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Full GPT Disk Restore to New Drive

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I recently got a new larger m.2 nvme drive to replace my smaller m.2 sata drive in my computer. I purchased Acronis 2020 and did a full disk backup of the smaller drive and created a "Rescue Media" USB bootable media stick.

I have verified that my smaller drive is formatted using GPT and Acronis reports three partitions (first image attachment):
-Recovery Partition (NTFS)

-EFI System Partition (FAT32)

-Local Disk (NTFS) (this is my C drive)

I also downloaded MiniTool Partition Wizard and found that there seems to be an "Other" partition on my drive between the EFI System Partition and the C drive that is 16MB. This partition does not show up in Acronis or Disk Management. (see second image attachment)

After doing a complete backup to a third SATA HDD that I use for backups, I shut down my computer and went into BIOS and set the boot volume to the UEFI USB, and was able to boot from the Rescue Media USB, and verify that it is booting using UEFI using the steps described in https://kb.acronis.com/content/59877.  At no point in any of my drives, new or old, am I using MBR scheme. All drives that I am booting from are formatted using GPT scheme and I'm using UEFI boot.

Once I have booted into the Rescue Media, I choose to restore data, choose my backup, and am presented with the drive and partitions to restore. I choose the entire drive, then I am prompted to choose a location for each partition of the drive. This differs from what I would expect, which is just to choose a destination drive for ALL partitions in the backup, but maybe that is just a made-up expectation. In this process of selecting a destination for all of the partitions, it comes up with some fun drive letters for them, and does not allow me to choose "C" for the big partition. This list of partitions also includes a "Track 0." which from what I have seen in the forums has something do do with MBR and confuses me. 

Once the restore is complete I shut down the computer, change my BIOS to boot using UEFI Windows boot manager, and it tries to boot three times and then goes into recovery mode. I cannot get the drive to boot at this point. I feel like I must be close, because it IS booting into the recovery partition at this point, but I just can't get it to boot normally. 

 

Other things that I have tried:

-Sector by sector backup

-Sector by sector backup and backing up un-allocated space

-Completely deleting the backup, then creating a new one (three times)

-Erasing the larger nvme destination drive and manually creating partitions before restoring as described in this help article: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2016-forum/guide-restoring-uefigpt-windows-system-new-disk-true-image-2016. When I did this I included the 16 MB "Other" partition mentioned above.

 

I have been trying for four days now to successfully restore the to the new drive and I feel like I must be missing something obvious because there is no way it should be this complicated. I've scoured these forums, and I haven't found a solution. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Patrick

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Patrick,

"I also downloaded MiniTool Partition Wizard and found that there seems to be an "Other" partition on my drive between the EFI System Partition and the C drive that is 16MB. This partition does not show up in Acronis or Disk Management. (see second image attachment)"

This 16MB partition of known as the MSR partition and is a hidden reserved partition created by Windows installation which is not normally needed in most cases but is there for possible subsequent use by Windows.

"Once I have booted into the Rescue Media, I choose to restore data, choose my backup, and am presented with the drive and partitions to restore. I choose the entire drive, then I am prompted to choose a location for each partition of the drive. This differs from what I would expect, which is just to choose a destination drive for ALL partitions in the backup, but maybe that is just a made-up expectation."

This confuses many users.  There is a check box at the top of the app window which when checked will select all partitions and would be the process in most cases.  The reason you see it this way is in the case of your needing to change a partition for some reason you have the ability to do so here.

"In this process of selecting a destination for all of the partitions, it comes up with some fun drive letters for them, and does not allow me to choose "C" for the big partition. This list of partitions also includes a "Track 0." which from what I have seen in the forums has something do do with MBR and confuses me." 

When using the boot media drive letters are assigned arbitrarily and only serve as markers.  If you give drive partitions (volumes) and name in Windows these will carry over and make selection and recognition of them easier when using the boot media.

"Once the restore is complete I shut down the computer, change my BIOS to boot using UEFI Windows boot manager, and it tries to boot three times and then goes into recovery mode. I cannot get the drive to boot at this point. I feel like I must be close, because it IS booting into the recovery partition at this point, but I just can't get it to boot normally."

Earlier in this thread you said " I recently got a new larger m.2 nvme drive to replace my smaller m.2 sata drive in my computer."  I believe your problem is that you are attempting to use an NVMe drive in a connector on your computer that does not support it.  Generally SATA connectors will not use or support NVMe.  

Hi Enchantech. Thank you for replying! I am using an MSI B450 Tomahawk motherboard. From everything I have read it supports a sata m.2 drive or an nvme m.2 drive. In my Acronis Boot Media, if I go to the “Add New Drive” took, it show the new drive with a nvme listed as the interface. I imagine that if the drive wasn’t supported by the mobo it simply would not appear. So I don’t think that is it in this case.

