the boot list. It didn't help. Also I'm quite sure about legacy boot. It is a Windows 7, installed a couple of years ago. Must've been legacy.
And I have tried several means to initialize the harddisk, using diskpart and, in fact, finally the Acronis "Add new disk" function.
Now that the OS has booted up, I think it boots in legacy mode, because we installed Windows 7 primly from the old Setup-CD.
Steve, if that were true, I might have made an error at backup-level already. I can't recall actually, because it was some time ago. I will certainly make a new backup now and double check behaviour then.
Thank you guys for your kind and patient assistance. :-)