Acronis Won't Restore Anymore
This is a long read because I'm not sure what detail is required to figure this out.
Bottom Line: I can’t restore from backups after trying every variation of restore I can think of. Functionally, Jurassic Park is offline and I'm desperate.
I was humming along minding my own business when some small glitch occurred, and I decided to do a system restore from a restore point. I've used system restore in the past and have had reasonable success. The result was that restore was unsuccessful citing a \norton\xyz_bunchofletters_and??'s.
I accepted that it didn't complete and as it turns out, just kept humming along cautiously.
The next day, I happened to notice that the Norton icon (Norton Online Security) was missing from my notification area. It was running as a process and in services, but when I went to the program from the start menu, the icon was blank. Maybe it's related to that arcane message I got from system restore… So I either troubleshoot that or just rewind a day or two with AI 2019. That's when the trouble started.
I ran AI 2019 from my usb recovery stick/drive/thingy, found a full backup on external HD (where all of my AI backups are kept) from a couple of days before and selected that to restore.
The result is I can only boot into the windows system recovery screen, even after removing removable recovery media . I can't boot into windows. Of course, I put my AI recovery media back in and once again, went through the process, picking a different backup set of which I have going back 14 days of daily backups. This has been going on for three days - trial and error, always resulting in the blue screen of windows repair when I reboot.
My backup sets are full BU, then 4 incrementals, then a full, keeping the very first backup. I also have some clones that I've made.
In the AI recovery environment, I'm choosing to recover disks, and selecting the entire disk not individual partitions/sections/whatever.
I've tested recovery and have successfully recovered at least 4 times in the past 4 months. Now? It's not working.
Is it the configuration/partitions? So, I got AI 4 months ago because I was upgrading from a 1 TB drive to a 4 TB drive. I only have one SATA slot so I made my last backup from the 1 TB, put it on an external USB HD, then removed the internal 1 TB HD. After installing the new 4 TB, used AI RE to recover the drive from the USB HD to the new 4TB HD. Worked flawlessly. I repurposed the 1 TB to a machine whose HD had failed.
Then I found I had approx 3 TB of unallocated space, and used MiniTool to create a simple volume, and transformed that into another drive designation. I've made backups of "My Computer" daily since then. So I don't know if the hidden partitions/volumes (EFI/Recovery, etc.) have an effect. My past experience was pretty plug-n-play.
What I would LIKE to do, is get my installed 4 TB HD back to the state it was in when I bought it, and just restore my backups just like I did 4 months ago. For some reason, that's not working.
So, I need a little hand holding. Help? Hilfe? M'aidez?
Thank you SO much for the speedy reply. I'll do my best below...
What version of Windows OS is involved here?
Microsoft Windows 10 Home (x64) Build 18362.356 (1903/May 2019 Update)
How does that Windows OS boot from the BIOS, i.e. is it Legacy or UEFI?
UEFI
check in the BIOS for the boot priority device, is this the drive by make (Legacy) or is it Windows Boot Manager (UEFI)?
Windows Boot Manager (UEFI)
When doing the recovery, did you boot your USB rescue media in the same mode as Windows?
I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I always do a recovery by inserting my AI Rescue USB, and boot to the USB, resulting in the black screen with Load Acronis, System Report, Continue Booting; I choose Load True Image. I've read it's the most reliable way to recover.
When the recovery finishes, have you checked the Log information while still in the rescue media, if so, does it indicate any issues?
I have indeed checked the log and saved a couple. The last line in the log matches the dialog of the UI when a recovery is completed: "Recover operation succeeded"
Which type of USB rescue media are you using?
Again, not sure what that means, but all of my backups are stored on external WD USB drives. My main backup location is an 8 TB WD USB 3.0 drive. I do store some discrete (special) backups and clones on other WD Elements USB 2.0 drives. I do not store backups on my internal HD.
The issue I'm having is independent of the media source I select, FWIW.
If you are asking about the rescue media I boot with, it's a 2 gig thumb drive created by AI media builder. Although, I've also created a rescue CD from the iso and booted into the rescue environment with that.
Is this the older Linux type, or the new Simple WinPE / WinRE media, or have you created the MVP custom WinPE media?
Interesting question. I don't know. I created the usb rescue media 4 months ago, and don't really remember how it was created because I haven't delved into WinPE Win RE and all of that. Don't really understand it. But what I can tell you is that I created the CD (iso) just the other day by downloading the iso file from my account in Acronis, and it boots exactly the same way as my USB stick does. I DO see Linux references when I exit the interface prior to the "requesting reboot" after a restore process has completed.
If you have restored your backup at the top Disk level, then this should have also recovered all other hidden/system partitions as well as the OS one, assuming that your backup included them.
I always backup and restore entire disks.
What *I* don't get, is if I don't have any media inserted, and disconnect all external USB drives, I STILL boot into that windows recovery screen (the blue one with "troubleshoot your PC" and all of that). In that environment (or by inserting the Windows Repair Disk) if I go to command prompt, I can see the C: drive by simply typing "c:" followed by enter. I can also see all drives, volumes, and partitions using DISKPART.
Some Acronis documentation says that when I restore, the drive that boots (c:) should have the flag Pri and Active. Mine doesn't, and when everything was working fine, didn't. Some Acronis documentation says not to check the Track 0. I'll add that for as something as important as this, they have the MOST inconsistent documentation I've ever seen, and the help file (pdf) refers to features or dialogs that don't exist in my software.
That said, as it relates to volumes and such, when I first got this PC 7 months ago, I did a basic Windows backup and created vhdx files. In troubleshooting this issue, I brought those over to another windows machine and attached the vhdx files using Computer Management. I've uploaded the screenshot in this post. The drives in question are the ones that are blue, in case this might reveal anything.
Finally, as I said in my first post, I might be successful if I could get my HD to the same state it was in when I bought it - I'm not sure how, or what that was, because I just installed it and ran the recovery 4 months ago, with success.
The screen image from disk management looks the same as that from my working laptop on Windows 10 #1909 with the exception of not being Bitlocker Encrypted.
The key question here is what does your restored drive look like in disk management, assuming that your screen image comes from your original 250GB OS drive, not the 4TB drive you are recovering to?
I am assuming that as your original drive had an EFI System Partition, that the new drive also has the same after recovery, and therefore your recovery was done with the rescue media booted in UEFI mode.
