TI 2009 Home - Bootable Media fails to detect SATA backup drive
TI 2009 from within Windows sees the 320GB backup hard drive but the bootable media cannot see it. This caused me real problems recently when the system crashed and the restore process involved creating a new partition on the main HDD using DD9 copying the System image .tib to this new partition and then using TI to restore. This is not acceptable if my main HDD crashes. The MOBO is Winfox the SATA controller is Nvidia 6600GT. I saw an earlier post referring to enhance mode in the BIOS as a workaround. My BIOS is Pheonix and I've not been able to find an "enhanced" mode, to enable me to find it (if it exists) what should this mode do? TI 8 and 9 worked ok with IDE HDD. Most PCs now ship with SATA and Nvidia is not exactly uncommon, so is there a fix? By the way DD9 bootable media only works with these SATA drives when used in the safe mode, but at least it works.
Hi. the PC MOBO used IDE for all devices but was fitted for two SATA HDD. So I swapped out the two IDE HDDs for two SATA. The CDRom devices are still IDE. Using DD9, from the CDROM it see both drives and using the safe mode I can copy partitions between both. However, TI2009 previous and latest release don't see the BAKup HDD. In fact when I went through the process outlined TI2009 managed to screw up the restore and completely wipe all the partitions on my bakup HDD. However, using DD9 I was able to recover those. There is a previous mail about the Linux kernel of TI2009 not working with Nvidia ATA controllers. My current workaround is to backup to an external USB disk using TI2009, that appears to to work, but as a belts and braces in case it doesn't I use SyncToy with one of the old IDE disks. Not a satisfactory situation. From all the postings it does seem as though Acronis have lost the plot.
Hi. the PC MOBO used IDE for all devices but was fitted for two SATA HDD. So I swapped out the two IDE HDDs for two SATA. The CDRom devices are still IDE. Using DD9, from the CDROM it see both drives and using the safe mode I can copy partitions between both. However, TI2009 previous and latest release don't see the BAKup HDD. In fact when I went through the process outlined TI2009 managed to screw up the restore and completely wipe all the partitions on my bakup HDD. However, using DD9 I was able to recover those. There is a previous mail about the Linux kernel of TI2009 not working with Nvidia ATA controllers. My current workaround is to backup to an external USB disk using TI2009, that appears to to work, but as a belts and braces in case it doesn't I use SyncToy with one of the old IDE disks. Not a satisfactory situation. From all the postings it does seem as though Acronis have lost the plot.
Hi JonTee,
What is the exact make and model of your computer's motherboard? I will download the manual for it and see if I can find any bios setting which might resolve the problem with ATI2009. You mention that ATI2009 doesn't see the backup disk drive, yet both hard drives are SATA. Does the motherboard support raid, and if so is raid turned on in the bios? That possibly could be the problem. But first I would like to take a look at the MB manual before you start tinkering in bios. The nvidia 6600 GT chipset is built into the motherboard, right? Or is it on an add-in card?
Hi GoneToPlaid,
The MOBO is a Foxconn Winfast NF3250K8AA-RS. The manual is located at
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_spec.aspx?ID=…
where you can also see what is on the board.
It uses nvidia chipsets nforce3 250, the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers are nforce3 250 (v2.6) for the parallel and serial controllers. The 6600GT is the video chipset which is on a separate video board. Apologies if that was misleading.
The board uses a Pheonix BIOS, when I bought the SATA drives I did partially configure them for Software RAID but didn't enable it in the Windows setup although the BIOS was enabled for a time, is definitely now disabled. It was suggested by an IT tech at work that Acronis was a better solution for a home PC than RAID so I abandoned the process (not sure now whether that was the right thing to do! Could there be something still appearing on the HDD which makes ATI2009 bootable media intrepret it as addressing one disk? It might be a red herring but it might be worthwhile to eliminate this possibility if there was a simple method without re-installing windows. Certainly DD9 bootable media sees both HDDs although it can only perform partition changes in 'safe' mode.
Hi JonTee,
Thanks for the info. I will do my best to help you get Acronis working right on your system. The additional info you provided above is going to help a lot. I may need you to download and run a utility which checks the versions of what drivers you have installed, and a utility which will give me the BIOS ID string and the BIOS date so that I can see if there is any reason why you might need to upgrade the motherboard's BIOS. Anyhoo, let me first take a good look at the motherboard docs and then we will go from there.
