Recovery: Understanding choices
Without getting into the back story, my List of Backups does not include the backup .tib file located on an external drive. I use Windows 10 Home and my Acronis 2015 is the latest build, reinstalled today.
I now want to recover the data from my external drive onto one of my internal hard drives.
How can I get Acronis to understand my recovery data is on my external drive H: and I want to recover it to my internal drive E:?
There is nothing in the help file making this basic issue clear.
Do I "Add an existing backuip" and point Acronis to the .tib files on my external drive?
Acronis doesn't seem to understand I want to recover the E:drive BACKUP data FROM my external drive H:, to my now empty E: drive.
The initial Recovery dialogue SEEMS like Acronis understands I want data to move from the external drive to the internal drive, but once the operation starts the "Backup" (the word "Recovery" in not used during recovery) has a "Custom Destination" of my External drive...which is the source of my data.
The options I'm presented with, when the operation gets going, seem to give me choice of recovering my E: drive (E: drive is now empty) to my external H: drive, making me think it may overwrite my backup data with data from an empty drive...thereby erasing my backup data.
I realize this question may seem incredibly obvious but Acronis does not speak clear English.
Thanks.
Richard
As for the drive letters, you may want to post screenshots of what you're seeing for a second set of eyes. If the drive letter was different when it was backed up originally, that may be all that is being displayed now. I'm not sure what it's showing you exactly - if you can just mount or double click the .tib file and copy and paste from the backup that way, that may be the easiest to do. The only time I ever actually recover with Acronis is when restoring an entire disk or parition and then I do that with the offline bootable recovery media instead to make sure that Windows and/or third party applications like anitvirus programs don't try to interfere.
Bobbo, thanks for your replies. My system has demonstrated instability recently and no program has been more unstable than ATIH2015. This "adventure" began with ATHI freezing when backing up one of my internal HD's, a HD filled only with audio program patches and files and which ATIH has backed up without a hitch before. Backup of my boot drive where all my programs are happened without a hitch, or a hitch I'm aware of. Then, one of my two data drives had its data "disappear" only to reappear after I made my posting. The "reappeared" files were not 100% complete, however, and I'm going to explore the copy and paste method to fill in a number the obvious holes in my data shortly.
I am goiing to further explore solutions to ATIH's "freezing" as suggested elsewhere on this forum. I began using ATIH with version 10 and have found each successiver version to be buggier and less reliable than its predecessor, though it has also saved my life, too. The owner's manual is one of the worst I've encountered and I thank God for this forum, though I don't speak Geek as so many others fluently do.
I will report back later.
Richard
Interesting that the data is missing and then re-appears. I don't suspect this to be due to Acronis though as it only copies data from the source and writes it to .tib format on the destination. It sounds like the drive is disconnecting from Windows at some point or becoming unresponsive. Are these internal drives or USB? If internal, I'd reseat the power and SATA connectors for good measure. If usb, I'd try a different UsB port (or remove any hubs if using them, or replace a non-powered hub with a powered hub) and possibly a different USB cable. There have been users reporting issues with USB 3.0 drives that use the micro USB 3.0 connector with then not seating very well to the drive and losing connectivity with the slightest touch. Others have reported that their front USB ports will drop connectivity with non-powered external usb drives at random times (not enough USB power) and others that have found that their UsB cables are bad (or using the wrong one from another device even though they looked the same).
Another route to check is using a good, free tool like the home version of hard disk sentinel. It should show you the life of the drive and perhaps identify an issue on it as well.
Another option could be issues with windows VSS as this is the new default backup method of Acronis in 2015-2017. In previous versions, it defaulted to the Acronis Snapapi backup method. You could try changing from VSS to the old backup method and see if that helps at all. Both are fine (VSS has an advantage of being able to backup open sql or oracle databases - supposedly), but it also relies on other Window services and VSS can have it's own set of problems outside of Acronis or other backup programs.
Bobbo, I expect my major problems are of my own creation.
I have an SSD programs drive and two internal HD's for the audio patches and files my audio production programs use. And for storing program updates and other "passive" files.
I'm reindexing now and have copied and pasted one big pile of data. I will see if reindexing "reveals" agaiin files that are there but not being recognized.
I am now figuring I will be using the copy and paste method of moving data off external drives - two USB 2 and two eSATA - and try to get back to square one again.
You make a good point about checking my HD connections but I don't think that's the problem.
I like your suggestion about changing to the "old" backup method...about which I am totally unfamiliar. I did note the VSS issue raised repeatedly on this forum as a problem area for people with my same backup "freezing" issue. I'm not running any sophisticated databases on this box.
I have run windows event viewer and saw an error regarding "permissions" from the cryptographic services area and am now, on booting, getting a notice about an error condition re: cryptographic services so I expect there's an issue to find there, too.
I'll see what the next 24 hours brings.
Again, thank you for your input and assistance.
Richard
Glad to try and help out where I can. I've been up in the mountains the past few days without any connectivity so am playing catch up in the forums. Any luck?
I tried letting Acronis recover. I selected one set of folders with just under 1gb of content and gambled that it would recover to the correct destination, even though the onscreen visuals had it going backwards. I guess it's too much work to change their visuals to accurately reflect the data direction.
Well, that first effort went quickly and well. So I decided to try it on the bulk of the data. That took much longer and went less well. It took about a day and half and seemed to go slower and slower...but it kept on dripping so I let it go on. I did recover a lot of data, though.
Many files weren't recovered but it's very time consuming to figure out which ones weren't because the folder structures are all in place and I have work my way down to see what didn't get restored.
I intend to "drag and drop" the remainders. I just haven't taken the time to finish it off.
I did look for a setting that would let me go back to the "old" backup method but saw no setting that appeared to address that.
Do you have any comment on how to move out of the VSS method and go back to the "old" way?
In the mountains sounds good to me. Thanks again for your assistance.
Richard
Richard, VSS is only used normally in backup operations, not for recovery as far as I am aware as you cannot create a recovery task.
The method of reverting from VSS to the Acronis snapshot method is documented in post: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/45832#comment-346558 - this is on a per task basis.
Ditto to Steve. Turning VSS for a backup will allow the backup to run with the proprietary Acronis Snapapi backup method that was the default in 2014 and earlier versions of Acronis. I don't think the recovery option is bound to either VSS or Snapapi as the recovery process is different than the backup process.
When doing a file/folder recovery, I've heard others state it can be much slower than a disk recovery. The reason being is that when doing a disk or parition recovery, it is recoring data in blocks and not focused on individual file/folder structure or specific permissions. When doing a file/folder recovery in Windows, Windows has to navigate through the nested files/folders and set permissions again. The deeper the folder nesting, the more files and the smaller files being recovered indiviually, the slower the process goes.
Not to get in the weeds, but you can kind of see this behavior when using a usb flash drive for copy and pasting files. For instance, if you copy a single 4.7Gb .iso file that contains a Windows installer disc image from your computer to a flash drive - it should go relatively quickly becuase it's one large continuous file. However, if you extracted the contents of the .iso to a folder on the computer first and then copied that folder to the USB flash drive, it should take a lot longer even though it's technically the same size.