cannot restore v2019
OK I have no idea at this time as to what I'm doing wrong. I have TI 2019 installed on a laptop that backup nightly to a shared drive on my desktop. I recently encountered some malware that I've not been able to remove and decided to restore the C drive to a date prior to the malware. The backups report that they have run successfully. In TI I click the Recovery button, select the C drive, start the recovery, the process seems to start and I need to restart the PC so I click the restart button.
The PC restarts and almost immediately it fails but when the PC reboots and I open TI it reports success.
I'll upload several images and the Acronis System Report. OH crap, TI created a ZIP file but I cannot upload it. What the xxxx?
OK I added .doc to the filename.
John, sorry but the clues here are in your post above where you say:
In TI I click the Recovery button, select the C drive, start the recovery, the process seems to start and I need to restart the PC so I click the restart button.
The PC restarts and almost immediately it fails but when the PC reboots and I open TI it reports success.
Doing any restore of the OS partition will require a restart into a temporary Linux offline environment which will then require a connection to the remote shared / mapped drive.
Doing this on a system with suspected malware is probably not a good idea either.
I would recommend booting the problem computer using the Acronis Rescue Media using the same BIOS boot mode as that used by your Windows OS, then once booted, ensure that you can connect to the remote computer where the backup files are stored, or else copy the files to an external USB drive to use.
The rescue environment has minimal support for wireless adapters, so best to be using a wired network connection for recovery.
With a backup of all partitions, why not recover all partitions? (It looked like you were only selecting the C: partition). With malware, best to be safe.
And to reiterate what Steve said, boot rescue media using the same BIOS mode (UEFI vs Legacy) as the PC runs with.
Thanks guys !!!!
To make life a bit easier for me I'm copying all of the backup files to a USB drive and will attempt to restore tomorrow using the USB drive. Since I'm setting up this PC for a family member ultimately he will need to use the USB drive for the backup.
This raises a question. I "could" use TI to MOVE the backup files from the network drive to the USB drive but this is a VERY slow process because it is a serial process for the move. If I copy, I can create several copies and run them at the same time and get the total transfer in less than two hours. But if I copy the files TI still thinks the files are on the network share and seems to ignore the USB drive. Is there some procedure within TI that I can run and make it aware that the files are now on the USB drive?
I agree that TI boots to a Linux environment but after it booted it immediately failed. I had assumed that somehow it would have connected to my desktop and the network share and be aware of the TI files on the network share. This seems to be an error on my part.
The malware is within Chrome (the browser) and is only apparent when Chrome is running. I'm assuming that if I restore the C drive all will be good (we'll find out, hopefully, tomorrow).
With TI I only backup the C partition. The "D" partition is for data and other misc libraries. Normally the data is backed up using another backup app. I've never used TI to backup my data. I'll have to take another look at that possibility. This might simplify things for me.
I'm currently backing up the "C" partition only (with TI) and assumed that if a restore was necessary I'd have everything I needed to get the system going again (say the HD failed), without the data. Is this a wrong assumption?
- OK I managed to copy all of the backup files from the network drive to a USB drive.
- I then connected the USB drive to the laptop. using my file manager application I can see all of the backup files.
- I started TI 2019, clicked recovery, TI does not see the USB drive, it seems to only know about backups that are stored on the drive in my desktop that is shared to my network.
OK dummy question - how do I get TI to use the backup files I copied (all of the full and incremental TIB files) to the USB drive that is now attached to the laptop? I'm confused and super tired, time to get some sleep. It will be late tomorrow at the earliest that I can resume on this?
John, are you doing the recovery here from within Windows John? If so, I would recommend using the rescue media instead.
The storage drive should be connected before booting into the ATI application to ensure that the drive is picked up, plus you need to check that you are considering that the drive may have been given a different drive letter.
What format is being used for the storage drive here?
Thanks, Steve, I'll have to create a recovery rescue media device on a USB stick, the laptop does not have a CD. I need to do a bit of research to determine how to get into the BIOS on the laptop and have it boot from the USB stick. It should not be a big deal but with my luck, it will be a PITA!.
The USB drive with the TI recovery files is a 3TB NTFS formatted drive in an external USB device.
As you suspected I tried recovering using TI in Windows 10 but TI did not see the USB attached drive but my windows file manager application could see the drive. I agree that most likely when I boot with the TI recovery the USB drive will have a different drive letter.
