Unable to restore Full Image Backup on Mac
Hi, I had to perform a new OSX install on my Mac because I was having issues with the WD Discovery application not seeing any files on a Mycloud Home- I had been having issues since upgrading to Mojave - I made a full image backup of the system before reinstalling. I wanted to try reverting to High Sierra as the WD application had worked prior to upgrading to Mojave .
I made the bootable media from Mojave and all progressed as it should - On reinstalling High Sierra, I installed Acronis true Image 2019 again and found my backup stored on an airport time capsule - once I loaded that into Acronis 2019 it could see my hard drive and all the user files etc so all looks great- I went to recover and it prompted me to create the bootable media again so I assumed I needed to recreate it , which is what I did - I followed the onscreen instruction booted from the usb - I then got the prompt where it says choose the location of the backup file which was on the time capsule -,however the time capsule does not appear in the list - I had the option of local drive ,acronis cloud and two NAS drives and network - I chose network and manually entered the ip address and shared folder and it found the backup
This is where the issue occurs -it opens the backup and I can see all the partitions -including Macintosh HD which is what I want to restore - however it will not allow me to check the box to select it -a little box to the right of the drive momentarily flashes up and you can see it says "no data" -that disappears and the box unchecks itself again - When I reinstalled High Sierra -I made a base image backup of the OS so that I can just recover that if need be and I stored this on one of the other network drives - If I try to restore that it allows me to select the Macintosh HD.
I am wondering is it because the backup was made on Mojave - so the backup needs to be restored using Mojave - The problem I have here now is I no longer have the bootable media made by mojave if that is the case , so How do I create one .
I thought I could try this by upgrading from High Sierra to mojave but I have an additional issue in that I tried to upgrade the Mac back to Mojave and it fails to do so-it errors at the last minute -just saying please try again
Any help would be much appreciated to either help rectify the problem or at least a suggestion as to how I can mount the image so that I can access my data and copy it across manually
Thanks everyone
Hi and thanks for your reply - Yes it was the build of the rescue media that was the problem- I managed to load Mojave by doing a clean internet install which loads the latest MACOS anyway , so I got the rescue media created - Loaded it up , found my backup and proceeded to restore (it found the correct partitions etc this time and allowed me to select them ) However disaster struck about 5 minutes in I get a recovery failed error now -the log reports a corrupt file within the backup .
This unfortunately is the only backup I have with years of documents and photo's so I really need to get these back- I am fairly confident that these are ok as when you first load up the backup you can see the full directory structure - I need to find a way to just mount the image and then maybe I could just copy the files and folders back that I need - I am not worried about reinstalling apps etc . I am surprised that Acronis will stop if it finds a corrupt file -other programs I have used allow you to override "halt on all errors" -unless there is an option there somewhere that I am not seeing
I am guessing I will have to try and contact support to see if they can suggest a way to mount the image
Thankyou for your help anyway
Dang - I hope your support ticket goes well! Best of luck, but sounds like the way to go.
I'm not that versed on the Mac side of Acronis as I only have an ancient 2007 iMac with Yosemite on it and just use time machine for it, but it's really a media player for easy access to things like Pandora, Hulu, etc. I don't have anything of importance on it and just image it with Time Machine to save me from having to rebuild completely if need be. I have some Hackintosh virtual machines loaded up with current MacOS for some testing, but really don't back them up either since they are easy to rebuild and VMware snapshots make it easy to revert back if I blow them up playing with software. Hopefully someone else might be able to chime in too.
Whatever the outcome (which I hope will be positive in the long run), don't rely on just one backup in the future! I know a lot of people burned like that with all kinds of backup products. No software is perfect, and even when it's super reliable, sometimes the hardware the backups are stored on get corrupted (physical damage, fire, flood, failure from being worn out,virus, accidental deletion from the user, who knows) If possible, try to follow 3-2-1... 3 backups of the data, at least 2 backups on different media or 2 different backup types and at least 1 backup offsite.
As you're on a Mac, Time Machine and Acronis can supplement each other and you could use one for one type of storage (maybe an external USB drive) and the other to another type of storage (perhaps different USB drive, or time capsule or NAS).
And if possible, maybe even a third that you leave at a friend or family members house (using either Acronis, Time Machine, or maybe even something else) and rotate it occasionally in case of a fire or something that could otherwise wipe out everything physical where your backups normally live.
Cloud is pretty slow, but at least it's offsite and accessible from just about anywhere.
Hi, well I have some better news although I have not yet received a response to my support ticket - I was under the the impression if you made a complete back up of the disk with true image then you could only access it by using the bootable media - If you load the image there is only the option to recover the complete disk and not files and folders ,which was what I did or tried to do , The Acronis GUI does not show you an option to recover the files and folders , however i found that if you clicked on recovery in the acronis task bar at the top of the screen there is the option to recover files and folders from a disk image - I tried this and it works - there are some corrupt files which causes it to stop but once the first occurs you can choose to ignore any more and it carries on -It looks like I will get the majority back although it is quite time consuming
I think I will follow your example going forward and have a few different backup types on different media - Trouble is I have quite a bit of data - the acronis Tib file is 1.5TB so I may need to break it down a bit as this may have caused the issue in the first place .Thanks for your help on this
That's great news! Glad you'll be getting your data back (most of it anyway).
Yeah, it's hard to determine where corruption comes from at times. If the disk is corrupted (failing, bad sectors), it could corrupt files on the disk which get captured corrupted in the image. Or, if the backup disk is failing, it could corrupt your backup.
I'm not a fan of giant, single sized files either. 1.5TB for a single file is huge!
A couple of other suggestions:
01) Maybe keep your OS/apps and DATA separate? Then, you can do different backups for different types of data... this keeps backups smaller, faster and more managable when it's recovery time.
For example. Backup 1 for the OS, Backup 2 for your music in its own folder, Backup 3 for your pictures in its own folder... something like that.
Although you have more backups, if the OS has an issue, you can just recover the OS without having to worry about the data (in most cases). Or if you just need to recover some pictures, you don't have to worry about messing with the OS or music files.
And your backups can be staggered to occur at different times/frequencies/days depending on how often you want/need to back each type up.
02) And yeah, have a couple of backups with some history of each, just in case. History of backups also can help with recovery. If a critical file is corrupted in a current backup, you might still be able to go back to an early point in time (the day, week or month before) and get those critical files from that backup, without having to completely revert everything.
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The good news is external drives and many home NAS devices are super cheap these days. Not always the fastest (but not that slow either), 6-8TB external USB 3.0 hard drive are often found on sale at Amazon for around $100. Or if you need one that only uses USB power, you can get 4-5TB drives for$100 or less too.