Unable to lock the disk.
Hello! I get an error when I try to clone a disk.
I tried both rebooting and shutting down completely. Active Cloning doesn't work either. Hangs on stage-select the destination disk for the cloned data.
Ok, then much more information is needed here to try to understand what is happening?
What drives are involved here, what sizes, how connected etc?
What version of Windows OS is being used?
What version / build of ATI are you using, i.e. is this ATI 2019 build 14690 (latest build)?
OS Windows 10 x 64
HDD - 1Tb /SATA. OS partition 120Gb
New disk SSD - 240Gb /SATA
Yesterday I tried ATI 2017, today paid for a new license ATI 2019 build 14690 but also does not work.
Active Cloning shows this inscription and does not go further
Andry, sorry but the image shows nothing of value to understanding what is happening here.
Please download the MVP Log Viewer tool and use this to access the log file information for your cloning actions as this may show more detail of what is going on?
Link to the tool is in my signature below.
Andry,
I can't tell if you're using rescue media to clone, or Windows - it looks like an older rescue media of 2017, but I can't tell.
1) Make sure you're using the latest 2019 version. Try to clone directly in Windows if it let's you. You'll need to make sure that Windows can see the new and the existing drive before you try though (make sure the new disk is initialized and showing a drive letter in Windows).
2) If that doesn't work for some reason, create Acronis Rescue media using the 2019 winRE method and then boot that up and try to clone.
HOWEVER, before you boot it up... A) Do a full shutdown by pressing SHIFT+shutdown or use command prompt and type shutdown /p.
This will ensure a full shutdown instead of a possible hybrid shutdown where the disk may remain locked by a hibernation file.
Thanks for the replies! But it doesn't help me.
Now I understand that the Acronis is only advertising. Software is not working, tech support not responding. Acronis creates the illusion of reliability and doesn't really work but only raises money every year. I found a few more topics with a similar problem that hasn't been solved since 2015. I also found a great free software that solved my problem in 4 simple steps. I'm upset that I've been paying for licenses for over 5 years, and getting a pacifier.
Use what works for you!
But your other comments are misguided. Acronismvp works great for most people and offers different features not found in other products. I not only use Acronismvp but other paid products and free products too. Each has positive and negative features for my environment and use cases and will differ with others.
Unfortunately, you didn't provide any actual details to the thread that might have helped identify or resolve your issue. When you ask for help, but don't provide background or details requested by people wanting to help, well, then you won't find answers.
Glad you found something else that your happy with though. I hope it works out in the long run.
Andry
I also have been getting this message when backing up my hard drives:
" Unable to lock the disk. Boot your computer from a Lunix- based bootable media, and then try again "
The program just sit there. ! Whats going On ! I'm using Acronis True Image 2019
I may have to rethink or look into using a different Program to backup my hard drives.
Mark
Andry, when are you seeing this? Are you using rescue media or is this from windows? Are you cloning or restoring a backup? If a backup restore, is it an entire disk or files/folders? If files, are you attempting to restore to the original location with existing permissions?
Really hard to provide a random "guess" to answer your question, which is the best you'll get without some information from your end.
Assuming a clone or a full disk restore is being tried...
1. You need to boot full Windows and do a full shutdown before anything. Fastboot on windows 8, 8.1, 10 locks a drive with a protected hibernation file that windows will recognize on the source disk and winpe or WinRE rescue media is windows and will see it too. Unlock the disk by doing a full shutdown so windows does not using a locked hibernation file and fastboot. Shutdown /p ensures a full shutdown.
And
2. likely, you either need to format the destination disk and make sure it's initialized as the same as the source image (MBR or GPT), or the destination disk already has windows on it and should be formatted anyway so an existing OS (which also could be locked by fast start hibernation) is not present. In windows, delete the volume and then initialize correctly first. Or in rescue media, use add new disk feature to initialize the destination disk first.
I have same problem, I think. I have a Dell Inspiron 5270 laptop, Windows 10 Pro, 1803, 17134.523. ATI 2019, 14690. I created a Rescue Disk (DVD) with the Simple option.
I shut down from the command prompt with "shutdown /p". I booted to the drive select and specified the DVD drive.
Recover, Select backup, Recover whole disk and partitions, selected all 4 partitions.
Window says "Locking partition E:" , times out with the message "Unable to lock the disk. Boot your computer from a Linux-based bootable media, and then try again."