Hopefully we will get ATI working smoothly on your system since once it is working smoothly then nothing beats it for backing up and restoring your system or data. I do full backups of my computer every weekend (just did a full backup this afternoon), and I usually do an incremental backup just before installing any new software ever since a few months ago when I installed some software which contained malware that all five of my security programs completely missed. That was an "Eeek!" moment if ya know what I mean. It wasn't pretty since the malware silently and completely killed XP's DEP protection for the OS. But fortunately ATI came to the rescue! And this is exactly the situation for which you bought ATI. :-)
P.S. Hey, that is a nice looking motherboard! AMD processor too. I prefer AMD CPUs over Intel CPUs.
Hi GoneToPlaid,
Thanks for your assistance, I have found myself having to use ATI on a number of occasions to restore things after a screw up also. The MOBO is getting a little old but has the latest BIOS updates and is currently adequate for my purposes though the next upgrade will probably be at least dual core, but I'll stick with AMD if I can.
Hello all,
GoneToPlaid, thank you very much for your help.
JonTee, most probably, the standard Acronis Rescue Media just don't have necessary drivers for your SATA HDDs. I have sent you a Private Message with a download link to an alternate bootable media. This new media is based on the another bootloader (ISOLINUX) and it includes newer hardware drivers, so it should work fine for you.
Please reply to this thread or to my PM if the issue still persists with the new bootable CD, I'll be glad to help.
Thank you.
Hi Ilya,
Thanks for getting back to me. I got your message tried your suggestions using the iso image. In standard boot the second hard drive failed to show either in an attempt to restore or to backup. I then re-booted and used option 3. I assume you just type in 3 when the word "boot" appears. I found the same result as the standard boot. I will try again to make sure that I haven't screwed up but I think this is looking like a lost cause and I have now been using the paid version of Macrium for a few weeks and it has the facilities I need in an imaging piece of software. The Macrium linux bootable media works with both my SATA HDDs and the BARPe version of the media works with the SATA HDDs as well as my external USB HDD.
I'm disappointed because Acronis TI has been such a great product, but in it's day so was Win98. I shall continue to use Acroniss DD since that does what it says on the tin.
Thanks for your help.
Hello JonTee,
I'm very sorry for the inconvenience you experienced to get the product to work.
Could you please let us customize a new ISO image for your hardware? We would be able to create it if you provide us with the following information:
1. AcronisInfo output (from Windows):
- Download the file;
- Run the downloaded file
The gathered information will be put in adv_report.zip in the same folder, where the AcronisInfo was saved.
Running AcronisInfo may take up to 5 minutes.
2. Linux sysinfo:
Could you please boot your computer from Acronis True Image rescue disc and press CTRL+ALT+F2 keys after getting to GUI. Wait for # prompt to appear. Please insert a Flash disk to a USB port and issue the following commands:
# cat /proc/partitions
This will give you the list of partitions/drives available in your system.
For example:
8 0 127744 sda
8 1 127744 sda1
3 0 80417183 hda
3 1 10241406 hda1
3 2 20482875 hda2
3 3 1020127 hda3
Flash drive's partition is visible as 'sdXY' (X - disk letter, Y - partition number). If there are some scsi devices in your system you may find your flash by partition/drive size. If the flash is partitioned it will bring the list of partitions as well.
We discovered that your USB flash drive is detected as sdb.
Then you need to create a mount point for your flash and mount it.
# mkdir /mnt/tmp
# mount -t auto /dev/sdb /mnt/tmp
There can be some warning messages but it is safe to ignore them. If mount fails you may try to use 'vfat' (if the flash is formatted to FAT file system) or 'ext3' or 'ext2' (if its formatted to ext3 or ext2) parameter instead of 'auto' .
Make a directory on your flash drive to save files to it:
# mkdir /mnt/tmp/sysinfo
Check whether the drive is mounted correctly for writing access:
#ls /mnt/tmp
This will give a list of files/folders located on the drive.
Save 'sysinfo' and unmount the flash drive:
# sysinfo > /mnt/tmp/sysinfo/sysinfo26.txt
# umount /mnt/tmp
Collect the created sysinfo26.txt file from the flash drive.
Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request and the link to this thread. Then please provide me with the case number you receive from our system, so I can pick it up and speed up the process. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.
Additionally to this, you are welcome to ask me any other questions concerning Acronis, and I will assist you further.
We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.
Thank you.