ATI and Win 7

John:

The 100 MB partition is the Windows 7 boot partition, so you should back up and restore both partitions. With ATI you can include both partitions in the backup image.

The files needed to boot Windows 7 reside in the 100 MB partition. Without them the PC will not boot.

john:

Windows calls the 100 MB partition the "system" partition and the "C:" partition the Boot partition.

I have win 7/64 and have successfully used TI 2009 to make an image of both partitions to an external hard drive. I chose both when running the manual backup. I booted to a TI CD to make the backup image.

I then removed my internal hard drive and installed a different empty drive.

Next I booted the TI CD again and chose the small partition for restore. TI was confused when I chose the 100 MB "reserved" partition and wanted to make it fill the entire new drive. I told it to use 100 MB, to be Active, and to restore the boot info.

Next I told TI to restore the large C: partition and it worked as expected.

When finished restoring TI warned me that a re-boot was REQUIRED so I said "sure", do it. I made sure I pulled the TI CD before it could boot from it.

Result was a perfectly booting win 7/64 system.

Fungus

Thanks Kolo
I have seen a win 7 machine with ATI10 installed some time back with the same scenario as mine excepting mine has 2 internal hard drives. What confuses me a little is when you view the hard drive backup it lists the bootable big partition as "c" and the 100 meg partition as "d" and if a restore was to take place would my Existing D drive get pushed backed to an e drive???
I guess I am showing my ignorance as Ive only ever created full disc images previously and never had to deal with more than 1 partition on a drive.

Thanks for your response
John R

Thanks Fungus
I have only had to do do complete restores twice previously and when you do regular backups alternatively to both extra internal Hard drive and external hard drive, and have a rescue cd, I am a firm believer in having ATI on any machine I own.What is the advantage of creating a backup with the rescue cd, I know its driven by linux but is it better to backup this way or through windows????
I mentioned to KOLO that I have seen an ATI 10 backup of a win 7 machine and when you explore the backup it lists the main large partition as C drive and the 100meg as d drive.
I already have a d drive, so if i restore will I have a c,d, and now e drive???? Sorry if this is really basic, It could just be the way acronis looks at the backup?

I now believe that if you format a drive before installing win 7 you wont get a separate 100meg partition, and am considering considering wiping my new installation out and re installing win7 before my new machine is used for important stuff. Seems like overkill though to save a measly 100meg on a 1 tb drive.

I have a spare smaller capacity hard drive I could replace my C drive with, that should tell me if it will work. I guess I should have thought of that before???

Thanks for your help Fungus
John r

John:

When using TI you have to ignore the drive letters. Go only by the size and label of the partitions and it will all work out.

In your reply #4 you mention ways of eliminating the 100 MB boot partition. Why bother? The reason that Windows 7 creates this partition when you install to a blank hard disk is to make the process of enabling BitLocker drive encryption easier. If in the future you ever decide to encrypt your disk, Windows will need an unencrypted partition to boot from. That's why the boot files, bootmgr and the /boot folder, are installed to a separate 100 MB partition. Windows boots from these files and then passes control to the main partition, which is then free to be encrypted (or not).

The reason that Windows does not create a separate boot partition on a disk with already existing partitions is because the installer has no idea what the existing partitions are used for. Some people may already have a boot partition for Linux or other operating systems, so the installer doesn't have enough information to just blindly create another partition. Instead it simply installs everything, including boot files, into the partition that you designate.

Once you have done it this way it then becomes difficult to set up BitLocker disk encryption. Doing so on a single-partition installation requires creation of a separate partition to boot from. This is the way Vista works and MS got too many complaints about how difficult it was to enable BitLocker on Vista, so they tried to simplify the process in Windows 7.

K0LO wrote:

John:

When using TI you have to ignore the drive letters. Go only by the size and label of the partitions and it will all work out.