I checked Logs, but there was nothing there.
Clarence, welcome to these public User Forums.
Are you able to determine which actual partition E: relates to when you see this message from the ATI application running from the rescue media DVD? Drive letters are often changed in that bootable media environment and identifying the 'locked' partition may help with understanding why it may be locked?
I would recommend trying doing a 'Restart' from your Windows 10 desktop with your ATI DVD in place, then pressing the Boot Menu override key (normally F12 for Dell) when opportunity is given, as this should guarantee that you are not in a Windows Fast Start state / aka hybrid sleep.
Unless it would help in diagnosis, I see no reason to test your restart suggestion, since I want to be able to rescue when it is not possible to start Windows.
I don't know what partition E: is, but I have an idea how to find out. Tonight, when I will have time, instead of trying to recover all 4 partitions at the same time, I will try to recover them one at a time.
Clarence, in a situation where it is not possible to start Windows, then the easiest method to avoid this type of issue is to simply ensure the target drive is wiped clean before attempting a restore, this way there can be no locked partitions.
The first step of a normal recovery would do exactly this, i.e. wipe the target drive, but this is being stopped by the locked partition, probably because of a hybrid sleep state or hibernation type flag being set for the partition in question.
Clarence,
Fastboot locking a disk can impact rescue media too. If you have an SSD drive, the boot time isn't that much better with it enabled either, and because of the risk of a drive becoming locked and not allowing it to be accessed by rescue media, I have disabled it on all of my Windows 10 systems. My system still only takes 12 seconds from post to the time I enter my password and see the desktop.
I'd also recommend checking out this post about the issues a locked drive can pose.
If you want to avoid the issue with cannot lock the drive in Windows 8 - 10 do this:
Hold down the Shift key while clicking Shutdown from the Power menu. This will force a complete shutdown of all apps and Windows OS.
I discovered that if I click on OK on the error message, another attempt to lock the disc is made. Eventually, the partition gets locked. Proceeding, the request is made to select the disk on which the image is to be written. Part of the time, the SATA disk is greyed out and only the USB disks are selectable. Repeating the entire process eventually gets to the point of deleting the partitions, which I did not do.
I certainly don't feel comfortable with the erratic behavior of the Rescue software. If I were to have a real 'disaster', I would like to have more confidence in in the ability to recover the system.
I feel like there's nothing more to discuss in the way of getting help with a problem, but that there are a few bugs or design issues that need to be fixed.
Clarence,
In your previous post you said you used the Shutdown /p command and still got the unable to lock the disk message. If you want to use the command prompt then you need to add the /f switch with the Shutdown command.
Example Shutdown /p /f
This will force all applications to close which removes all open files from the Hyberfil which in turn will allow for the disk to be locked.
Same issue. can't boot from usb, because it's not uefi bootable. switch to legacy, it won't lock the drive.
Clone on 3rd party machine, won't boot.
Anyone ever gotten this to actually work on windows 10?
Scott, all recent Acronis USB rescue media can boot in either UEFI or Legacy modes but whether this does so on your computer can depend on how the BIOS is implemented.
The last time I had an issue booting rescue media in UEFI mode was on an Acer laptop which would not allow me to do so if Secure Boot was enabled.
If you are getting Cannot Lock Drive error then you must first perform a complete shutdown of the PC prior to booting the recovery media.
The easiest way to completely shutdown a Win 10 machine is to hold down the Shift key then click on Shutdown in the Power button menu.
Steve Smith wrote:Scott, all recent Acronis USB rescue media can boot in either UEFI or Legacy modes but whether this does so on your computer can depend on how the BIOS is implemented.
The last time I had an issue booting rescue media in UEFI mode was on an Acer laptop which would not allow me to do so if Secure Boot was enabled.
Ditto to this.
Also, uefi booting is specific to the architecture at build. Uefi 32 bit can only boot on 32 bit bios hardware. Uefi 64 bit can only boot on 64 bit bios architecture.
The Linux rescue media (check your flash drive) has efi/boot and both the ability to boot 32 bit and 64 bit as it contains bootia32 and bootx64.
The winpe/WinRE typically only has uefi bootability for the type of system it was built on.... Or whatever type you made if using the MVP custom media builder or default Acronis builder which lists the architecture as 32 bit or 64 bit when using the advanced option.
