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TI2019 restore problem

Thread needs solution

Hi

I created a full image backup of non-AFT 512n disk at TI2019

I attempted to restore the image to another AFT 4kn (not 512e) disk

But the AFT 4kn disk is grayed-out and can not be selected for restore destination

Is this not supported by TI2019?

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It should be supported. Are you using the rescue media? If so, click on the top menu to restore instead of the left menu pane. I've had this happen where I could not continue restoring to ant disk from the left, but once using the top menu, they all showed available.

Just curious, but what is the make/model of the 4k drive? And has it already been initialized and formatted as NTFS with A GPT scheme? Some brand new disks need to be initialized first.

The AFT 4Kn disk model is Phison electronics embedded PS5012-E12 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

I was using rescue media at restore and image backup
Restore start is not a problem, It's the same from the left pane or from the top menu.
Then, proceeding with the "Choose Recovery method" step and next step "Select the items to recover",
But i can not select disk by grayed out with the next "Select Destination" step.

The situation does not change even if GPT scheme initialization is done or not

Phison electronics is the drive controller manufacturer.  Whom is the drive maker?  Possibly Patriot or MyDigital.

I think you have a driver problem.  You need to create recovery media using the MVP tool so that you will have driver support.

Please check the details of the drive at the following URL

https://www.phison.com/en/solutions/embedded/pcie/160-ps5012-e12-3

I agree with Enchantech. Your rescue media likely does not have the necessary drivers.

The default Linux recovery media (that you can download as an .iso) will not work with these drives.

Please build winpe rescue media. If you choose the WinRE method on that system the drivers should automaticall be  there.

Alternatively try the MVP custom rescue media builder and just follow the prompts. Be sure to say yes for custom drivers and they will be added automatically for you since they are already included with the tool.

The rescue media is WinPE, and the driver correctly recognized Phison disk.
Because can create image backup that disk, and restore it.
But backups created with another 512n disk can not be restored.

You may want to open a support case then. I've not had an issue restoring backups. You can't clone between the different sector size disks but have not had any issues going the backup and restore method. Never had that type of drive either so maybe it's unique, but have used various drives with Phison controllers without issue so far.

Could you shed more light on your drive as well too?  The info you've given is really vague and the guessing game eats up time.  It would be REALLY helpful if you could answer ALL of these questions with specific information, especially since there are 7 versions of different drives on that link.  

- What is the exact model drive you have? 

- Is it PCIE NVME or U.2?

- Is it recognized in Windows? 

        - If so, has it been intialized, formatted as GPT and given a drive letter already too?

- What does the sector size actually show up as under System Information >> components >> storage >> disks >> bytes/sector  (a screen shot would be nice).

- How did you build the WinPE rescue media?  Did you use the WinRE option from your system, or WinPE?

 

- If using WinPE, did you include the ADDITIONAL IRST controller drivers drivers that you provided? 

                - If so, what version are you using?

                - What is your CPU as well, are you using Intel or AMD?

- If using WinPE, what version of ADK do you have installed and used to build the rescue media?

- For clarification, you did build the rescue media on the same system where the drive is installed as well (where Windows already detects the drive and has it mounted with a volume letter)?  And then did you build WinRE or WinPE and include the necessary extra drivers as well?

If it's a true 4K (native) drive and not 4Ke (512Kb emulated), that would be a first for me so can't offer any other assistance and would contact Acronis via support.  Where did you get the drive as well?  I can't find any true 4K (native, non emulated 512Kb) drives on Amazon or NewEgg. Perhaps with the exact disk model though, we could look it up and dig a bit more. Answers to AL of these questions, would help find an answer.

Thanks
I will open support

My drive is Phison embedded PS5012-E12 PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 SSD
Please check with the URL, I wrote before.

Below is the review of ANANDTECH
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13080/the-phison-e12-nvme-ssd-controller…

Clean GPT installation of Windows 10 in the drive will work correctly.
System Information >> components >> storage >> disks >> bytes/sector is 4096

The drive have logical addressing interface of 4K bytes
It is true 4K native drive, and not 512 emulation.