In your reply #4 you mention ways of eliminating the 100 MB boot partition. Why bother? The reason that Windows 7 creates this partition when you install to a blank hard disk is to make the process of enabling BitLocker drive encryption easier. If in the future you ever decide to encrypt your disk, Windows will need an unencrypted partition to boot from. That's why the boot files, bootmgr and the /boot folder, are installed to a separate 100 MB partition. Windows boots from these files and then passes control to the main partition, which is then free to be encrypted (or not).

The reason that Windows does not create a separate boot partition on a disk with already existing partitions is because the installer has no idea what the existing partitions are used for. Some people may already have a boot partition for Linux or other operating systems, so the installer doesn't have enough information to just blindly create another partition. Instead it simply installs everything, including boot files, into the partition that you designate.

Once you have done it this way it then becomes difficult to set up BitLocker disk encryption. Doing so on a single-partition installation requires creation of a separate partition to boot from. This is the way Vista works and MS got too many complaints about how difficult it was to enable BitLocker on Vista, so they tried to simplify the process in Windows 7.

Thanks Kolo
I know this is a bit off the track, but I have win 7 home premium which doesnt have bit locker, I also have no use for encryption, just a neat and tidy (for windows) c drive. I also will never want to dual boot on this machine. I have an old machine to play with linux. I suspect you may be correct (read hope) that when the backup is viewed in acronis that the drive letters assigned within the backup are purely fictitious and are made up by acronis. The drive shown in acronis backup is exactly as shown in windows disc management screen. I have a smaller new hard drive which I will replace my current C drive with today and ill try and restore. That should give my answer, i hope.

Thanks again for your patience
John r

John:

I understand. If you want to have Windows 7 installed to a single partition it is possible. You could try restoring only the Windows 7 partition. You'll then find out that the PC will not boot (because the boot files are missing; they were in the 100 MB partition). It MAY then be possible to use the Windows 7 DVD to repair your installation. There are no guarantees that the repair will succeed, but you could try. If it doesn't succeed the first time, try again - there are multiple problems to repair and it may take multiple passes to get them all.

More info here: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3317#comment-1920

Thanks Kolo
I am not really concerned about the loss of 100meg on a 1 tb hard drive but I am paranoid about backing up. All I want is to be able to backup without hassle, and for the restore function to work. You may be interested in my experiment. I have just created a backup to a second internal hard drive (d) and then unplugged the drive (c) that was backed up. I then plugged in a brand new 160g hard drive and ran the rescue disc. There is no usb support (sort of) on the rescue disc. When the cd boots the puter my usb keyboard can select either to run windows or acronis, but after that screen I have no usb support whatever. There is a brief message displayed about an error but it is too quick to read. If i plug in a wired ps2 mouse all works. I restored and I ticked universal restore????? The restore took about 40 minutes and when rebooted windows 7 booted perfectly. It then decided to install about a dozen device drivers (which im guessing had something to do with me choosing universal?) When the restored win 7 drive is viewed in windows disc management the 100 meg hidden partition is exactly as my original install. I think this proves all is good, and when backing up all thats required is to select both partitions on the c drive. My faith is restored and I really want to stay with ATI,. Now to try to sort out my non usb rescue disc.

Kolo, thanks again for your ear, and suggestions. Much appreciated by a newby to win 7 and ati10.
John R

Kolo (or anyone?!),
not sure if you can help me. I have a new PC with W7 64x and 3 Hard Drives, the first one is dynamic (not entirely sure why or what that means but....), which means I have to have Home 2010 with Plus Pack to get Dynamic Disk support.

Backed up OK but when I come to restore I opt to restore 100MB partition to the appropriate 100MB(Active) partition, no problem, I then try to restore the C Drive to it's original partition (from standalone CD - I believe you can't restore it to original partition under Windows (though not entirely sure why) but I get an error saying "You are about to recover a partition containing OS files to an existing non-active partition on a dynamic volume. Activation of dynamic volumes is not supported.System will be unbootable. Are you sure you want to continue?". Obviously I say no as I want a bootable system but why do I get this error.

If I've understood your previous posts I want the 100MB drive to be 'Active. as that is where Boot info is, so why is Acronis complaining if I put C onto an inactive partition? Any ideas?