Most modern systems are 64bit uefi. There are still some budget laptops and tablets that are 32bit uefi only (they typically have less than 4GB of memory installed or supported).
I had the same issue. I solved it by formating the destination disk. (it has a "C" but i was going to overwrite it, so...)
It worked for me, but i understand that it is not the best solution...
Hi chaps,
new here but here’s what I find fixes the locked disk issue.
you’re trying to recover a disk so I’m guessing the data on the disk is ok to wipe??
just use diskpart>select disk 0>clean
this wipes the HDD and allows ATI2019 to use the HDD :)
you’re welcome
I may be late to the party, but I've had the same issue.
How I solved it (some steps may be overkill, but I don't know what was the fixing step):
- formatted my USB stick
- created a Linux USB boot drive on it
- shutdown Windows running cmd.exe as administrator with the command line "shutdown /f /p
- ran BIOS setup (F2 on startup)
- chose USB stick as boot drive (not the UEFI version)
- started Acronis True Image, 64b version
- boom!
Hope this helps (at least someone stuck as me).
How do you start the Acronis True Image, 64b version from just a Linux USB boot drive? Do you have to install it onto it first? And if so how?
Mark, just use the Advanced method of the Acronis Rescue Media builder tool to create a Linux USB stick which will have both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the ATI offline application.
There is no need to install anything unless you don't have the main ATI application installed which in turn provides the Rescue Media Builder tool.
If you have registered ATI to an Acronis Account, then you can also download an .ISO CD image from your account pages and use this to create either a bootable CD or copy to a USB stick using a utility program such as either Rufus or ISOtoUSB.
Thanks Steve, that did the trick. I am so relieved now that I can recover my crashed disk.
" Unable to lock the disk. Boot your computer from a Lunix- based bootable media, and then try again "
我也遇到了同样的问题，初始的备份是在基于64位win10的pe里的ATI2019制作，当我需要恢复C盘时选择恢复C盘和mbr，ATI2019系统出现以上提示，查看了Steve Smith经理的提示：未完全关闭相关进程或者格式化相关分区，退出程序后尝试了三次恢复（未重启PE系统和未格式化分区的情况下），第四次正常恢复。大家如果遇到此问题可以尝试格式化分区后恢复，但是这不是一个好的办法。
Darin Real wrote (in Chinese):
I also encountered the same problem. The initial backup was made in ATI2019 based on 64-bit win10 PE. When I needed to recover the C drive, I chose to restore the C drive and mbr. The above prompt appeared on the ATI2019 system. Check out the manager Steve Smith's Tips: The related processes are not completely closed or the related partitions are formatted. After exiting the program, three attempts were made (without restarting the PE system and unformatted partitions), and the fourth normal recovery. If you encounter this problem, you can try to recover after formatting the partition, but this is not a good way.
Thank you for sharing your experience with this issue.
Hi Andry,I've been having the same issue and I agree with you that Acronis just keeps raising their prices each year, yet we're having these issues over and over again. What free software did u use? Maybe i can try that as well.Thank you.
Ron
Steve Smith wrote:Mark, just use the Advanced method of the Acronis Rescue Media builder tool to create a Linux USB stick which will have both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the ATI offline application.
There is no need to install anything unless you don't have the main ATI application installed which in turn provides the Rescue Media Builder tool.
If you have registered ATI to an Acronis Account, then you can also download an .ISO CD image from your account pages and use this to create either a bootable CD or copy to a USB stick using a utility program such as either Rufus or ISOtoUSB.
I was having the same problem as many on this thread and the problem is that the Acronis documentation is just not specific enough. I had been using an Acronis boot CD that I created previously and successfully used to clone a new HD. This didn't work with my SSD.
You must use a LINUX based boot media and the documentation should be specific about this - it would have saved me (and others no doubt) hours of grief. This seems to be a problem of the experts assuming that everyone else has the same knowledge and understanding of the underlying technology.
Thanks to Steve for the suggestion of downloading the CD iso which is Linux based and which worked perfectly.
Hello, I Wiped with the disk with tools & Utilities, Acronis DriveCleanser, and works. I used the American standard.
Thank You for this post. Resolved the Lock disk issue and I got to learn lots other ticks and the knowledge on what is the cause of the issue. I contacted support and they did not direct me to this post. I would have saved days of frustration and waiting on support to contact me.