I'm busy on a woodworking project and will try the TI recovery hopefully later today.
Much thanks for the help!
John, just one further comment - please check what BIOS mode your Windows OS uses to boot then ensure that you use the same mode for the rescue media.
Ops.... I just saw your comment about the BIOS mode but this was after I attempted to use the TI file for recovery. Sorry to say that the recovery process failed. I was able to boot to TI (e.g. not in windows but as I booted up the PC). TI ask me a lot of questions, GEE WIZ I did not find this userfriendly or obvious. It appears that I did one or more things incorrectly (bummer). Once I got to the point where I answered the questions and clicked the button to start, in a flash TI reported that it failed.
Now if I attempt to boot the PC into windows, windows attempts an "Automatic Repair" and fails.
I'm too tired to try something else tonight. I'll see what I can do tomorrow.
Hopefully, I don't have to start from scratch but that might be the quickest path at this time. It has been 7 months since we moved and we are still unpacking after a double move, OH DARN
I have a softcopy of Windows 10 and can burn it to a CD (yep!!! I discovered that the laptop does have a CD. The tray blended in so good my old eyes did not see it.
I gave up on the restore and reinstalled Win10. The actual install was not a "clean" install. Windows presented the option to install without destroying the data and this is the option I took. This is on a laptop where I have two partitions on the drive. The install only affected the C drive, the D drive (partition) appears to be untouched.
After the windows install I installed a few PC applications and TI 2019. I logged into my Acronis account to verify my license but there appears to be a bug in the account process. After clicking on the Dashboard button for TI 2019, I'm prompted to enter my ID (I did), then I'm prompted to enter my PW (I did), then I'm informed that either my ID or PW is incorrect. I contacted support, the tech remoted into my PC, checked several things and came to the conclusion that something was wrong with the TI website. He then ran a few functions to generate information he need, then collected several different files.
A couple of days later I received an email from support stating that they had resolved the forum login issue. I tested the Dashboard option in the Account section and still encountered the same failure. I then collected the requested info and reported back to support. Hopefully, they will fix the correct issue this time.
Now that I have TI 2019 working on the laptop I decided to recreate my TI USB Boot stick. In the tools section, I selected "Rescue Media Builder", Simple (The bootable media is configured automatically to suit this computer best.) At this time I "should" be able to select the USB stick but it was not one of the options. TI did present my USB backup drive (WD 3TB drive) but obviously this was not the USB stick.
I removed the USB BU drive, in TI I went back to the screen where I selected "Simple", again I clicked Simple (I have the USB stick inserted in the USB port), now TI does not see the USB stick, for the USB it request "Plug in your external drive". Humm, in the file manager I don't see the USB stick.
I went into Computer Management, Disk Management. I do see the USB stick as a 978MB drive. I have no idea why it is showing up like this. I attempted to delete the volume but windows reports "The request is not supported".
I inserted the USB stick in my desktop, went into Disk Management and get the same results.
It appears that the USB stick is dead.
Family company is here. I'll follow-up later.
I've done some testing with a few USB Thumbdrive apps and the thumbdrive is good but I get really strange results when I attempt to use it with TI and create a rescue media. So far I have not been successful.
John, try using the following diskpart commands with your problem thumbdrive from an Administrator level command prompt or powershell window.
Preparing USB drive for use by Acronis using Diskpart
diskpart
list disk (to identify USB drive, i.e. 1)
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
active
format fs=fat32 quick
assign
exit
I cannot determine what or if I'm doing something wrong when attempting to create the bootable USB TI recovery but I finally gave up.
I created an Acronis Recovery ISO file and used RUFUS (https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Boot-Manager-Disk/Rufus.shtml) to write the ISO file to the USB thumbdrive. I then tested to see if I could boot the laptop from the USB thumbdrive (I could) and run TI recovery (I could). I did not perform a full test of the recovery but I was able to select the recovery file from the USB 3TB backup drive. At this point I canceled the recovery and booted into windows.
I don't mean to throw rocks but IMHO this process needs some serious work, it is far from user-friendly. I don't think the average PC user would have been able to accomplish this. I don't mean to imply that I'm a super PC jock, I'm far from it. The recovery process needs to be really easy. I'm well aware that this is a complex process but Acronis cannot expect the average user to spend hours setting up TI and then hours or days attempting to recover. It has to be simple and easy for the average user. I managed to work my way through it but it took me a few days, like I said I'm not a PC super jock.