Attempting to move to new drive and "recover"
Running ATIH 2012 on W7/32. Started getting message "Windows detected a hard disk problem" on C drive. Performed a backup and tried to RECOVER to new SSD drive, attached via USB. Didn't work.
Should I remove old C drive, install new SSD, boot from recovery media, and RECOVER to new SSD C drive? TIA.
Jim
Got this message:
"The type of file system is NTFS. Cannot lock the drive."
Did you see this message?
You should answer "Y" to schedule a scan, then reboot the machine. Give the machine lots of time to scan. If you have a large disk and some bad sectors it may take an hour or more.
2nd time I tried I got the rest of the message. Did the restart but it didn't run CHKDSK. I didn't use an "elevated" command prompt...not sure what you mean. Where does it put the log file? I'll see if it's there.
Not sure why I can't do a restore of the "C" to the SSD on another machine. Seem like I should be able to mount the SSD and restore to it, then pop it into the machine that was having problems and boot from that.
I put the SSD in the machine and I'm trying to boot on the Acronis Bootable Media CD I created when I first loaded the software onto the machine. When I select "Acronis True Image Home (Full version) I get this message: "Acronis True Image Home has not found any hard disk drive." Only option is "OK" but can't click on anything. When I select "Windows", I get a blinking cursor. Great...just great.
I'm running ATIH 2012 on 4 machines and ATIH 2010 on 1 more. It shouldn't be this hard...there's gotta be something better than this out there.
An elevated command is one with administrator privileges. If you right click on the command prompt menu choice you will see "Run as Administrator". Choosing that will run the command prompt in elevated or as a administrator.
I would say based on your posts that your original disk C: is corrupt in some way and your attempts to work with the disk True Image sees the corruption and gives you the behavior you describe. You must attempt to repair this corruption before the application will work as intended. Your symptoms are due to hardware malfunctions not due to the application.
James:
To run an elevated command prompt, click on the Windows 7 "Start" orb and type "CMD" into the start/search box. One of the search results will be "Command Prompt" or "cmd.com". Right-click on this result and choose "Run as Administrator".
The log file location for chkdsk is illustrated in this article: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/96938-check-disk-chkdsk-read-event…
Your initial post mentioned an SSD attached via USB. That won't work because Windows can't boot from a removable drive. You should install the new SSD in its target machine in place of the old disk and restore the image to it. The image file can be on the network or on an external USB disk.
I tried putting the SSD into OFFICE1, thinking if I could boot from the recovery media I could load the image to the SSD. However, the "bootable media" CD would not start OFFICE1 with either the 2010 or 2012 versions - could not boot to Windows or Acronis.
I'm not attempting to boot OFFICE1 from the SSD connected via USB. Rather, I've attached the USB drive dock to OFFICE2 where I have the image from OFFICE1. Shouldn't I be able to recover from the image to the SSD in the USB drive, take it out, install it in OFFICE1 just like the old drive was?
James:
That procedure does not always work. On most PCs it will, but not on all PCs. The first few sectors on an MBR disk contain what's called a "BIOS Parameter Block", which is written to the disk when it is initialized. The BIOS parameter block contains low-level information about the disk geometry that Windows uses during the initial stages of the boot process. If the disk is installed in the target PC when an image is restored to it then this information will be written correctly. If it's installed in a different PC it will usually work, but not always. Some PC brands, especially Lenovo, Compaq, and a few others, use what is referred to as "Nonstandard Geometry" in their BIOSes and are often problematic when using imaging software unless the new disk is in the target PC when it is cloned or imaged. If you search this forum for "Geometry" you can read some posts describing this issue. The recovery method that always has the best success is to have the new disk in its final location in the target machine when an image is restored to it.
Back to your current issue with the bootable media not working on your machine. The Linux recovery environment on the Acronis bootable media doesn't always work on all PC hardware; it depends on whether their Linux distro includes drivers for your hardware. Have you checked your account on the Acronis web site to see if you can download the latest version of bootable media for either of your TI versions? If there are newer versions of the bootable media then one of them may work on your hardware.
If not, you can create a WinPE version of the bootable media. These are Windows-based recovery environments that use Windows drivers instead of Linux drivers. At the top of this section of the forum in the "sticky" topics is a post by forum member Mustang here: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/17630. Windows PE recovery environments are more likely to work with most PC hardware. It takes a little effort to create a MustangPE boot disc but it's worth the effort. I use MustangPE exclusively now for a bootable recovery environment and have been for several years. It's always worked on machines where the Linux recovery media fails to work.
Not sure how Linux got mixed in here. 3 of my 5 machines are W7/32, including the one I'm trying to recover to and the one I'm using to help recover. 1 of the others is W7/64 and the last is WXP.
Got CHKDSK to run in admin with the original, failing disk. Recovered to 2 other disks using OFFICE2 and USB. Put the disks in OFFICE1 and neither would boot.
Still troubles me that none of the recovery media will boot the machine.
Yes, all of your machines run Windows but the Acronis bootable media is Linux-based. When the CD boots it loads a stripped-down version of Linux that is used to run the recovery environment of True Image.
If you want the recovery media to work on your machine you'll need to do one of the suggestions in my previous post (check for newer versions of the bootable media or build a WinPE-based recovery disk) or else contact Acronis support to see if they can supply bootable media that works with your hardware.
Everything is working fine now. The problems were multiple:
1) None of the 4 versions of bootable media created with ATIH 2012 would boot the machine. Using chat, the Acronis rep helped me download an ISO to create a bootable disk from ATIH 2015, which booted the machine fine.
2) The "C" drive was giving error that it was about to crash. I recovered to an old drive and it worked fine. Later I recovered to a new drive and it's humming along.
3) A 2nd drive in the machine had bad sectors which was causing the machine to boot slowly or not at all. Once CHKDSK ran, it appears to have fixed the problems with that drive. I may reformat or return the drive to supplier, depending on what I find out.
As I told the Acronis CSR and their supervisor, the answer to any problem found with ATIH cannot be "buy the new version". I own a small business and can't afford a new version on each computer each year or even every other year. That's why I'm still using Office 2010. And I'm less inclined to spend more money when I discover something not working that I thought was working - e.g., recovery disks.
I appreciate the input of those on this thread.
James:
Glad you got that sorted out successfully.
Coincidentally, I too have had my share of hard disk failures lately. On one, chkdsk ran for about 12 hours trying to recover data from a bad spot on the disk. In the end it was successful and I was then able to image the failing disk and restore the image to a new disk. All is well now.
What I've learned recently is that if your disks are 10 years old you should be proactive and replace them before they fail, because they WILL eventually fail. And imaging software, despite its problems, is well worth having around.