Scotty:

I've not used the Plus Pack so I don't know the details of how it works. However, I would ignore the warning. You are restoring the OS partition to a dynamic disk that does not need to be active - the 100 MB partition needs to be active. So go ahead and try it and ignore the warning. I think that the Acronis programmers must have assumed that operating systems need to be installed to active partitions, but that isn't true if you are booting from a separate boot partition.

Thanks for that Mark, I'll give it a go.

I thought that would be the case but the message is quite a scary one telling you you are about to make your system unbootable!
If you don't hear from me again you can assume it has worked ok.

Cheers,
Scotty

KOLO (or anyone)

I have a similar problem to Scotty's. I'm running ATI 2010 build 6053 with the snap in ( SnapAPI) installed and the additional TI2010 add on pack in Win7 Ult x64. My OS resides on a 2 drive striped array (Dynamic). I can back up with no problems to the ASZ I created however, when I attempt a restore, ATI wants to restart out of the windows shell to lock the drives (and I understand that) but I can't restore back to the original drive and have no way in the application to point it there. Similar to Scotty's issue, the restore mis-labels additional drives and partitons in my system with wrong letters and does not detect the partition that I want to restore to. It's as though the Raid partition, and the 2 Virtual partitions are not seen by the restore as targets to restore to (or at all). I can however backup those partitions fine. If anyone else has run into this and discovered a fix I'd be eternally grateful.

Thanx in Advance,

Daryl F

Daryl:

The restore environment for TI is Linux-based, so your symptom means that it does not contain the proper RAID driver for your hardware.

Have you tried the bootable ISO download that you can find by logging into your account on the Acronis web site? It may have newer drivers. Or, contact Acronis Support via Live Chat to see if they can make you an ISO that supports your hardware.

In the mean time, do not attempt a restore to your RAID disks unless the recovery environment can see the array as one disk.

Other alternatives include PE-based recovery environments. Search for MustangPE on Google.

KOLO

Thank you very much for you're timely response and I figured it was some sort of controller driver that was needed. I'll grab the bootable ISO you recommended and if needed, try and get an ISO from Acronis that supports my setup.

Thanks Again!!

Daryl F.

K0LO

Hello again, and problem solved. The fix was simply to make a bootable disk from inside the tools section of ATI2010 from my computer that has all the necessary RAID & Virtual drivers (DUH) :-) I feel soo dumb. But again thanx a million!!

Bye,

Daryl F

Hello all,

I would like to update this thread regarding the confusing error message that pops up when restoring Windows 7:

 - You are about to recover a partition containing OS files to an existing non-active partition on a dynamic volume. Activation of dynamic volumes is not supported.System will be unbootable. Are you sure you want to continue?

We have reproduced this issue successfully and once this problem is resolved I will update you about it.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Anton, is there any update for the cited message "Activation of dynamic volumes is not supported"?

Can I just ignore it?

I hope I've done my Acronis Backup/Recovery correctly? I got a system recovery to work okay on another Window 7 system.

The computer that I'm having that message appear on is a recent Dell that has some Hidden / Factory restore partitions.

Getting that message is very scary. You should have at least indicated whether to abort the recovery (I'm only testing my recovery). I'm not sure if I screwed something up in the Backup/Recovery process or if that's just a message to ignore.

I also get some "different" looking pages when recovering than when I did my other system.
"Specify Recovery Settings of Partition 2-3"
"Specify Recover Settings of Partition C"

I guess I'll ignore the message and assume I've done things correctly. I hope I don't waste several hours of my time as a result of this.

Thanks,
Rich

Do we ignore the message?

I found out I have Dynamic Disks:
http://kb.acronis.com/content/2974

I'm not paying to buy another add-on product just for backup/recovery. Not a happy camper here...

Hello Richard,

Thank you for your post. I will do my best to assist you.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

If there are no dynamic disks, this message can be safely ignored. This issue will be resolved in a future update of our software. You can subscribe to our newsletter to keep track of new updates. I will also update this thread when I have new information.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.