It can be purchased the following EC site in Japan.
https://www.century-direct.net/N0-14642/
https://www.century-direct.net/N0-14643/

Best of luck. That link had multiple drives on it. But if it's 4k native that's the first of its kind I've seen. It reports as such in system information too?

 

Not sure where you are getting your Advanced Format information from, I do not see that anywhere in the specs I look at.  As for logical addressing of 4096 I believe all current SSD's are designed as such.

I reread your original post, I note that you can see the drive but it is greyed out, cannot be selected.  This is the case when a drive is RAW, not formatted.  In such case you would need to use the Add New Disk function of the Recovery Media which you can select on the Home screen to format the drive so that you can select it as a destination.

Yup, I don't see anything that shows it's 4kn either. If only he'd confirm it was initialized and had a volume letter in Windows already and checked what it shows as in system information as requested ?, we'd know for sure.

My MyDigital BPX has an older Phison 7 controller and shows up as 512 in system information. Most new drives are 4k but 512e to the OS. Also, legacy bios cannot boot off of pure 4kn drives

I installed it on another UEFI base PC and got systeminfo, so I will show it.

Sorry for displaying Japanese.

Thanks for that! At least it's confirmed now and appreciate the info. That's the first I've seen a commercial PCIe NVME with Native 4k advanced format and am interested to hear how Acronis tech support responds.

It looks like the Sabrent Rocket NVME PCIE may be advanced 4Kn as well. Hard to tell but two of the reviews on Amazon said nothing would clone it but they were able to do a backup and recovery so perhaps not.

It is possible to create a backups of this disk and restore it at same disk.
However, backups made on other logical 512 disks can not be restored on this disk.

Your last post makes sense and would be true and expected as the format differs.  I bet if your backup was from a native 4k drive the recovery media would restore it.

Guess you looking at a clean install to the drive rather than an existing backup recovery.

Mind running the command shown in the screenshot below on the drive in question?  Would be interesting to see what it reports.

 

 

I got a response from the Acronis tech support, that backup and restoration between different logical sector disks are not supported.
That's disappointing.

fsutil command report

You certainly have confirmed the problem is the 4K native sector size.

I would take this as a challenge to save my existing system rather than going to a fresh install of Windows and all the software. I would start with other backup software to see if they had the same limitation. Many of them have a free version you can try. If none of them worked, I would try a Linux based solution such as Clonezilla. There are other backup solutions that use a zip format for the backup that should work.

Take a look at the Disk Clone / Copy Partition features of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard which from what I have read is meant to be able to migrate between 512 sectors to 4096 sectors.

See webpage: Copy partitions with different cluster size - which is for an older version of the above software (now integrated into Partition Wizard).

I do not want to sound discouraging here as you may well find another product that works.  I believe your challenge is that you are working with an SSD and not an HDD.  Even though the command I asked that you run does prove without a doubt you have a native 4K formatted drive the fact that the drive is an SSD means that there really are not physical sectors like that of an HDD.  Having said that, what I point out below applies to HDD's as well.

All of the output displayed in the command result is how the embedded controller on the drive itself is setup.  The firmware in the controller is how this formatting is acomplished.  I would suspect that software claiming to convert a 512 source to a 4K drive might not be able to work with or read-modify-write 512 byte data to this firmware which is necessary to acomplish the task.

I would recommend you read between the lines of any product as some may in fact use a bit of trickery to accomplish what they claim.  Example changing Bytes per Sector and Bytes per Physical Sector to 512 while leaving Bytes per Cluster at 4096 on the target disk.

Any imaging software would need to be 4K aware.  It would also need to fix any unalignment issues present in the LBA source image used before writing to the 4K disk.  The only way to do that is to work with the drive firmware.  It would need to write data from source of aligned 512 byte blocks times 8 blocks to a contiguos 4K sector.

Hope you find something that works for you.

 

Thank you everyone !
I'm going to try various other software etc.