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Can I Restore a Windows OS Drive from File-Level Backups?

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I've been working on this problem for a week and need some help. I had been using Disk Drill but ran into lack-of-manual problems with them, so I bit the bullet and paid for an Acronis license.

Disk Drill created a full backup image without issues, but I couldn't figure out how to then restore it onto a new C drive. Nearly all of their manuals gave Mac commands but not Windows commands. When I instead used Acronis, Acronis wouldn't make the backup image. It started then said it was going to start over. It started over and gave a generic failure error. I clicked for more information and it said the error is generic. It never gave me any actionable information.

I then did a file-level backup and it hit problems on two fairly meaningless files. I had it skip the errors and it's run through without a problem. My disk utility reports 8 "uncorrectable sector count" and 9 "current pending sector count". So maybe those are the places it is jamming. 

So in any case I either need a way to:

1) Run the image backup and have it just skip those two bad sectors as they don't matter anyway. Then I can restore it on my new disk.

2) Restore the C drive onto my new disk from the file level backup. Can I just also back up the MBR and restore it and have what I need? What else would the file level backup have missed? I already have the partitions set up properly on the new C drive including the two smaller partitions with the recovery info.

Thanks!

Lisa

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Lisa, welcome to these public User Forums.

First, to answer your subject question:  Sorry but you will not achieve a working Windows OS by just restoring a Files & Folders backup image!  There are too many missing important files that cannot be captured by this type of backup due to the OS having locks on them.

Next, the key steps that you should follow given your problem scenario with disk errors are as follows:

  1. Create the Acronis Rescue Media on a small USB stick (2GB min, 32GB max size)
    See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media
     
  2. Shutdown your computer fully by pressing / holding a Shift key while clicking on Shutdown.  This is necessary to avoid Windows Fast Start putting the PC into a hybrid sleep state akin to hibernation!
     
  3. Boot your computer from the Acronis Rescue Media (matching the BIOS mode used by your Windows OS).  Run the msinfo32 command in Windows to confirm what BIOS mode is used by looking for the value in the report produced on the right side. This will either be UEFI for most recent PC's, or else show as Legacy or the disk make / type.
    See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media
     
  4. Ensure that you have an external USB backup drive connected to your PC of a sufficient size to store a backup image the size of your failing disk drive if needed, and have this connected when booting from the rescue media.
     
  5. Make a Disks & Partitions backup of the failing disk drive by clicking on Backup, then on the top option.
     
  6. Select the top Disk option for the failing disk drive which selects all the partitions shown lower.  Select the option to 'Back up sector-by-sector' shown near the bottom but not the option below that to back up unallocated space!
     
  7. Click on the Browse button to select the Target backup archive location, and select your external backup drive.  Click on Generate name for the backup or give a name.
     
  8. Click on 'Backup options' shown under 'Optional steps' on the left side, then select the 'Error handling' option and select both entries shown to ignore bad sectors and not to give error messages (quiet mode).
     
  9. Click on Finish to see a summary of the actions to be performed, then click on
    Proceed to start the backup operation.
     
  10. The backup may take a long time to complete depending on the number of bad sectors and how long it takes to do retries etc, but leave it to run for as long as is needed.  The time estimate shown in the panel can vary quite widely so do not pay too much attention to it, just keep an eye on the progress bar.

All of the above will help you to capture a backup image of the problem drive outside of the installed Windows OS.

Once you have that backup image, then the further steps should be as follows:

  1. Remove the failing disk drive from the PC (after shutting down) and replace this by a new drive of the same or larger size!  This is important as is required in order to restore the backup image created using sector-by-sector mode where this cannot be automatically resized by ATI to fit a smaller drive!
     
  2. Repeat steps 3 & 4 above and boot from the rescue media with the backup drive connected.
     
  3. Click on Recovery and then select the backup image in the right panel.  Right-click on the backup image then select the top Recover option.
     
  4. Click on the top Recover whole disks and partitions, and on Sector-by-Sector.
     
  5. Select the Recovery point when the backup image was created.
     
  6. Select the top Disk option (which selects all partitons below)
     
  7. Click next on each of the 'Settings of Partition...' panels to accept the settings shown.  Note: this may take a little longer for the Partition C for the OS one.
     
  8. When shown 'Track 0 of Disk 1' select the correct target drive, i.e. the new one.
     
  9. Click on Proceed to recover the backup to the new drive.
     
  10. Wait for the recovery operation to proceed, allowing that this too may take some time to complete.  When all if finished and hopefully successfully, shutdown the computer, remove the rescue media and external drive.
     
  11. Attempt to boot normally into Windows from the recovered new drive, allowing for any disk check actions that Windows may want to perform.  Run the same in Windows once the desktop is available.

Once all is working correctly and any errors resolved, then make a new Disks & Partitions backup image using the installed ATI 2020 application in Windows.

Screen images to go with the above steps for doing the Backup & Recovery to a new drive attached in a zip file below.

Fichier attaché Taille
538009-184580.zip 1.62 Mo