Skip to main content

Acronis True Image 2020 Successful restore fails to boot

Thread needs solution

My Windows 10 Pro system SSD failed with an unrecoverable hardware error. I installed a new SSD and performed a recover operation. The recovery completed with a success message but the system fails to boot. While I was entering the information specifying the recovery I noticed that the new system drive was being renamed with a drive letter other than C. That seemed strange but I proceeded anyway. Does anyone have a suggestion on what I should do to get my system drive working again?

0 Users found this helpful

Rodger, welcome to these public User Forums.

What type of SSD is involved here?  SATA SSD or a PCIe card type drive such as NVMe?

How does your PC boot from the BIOS, is it a UEFI boot system or Legacy boot?

How did you perform the recover operation?

If you check the backup image being used for recovery, does it show an EFI or ESP system partition?  If so, then you have a UEFI boot system and the recovery has to be performed using the Acronis rescue media booted using the same boot mode.

See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

The failed SSD being replaced is a Samsung 840EVO 1TB SATA

The new SSD is a Samsung 870EVO 1TB SATA

It is a UEFI boot system

I followed the process describe in KB 63295, and it didn't work, my PC failed to boot (in the BIOS I had specified to boot from this SSD)

since then, I have decided to try specifying the partition sizes to see if that helps. I'll let you know what I experience.

Rodger Philips wrote:

The failed SSD being replaced is a Samsung 840EVO 1TB SATA

The new SSD is a Samsung 870EVO 1TB SATA

It is a UEFI boot system

I followed the process describe in KB 63295, and it didn't work, my PC failed to boot (in the BIOS I had specified to boot from this SSD)

since then, I have decided to try specifying the partition sizes to see if that helps. I'll let you know what I experience.

UEFI boot systems must use 'Windows Boot Manager' as the boot device and not the Samsung SSD.

Likewise, when booting the Acronis Rescue Media to do the recovery of the backup image, it also needs to be booted in UEFI boot mode so that the SSD is using GPT partitioning.

I booted from a DVD so I didn't get to choose UEIF.

I created a document describing my experience step by step. I split into two pdf files because of the 3MB limit. here is the first one.

Attachment Size
598809-310494.pdf 2.96 MB

Rodger, thanks for the PDF documents and images though I have to confess being still a little confused by what I was reading / seeing!

For this type of recovery then I would recommend not doing what you stated initially:

My system is a self-built PC running the latest version of Win10 and has a large number of internal and external drives.
For the recovery, I removed all drives except for the internal drive that contains the full backup.

My recommendation would be to have only the new target SSD drive installed internally with the backup storage drive connected externally.  This is where the SSD will be used and will ensure that correct device drivers and boot configuration is used.

Next, when performing the actual recovery, there is no need to specify each partition individually - all that is needed is to select the top 'Disk' tick box, which will automatically select all the partitions and will configure these as needed for a disk level recovery.

Doing this will also resolve any drive letter allocation for after the system boots from the new SSD.  Note: it is normal for the OS partition to have a different drive letter to C: when booted in to the rescue environment - this is advised in the user guide documentation.

See my YouTube video showing a disk level recovery operation.

Hi Steve,

I watched your YouTube video. My recovery didn't work the same way. If you look at images 4 and 5 in the document I provided, you'll see that after I selected the recovery file and pressed next the software took me directly to the partition specification screen. I was not taken to the target disk screen shown in your video.

Regardless, I'm not going to try the recovery again. I'll stick with the small annoyances I have. I can live with them and I don't have the time to try other recoveries.

Thanks for your help. Rodger