Corrupted hard drive with acronis true image
I have a M.2 solid state drive that was installed in a dell laptop, that I tried to image with a windows PE version of Acronis True Image 2020.
I created a bootable USB drive with ATI 2020. I tested it on another windows 10 64 bit install on a desktop and it imaged just fine.
I moved the bootable drive over to the laptop, it started the boot process, but locked up. After about 10 minutes of setting there, I unhooked the USB drive and rebooted the laptop, which wouldn't boot. I tried automated windows recovery and it couldn't fix the issue. I tried several other things and it stated that the drive was not a valid format. I took the solid state out, put another 2.5" SSD in and reinstalled windows 10 onto the laptop and have it running.
The issue now, since I can't boot from that drive and somehow ATI messed up the format, I wanted to recover it with Acronis Revive. So, I made an image with revive and the only thing that seems to be missing on that drive is the entire user folder that I need to restore.
Any ideas?
Steve,
Thanks for the reply. I have worked with computers for a long time and have literally imaged hundreds of pcs and had no issues. This is the first time that I have ever had this happen. Typically, the imaging goes off without a hitch. I have used Acronis imaging software, their disk director, and here recently started using their revive software to recover undeleted files.
I took the hard drive out and put it in an external enclosure to hook it to the machine I have revive on. It still is asking me to format the drive.... I have not done that. I opened a case with acronis and spent about 1 to 2 hours chatting with them last night. Revive finds the files on the drive, but not the user folder of the only user to log onto the machine. It's like the disk was reimaged or something, because all of the defaults are there. Not sure how that happened. They are still investigating and supposed to get back with me.
I created the WinPE rescue media through the ATI interface. Downloaded the windows development kit for windows 10, and ran it through the rest of the prompts. I'm not at home right now, so I can't tell you the exact steps. But, it worked on one system, but didn't work on this one. I'm not sure exactly what happened quite yet.
James, thanks for the update, this is very worrying that it could happen even the one time!
I have regularly created my own rescue media using both the latest Windows 10 ADK & PE kit and also from the WinRE files, either using the Simple, Advanced methods of the Acronis media builder tool, or using the MVP Custom PE builder script.
I would recommend trying the MVP Custom PE builder script as it will add all your installed Acronis applications to the same rescue media stick, so I have ATI, DD, AUR and Revive all on my own rescue media stick, plus some other extra applications too!
The MVP Tool will also make registry changes to the WinPE so that hidden and super hidden files are shown. This may get your user folder shown.
Steve,
I downloaded the MVP Custom PE Builder Script and ran it. I had no issues with it at all, until it came to putting the image on the USB drive. I am using a 4 TB Western Digital portable hard drive. I figured that it had to do with the size of the drive, so I put some simple volumes on it, first started with a 5 gb (didn't work), went to 64 gb (didn't work), went to 32 gb (didn't work), tried NTFS and FAT32 on all those sizes (didn't work). What am I missing?
Any help that you could offer would be appreciated.
Thanks,
James, the MVP Custom PE script is aimed primarily at creating USB stick media, so if you want to use this to create a bootable external USB HDD similar to the Acronis Survival Kit, then you need to do the following:
- Use a partition tool like the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software and use this to create a 2GB FAT32 partition at the start of your external 4TB drive, then allocate a drive letter to that partition.
- Now use the MVP script to create the rescue media and give it the drive letter from step 1. as where to write to.
The alternative method would be to create an Acronis Survival Kit on that external drive, which will do the same as step 1 except will leave the FAT32 partition (Acronis HM) hidden with no allocated drive letter.
Once the partition is created, again use a partition tool to unhide it and allocate a drive letter, then you can copy the Acronis_MVP_PEMedia_amd64.wim from the MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186\ISO\Wim folder (renamed as boot.wim) to the Acronis HM \sources folder to replace the boot.wim placed there by the Survival Kit create process.
Steve,
Thanks I can handle that now. Thanks for the info.
I do have a question about revive for you. It you have a hard drive, and it got partially formatted, would you be able to get any data off from it?
What is it that revive is doing?
Just looking at hard drives and seeing if there are any files that no longer have any pointers still telling the PC where they are? But, if they are formatted or those spots are over written, then all hope is lost?
Thanks James
James, any file or partition format presents issues for file recovery and there are specialist tools available for dealing with all different scenarios.
I have only had limited opportunities to use Acronis Revive 'in anger' for recovering files and had mixed success, as it also depends on other factors such as what else has been done since the formatting was done, i.e. how much other disk activity has taken part?
The help text for Revive states the following:
Acronis Revive 2019 recovers files:
- That have been removed without Recycle Bin, or when Recycle Bin has been emptied;
- Removed by virus attack or power failure;
- From deleted or corrupted logical disks or partitions