DD 10 recovery disk doesn't find SATA drives
I just bought a new computer with Win7 pre-installed. As it turns out, Win7 seems to be less than configurable, and I don't need the Gnomes of Redmond telling me how my OS should look. I decided to format and partition the SATA hard drive and install XP Pro, with which I've been very happy for the past eight years.
I booted from an Acronis recovery disk containing DD build 2239 an got a message saying that DD could not find a hard drive. Fortunately, I had a copy of Paragon Partition Manager handy, and it found and partitioned the hard drive with no problem.
After installing XP Pro, I installed both Acronis True Image Home 11 and Disk Director 10. When I run DD from within Windows, it works exactly as it's supposed to. If I try to run it from a recovery disk, it will NOT find a SATA hard drive. I had no such problem with my previous computer, which had an IDE drive.
I REALLY would appreciate an explanation.
Jim
Hello,
Gary, thanks for your help, you're absolutely correct.
James, let me shed some light on the issue. It seems that the standard version of bootable media doesn't have necessary drivers for your hard drive controller or it detects it incorrectly. That's why the media can't detect your hard drives. In this cases you should try to use a special version of Acronis Bootable Media available in your account. It is based on the latest Linux kernel and includes the latest hardware drivers, so it should work fine for you.
- Log in to your account;
- Once logged in, click My Products & Downloads:
- Scroll down to the registered product and click Bootable Media:
- Click Download:
-
Acronis Bootable Media will be downloaded as an ISO file. See Burning an ISO Image.
Please reply to this thread if the issue still persists or of you have any additional questions.
Thank you.
Gary, Ilya ...
Thanks for your quick responses.
I followed your suggestions, and burned the ISO image but, sad to say, it didn't work ... I still get the message that DD has not found any hard drives.
Now what?
Jim
Well, Jim, my suggestion didn't work. You will probably have to get more specific help from Acronis. I know for True Image custom bootable media can be made, but I don't know about DD. Maybe there is some BIOS setting that has some effect - Legacy IDE Support or something like that. Although my hard drive is definitely SATA, if I get the Disk Information, DD calls it an IDE - SATA does not appear.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
Jim-
Take a look at some of the last posts in this forum: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9892
This is an unrelated forum, but do look at the last few posts.
Colin's comments on some items that may be relevant, related to the IDE support I mentioned.
Gary ...
Thanks for the info. When I have the time, I'll dig into it a bit deeper.
One thing occurred to me ... the hard drive which DD couldn't find was a 500GB SATA drive with a single partition, and I thought that perhaps DD couldn't deal with a partition that large. I successfully divided it into four partitions using Paragon's PartitionManager, but DD still reports not being able to find the drive so, perhaps, the partition size is meaningless.
I've used DD successfully on a 500GB external drive, but I suspect that it's an IDE drive, rather than SATA.
I'm new to SATA drives so, as you can imagine, I find this whole business rather frustrating.
Regards,
Jim
I don't think it's the size. It most likely has to do with the interface and BIOS and how the drive is "accounted for". At least for me, Paragon and DD both work with the SATA drive just fine, perhaps due to the BIOS settings.
It's not the size. The Full Mode version (Linux-based) is just having problems correctly supporting the controller. Sometimes changing the SATA controller's mode will help (IDE Compatible, AHCI, etc.). If you do this, make sure to change it back before you boot into Windows or you may get a BSOD.
DD does have a Safe Mode version. It's DOS-based and uses the BIOS to access the drives. If you haven't included it on your DD CD, create another one that has it and see if it works. On my computers, I got where I usually use the Safe Mode version just because it boots so much faster.
I just tried to create a boot disk containing the DD Safe Mode, but got the following error message:
E0018000B: Cannot load required components. Please reinstall Acronis Test Program.
What test program?
???
There's not much on that particular error. You may need to contact support directly.
Since you have TI installed, you can try creating a CD from TI that includes DD and see if it works. There was a report of this working for another user (don't know which version of TI was used, though).
Another thing that may affect this is the order in which TI and DD were installed. Which did you install first?
Please disregard my last post. I successfully created a new recovery disk, with DD Safe Mode, from True Image Home 2010.
Safe Mode does, indeed, boot faster, and it sees my hard drive, which the full DD on the recovery disk won't do. Fortunately, I don't need to work with partitions very often, but I'm glad that now I can with DD.
Thanks for the info, Mudbug.
Regards,
Jim
MudCrab ...
Sorry about the "Mudbug". Not sure which I installed first, but probably TI.
Jim
Jim,
No problem. You can edit your post, if you want to.