Thanks Again! Keep up the Great work Steve!
Hello Everyone, I used the ATI2021 console to create a Linux bootable USB rescue media ( Rescue Media Builder > Advanced > Linux-based media ) USB created successful but failed to boot in Linux. Then I created an *.iso and then made a Linux bootable USB using Rufus as a DD image mode (only). This worked... don't know why, but this is a work around. Cloning/Recover/backup is much cleaner, faster and straight forward. (see attachment). I hope this helps others who are struggling to create a Linux USB bootable meda.
Marcus Mostamandi,
thank you for taking the time to share your solution with the community!
I too am seeing the error "Unable to lock the disk, Boot your computer from a Lunix- based bootable media, and then try again "
I have to say that using a linux based USB drive works fine, and the error message presented to the public is overly cryptic. If the linux version works fine, the Windows PE version should also work fine, or at least have an option to bypass the locked hybernation file. I have been using ATI for years, and often see errors in the Windows PE versions.
Please address the issue creating bootable linux USB drives, and add the option to ignore a locked drive.
Also please stop blaming the user for programming and lack of documentation issues. Fix your program already!!
I've run into this problem numerous times using the WinPE Rescue Disk, so always used the Linux based disk with no problems.
I was trying to clone WinServer 2016 from mechanical HD to SSD based RAID array. The RAID card requires drivers for a bootable volume.
I performed a dry run on a fresh install of WinServer 2016 & everything worked well, using the WinPE version of the Rescue Disk (USB) + Windows drivers for the RAID card.
Of course, I ran into the "Unable to lock the disk" error, but building a Linux based Rescue Disk with Linux RAID drivers is a problem, as I don't know which flavor of Linux the Rescue Disk is based on & frankly, I sick & tired of effing with Acronis. I was running UP2DATE Acronis 2021 & I've been a constantly upgrading customer for Decades, but I'm DONE with this product. Today I UPGRADED to a Perpetual License of EaseUS Todo Backup 13.5 Workstation & so far, it has performed Flawlessly. I WILL update this post if I run into any problems, but so far, I've cloned the disk that Acronis couldn't clone, after trying Every Single Trick in this post.
Hope this helps,
Franko
I'm trying to clone a drive and I was also getting the lock error. I tried all different ways to create the bootable USB and then found that when I started ATI 2019 there's an option to clone a disk so I used it. So far it's on step 5/9 copying partitions step so I'll keep my fingers crossed.
I had the same error when trining to clone an Inspiron 3880 1TB HDD to 500 GB SSD. The clone USB was created in Acronis and was a Linux OS. It would be helpful to have the version listed at install, but I guess I can get it at cmd prompt. I found that the BIOS was set to raid but was still using AHCI for a single drive. After Changing from Raid to AHCI, I tested the original HD boot. No errors. I started the Clone and used the manual setting so I could see how the drive partitions resided. I was not happy with the interface as it did show the original to allow me to resize some partitions. I know I could have started a third part disk manager, but it would have been helpful to do everything in one app. Acronis True Image 2021. All other products I tried to clone with did not clone the restore partitions correctly and were none functional on the new drive. Not sure if it made a difference, but all other products used WinPE. One additional note for Inspiron 3880. I could not find any legacy USB support. All USB boot drives would only appear in the boot manager if they were UEFI. I hope this helps the next person.
Try this:
Before you clone, log into windows, drop to a CMD prompt as administrator, and run this command:
POWERCFG /H OFF
(It turns off hybernstion, and removesthe hidden C:\HIBERFIL.SYS)
shutdown /p /f
(which does a clean, non-hybrid restart)
just doing the “shutdown /p /f” didn’t work for me, until I removed hibernate from the system.
…once your system is cloned, repeat the process, but with “POWERCFG /H ON” to reinstate hibernate.
Tom Johnson wrote:Try this:
Before you clone, log into windows, drop to a CMD prompt as administrator, and run this command:
POWERCFG /H OFF
(It turns off hybernstion, and removesthe hidden C:\HIBERFIL.SYS)
shutdown /p /f
(which does a clean, non-hybrid restart)
just doing the “shutdown /p /f” didn’t work for me, until I removed hibernate from the system.
…once your system is cloned, repeat the process, but with “POWERCFG /H ON” to reinstate hibernate.
Hello Tom. Welcome to the forum!
Thanks for sharing the workaround.