HD Disappears from BIOS after Restore???
Have a mystery, of which I've seen similar symptoms in other posts, but none that quite match what I'm seeing.
Here's the setup. I have just purchased a new PC. It's currently set up to multiboot into both WinXP and Win7. Each OS is on it's own partition on the same physical drive. I purchased Acronis so I could attempt to transfer the OS as is (with various recovery steps) to the new system. In the new system, I have an SSD and two SATA 1TB drives.
Here's what happened. From the old system I made a backup of the XP partition onto an external USB-connected drive, and then on the new system attempted to restore (with MBR) this XP backup firstly to one of the 1TB sata drives, and then later to the SSD drive. Before attempting the restore I used Acronis to create a new partition. Each restore attempt on the new system caused the drive to not only not boot at all with the new partition, but completely disappear from BIOS! I tried all I can think of to try to even see either of the two drives again, but no luck.
I realized afterwards I should have tried to restore the Win7 partition first, and other steps. I would gladly start from a clean slate and do the proper process, but cannot even do that without seeing the drives.
They do not appear in the bootable Acronis version, not in info and not in the "Add Drives" list. I also attempted to do a WinXP recovery with the original DVD, but get a blue screen when it attempts to detect a boot drive.
Any Ideas?
If I understand correctly, you want to transfer 2 OS from an old PC to a new PC. For this you need the Acronis Plus Pack, to restore to dissimilar hardware.
The BIOS issue might be a problem with IDE/ACHCI/SATA setting: try changing this on your new computer to see your drives again. In addition, you can boot on you Win7 or XP installation DVD, launch a command prompt, launch diskpart, list disks, select disk x, where x is the number corresponding to the drive you don't see, then type clean, enter. This will completely reset your disk.
Thanks for the quick reply MC & PL :-) .
Yes, have tried several reboots with power not just off, but disconnected for several minutes. Even went so far as to reset the CMOS by removing the battery.
And I did realize afterwards that I should have used the Plus Pack, will be doing so once I resolve this issue. Resetting the BIOS SATA settings (AHCI,IDE,Disabled) had no effect. I am at least able to boot with the XP/Win7 installation disk. I hadn't tried using the command prompt to manage partitions, I only attempted to do the recover, which gave a BSD when looking for the boot drive.
I'll try the command prompt diskpart to see if I can recover the disks, will let you know how I make out. Thanks.
If using Diskpart, be sure and use the Windows 7 version which will provide the correct starting offset for Windows 7 and SSD. Do not use the XP version of Diskpart.
No luck with Diskpart. Using the Win7 version and can only see the one remaining drive that I haven't attempted to restore a partition to. I can't even get the drives to appear in the BIOS. This was definitely something caused by restoring the partition. I had spent the last few days troubleshooting boot and post issues, thought my MB was dead. I then disconnected the drive I attempted to do the first restore to, and everything posted and came up fine. Now, after attempting to do a restore to the SSD drive, it's now having issues too, can no longer see it BIOS or anywhere else.
The only other thing I can think of doing is removing the drives from the chassis and installing them in an external enclosure and try to access them as a USB drive after booting into Acronis. Would just as soon not have to do that, however.
Any other suggestions that I can try?
Is the SATA controller running in AHCI mode? Some SSD's won't work properly in IDE Compatible mode. Resetting the BIOS may have changed previous settings.
Exactly where in the BIOS are you looking for the drive? The drive(s) should show up in the BIOS, especially if you can see them when you boot to TI.
Yes, sata controller is running AHCI mode, although I did try IDE compatible mode as well at one point.
I'm looking right in the SATA configuration screen in the BIOS. The drive in the first port shows "Not Present", when it has always been connected. The one remaining mechanical drive is still there in the second port, and in the third port is the DVD drive. The fourth port originally had the second mechanical drive, but I had to disconnect it as it was locking up the boot process (again, this started only after I attempted to restore a partition to that drive).
To clarify, I did see the drive originally in TI, but no longer see it there either. As soon as I attempted a restore, it disappeared from there along with the BIOS.
If it helps, the mb is an Asus P8P67 Pro, with newer BIOS version 1502 x64 03/02/2011. The SSD drive is an Intel 250GB SATA 6, and the other problem drive is an WD Caviar 1.5TB Green.
Have you verified that the drive is connected to a "booting" port? My Sabertooth P67 board has several that don't, however the drive should still show up.
Does the drive show up in any of the BIOS screens when booting? I think there's probably at least two or three that would show the drives for the different controllers (mine takes about 30 seconds to get out of the BIOS screens). I suspect that the 1502 BIOS is the same as the 1502 version I have (it still seems quite buggy). I haven't tried an SSD on it yet.
I really don't see how just attempting to restore an image to a drive would cause this problem unless Linux somehow corrupted the BIOS code. Have you tried reflashing the BIOS? I'm necessarily suggesting you do it, just asking.
Have you run any SSD diagnostics on the drive?
What about trying the disks on another computer or as external disks to see if they are OK?
Yes, the drives are connected to booting ports, and they used to appear on the post screens during the first few boots on the new system. Now, the drives don't show up anywhere in the post, or the BIOS. And I've also heard of other BIOS issues with this particular version, hoping I don't have to go that deep.
As an update, I was able to recover the drives. In the end, I had to pull them out of the PC and mount them in a USB enclosure, then connect after booting into Acronnis. I was able to add the drive, and delete the existing partitions on both drives. I also am able to see them from the USB enclosure if I connect to my old PC as well. So the drives themselves physically are fine.
After installing them back into the new PC, both now appear quite healthy and listed exactly where they should be in the BIOS and post. So what the heck was that all about? I'm wondering if there's an issue with the Marvell driver? I doubt it's specific to the SSD drive, since I had the same issue with both SSD and mechanical.
So, next steps, I'll attempt to do a proper restore of my dual boot system, starting with the Win7 partition. I'll also be using the Plus Pack to restore to different hardware. I already had it as part of the TI version I purchased, but didn't realize that's what it contained. Simply a matter of rushing to get the new toy working as opposed to stepping back and doing it methodically. Should know better after all these years :-) .
I'll post the results of the restore once I have them. At least now I have a way to recover if I hit the same issue. I'm also wondering if I should open a support ticket with Acronis on the vanishing drive issue, just so they're aware of it in case it's a compatability issue somewhere?