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ATIH 2014 overwrite MBR during backup operation

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Every time I perform a disc backup to my external USB Drive, ATIH overwrites the MBR of the source disc, making it impossible to boot the OS. Need to go through MBR recovery from backup to be able to boot !

More details :
Laptop with USB 3.0 drive connected (Western Digital My Book)
Acronis True Image 2014 Home Build 6673
Source drive for backup operation : the internal HD, containing the OS (windows 7)
Destination : the USB drive

Any idea where the problem comes from ? Why ATIH corrupts SOURCE MBR during backup ??

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Is this a backup from within Windows or the TI Recovery CD?

If the 2014 CD, then after backup and on reboot or startup,
specifically go into the BIOS and select the correct boot disk.

If the 2014 CD, how/when is the TI CD removed from the tray?
Try some variations. The CD does not need to be installed once the backup begins.

I have figured out that only a small portion (4 bytes) of the MBR is modified : the disk signature
the boot code and partition tables are not modified
Still no clue why Acronis does modify this during a backup operation :(

Regular Poster
Posts: 198
Comments: 120

Hello,

I have never had this problem with TIH2014.
I have backed up an Asus laptop, several desktop machines and done multiple restores to existing and new drives with no problem.
We have used TIH2014 with Win10, 8.1, 7/ and XP with no hint of the problem you are experiencing.
I'll watch this thread for more info....

Steve

R D,

Is your machine an HP or Dell?

Enchantech, sorry for late reply, my machine is HP EliteBook 2570p
Are you asking because you heard of some problem with HP or Dell ?

Not sure if this will help you or not but found it interesting none the less:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03481288.pdf

I found what is happening exactly, and a workaround :)

Root cause seems to be an unbelievable bug in ATIH2014
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belt for the explanations :)

A) when does the problem occur

My external USB drive is password protected. When you plug it to the computer, the content cannot be accessed unless you unlock it with a password
When the drive is unlocked, ATIH works fine, as expected.
The problem is when the drive is connected and locked. In that case, the simple fact of launching Acronis (not even running any backup or restore) leads to the overwriting of the disk signature of your system disk in the MBR. From my point of view this is a bug. Acronis should in no way touch the MBR of any disc under any circumstances, unless in a restore operation when asked to do so.

B) Workaround :
1) make a safe copie of your MBR sector 0. There are plenty of free tools, I used BOOTICEx86_v1.321 (easy to find, google it). You can do this in the graphical interface or in command line :
BOOTICEx86_v1.321.exe /device=c: /sectors /backup /lba=0 /sectors=1 /file=BackupMbrSector0.bin

2) in ALL your acronis backup tasks, use a pre-backup command to restore your MBR (because it has potentially been corrupted a few seconds ago when the task started, if your external drive is locked)

the script should look like this
BOOTICEx86_v1.321.exe /device=c: /sectors /restore /lba=0 /sectors=1 /file="PATH_TO_MBR_BACKUP\good\BackupMbrSector0.bin" /quiet

C) Conclusion
this will not solve all situations, for example if you launch acronis manually while your external drive is locked, you will corrupt your MBR, and the pre-command won't be triggered unless you run manually a task
So I think I am also going to run the MBR restore script in the shutdown scripts of Windows, just in case.
I will probably face the problem when going to hibernation.
For that reason, I have a pendrive to boot by computer under FreeDos with a utility to restore MBR from a backup file

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