Thanks for providing your board info.  I had a brief look at the mobo manual.  I would say at this point that you may have to adjust motherboard settings because of the switch from sata to nvme to get things working.  Below is a snippet from the manual.  This setting can be found in the Advanced section of the bios.

"PCI_E1 Lanes ConfigurationPCIe lanes configuration is for MSI M.2 Xpander / MSI M.2 Xpander-Z / Other M.2 PCIe storage card. The options in this item will vary with the installed processor"

You might need to make a change here so that your CPU works with the NVMe drive you have installed.

Additionally, some boards require that the SATA sontroller be set to RAID rather than AHCI for NVMe to function properly.

Patrick,

Also, just to be sure, what OS are we using here - Windows 10, I hope? 

If Windows 7, this won't work like this since Windows 7 does not natively support PCIe NVME booting without first applying hotfixes into the OS that must be manually downloaded and installed.

Thanks for commenting Bobbo I am using Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.

Enchantech, I just tried creating a Windows 10 installation media and was able to boot from that and install fully bootable Windows 10 on my nvme drive without making any BIOS changes, so I think I am good on the hardware support front.

I think it is also worth mentioning that if I include "Track 0" in my recovery, the first step in the recovery summary says that it is recovering MBR. Should I be including "Track 0" in my recovery?

I don't understand why ATI is asking for a destination for each of the partitions. Normally, if you select the disk at the disk level in the tree, it would ask to which disk the selected disk needs to be restore to, not what to do with each partition. Make sure you select the box at the disk level. Selecting each partition under the disk is not necessarily equivalent to selecting the entire disk.

On another point, support of M.2 interface doesn't necessarily mean the system can be booted from a disk connected to that interface. I am guessing you have verified that your motherboard can indeed be booted from M.2 NVMe. This support might depend on how the NVMe disk is connected to the PCIe (through a PCIe card or not, on specific slots, and which card you use if any). I assume you have already established that the computer can boot from your m.2 NMVe disk as you installed it.

Another variable could be the support of this setup by the Acronis recovery environment. Since it seems ATI can see the disk normally, you may want to use ATI to add the disk ("new disk") so that it initializes it, before attempting to restore.

Until we know why ATI doesn't restore your entire system disk, but only partitions, you might continue having bootability issues because something might not be restored right, or has been backed up right.

I apologize, I think maybe I didn’t give enough information in my initial post. I want to be sure of all of this information is accurate, so I started over from scratch just now and made everything anew. 

 

BACKUP:

I chose my primary boot drive including all partitions listed in Acronis (image #1) for the source. I have a SATA HDD that I use for backups, so I do not want to backup “Entire PC.”

Incremental backup occurs daily.

Default settings for exclusions, no changes made

I am NOT doing a sector-by-sector backup (though I did try that before)

AES 256 backup protection is enabled with a password

Validate backup when created (backup validated successfully)

Compression level: MAX

Snapshot for backup: VSS

Note: At this point I created a new initial full backup and there are no incremental backups after.

 

OLD DRIVE:

Model: Crucial MX300 m.2 SSD SATA

Partitions: (image #2)

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit. Fully activated and licensed

Note: Boots great been working fine for 2 years. No issues or failures are prompting the upgrade, just want a faster larger drive.

 

NEW DRIVE:

Model: Crucial P1 m.2 2280 NVMe

 

NVME HARDWARE SUPPORT:

Motherboard: MSI B450 Tomahawk

Bios is set to boot using only UEFI. Legacy boot is disabled.

I created a brand new Windows 10 Pro 64 bit installation USB key, and booted from it. I was able to fully install Windows 10 Pro and boot to the desktop. Windows is fully functional and bootable on the NVME drive. (runs real fast!) I even installed MiniTool and took a snap of the partitions with the vanilla Windows install. (image #3)

 

ACRONIS BOOT MEDIA:

Model: 4GB Generic USB drive

Partition Scheme: GPT

Creation Method: Simple

Bootable Media Type: WinRE-based media, 64 bit

 

PROCESS:

-Booted from Acronis Boot Media

-Tool & Utilities > Add New Disk

-Selected NVMe drive and initialized GPT

-Back ATI Main Menu

-Recovery > Browse for backup

-Navigated to SATA HDD and located new backup

-Enter password for backup (encrypted)

-Right click on full backup > Recover

-Select Recover whole disks and partitions (image #4)

-Selected Recovery Point (image # 5)

-Check the box for entire disk (not partitions) (image #6)

-Click the destination disk (image #7) this is the first time it has not prompted me for partition selection, so I am not sure what I did differently.

-Summary says “Recovering MBR” (image #8)

-Recover

-Once recovery is complete, shutdown 

-Remove Acronis Recovery Media USB Drive

-Boot into BIOS

-Change boot from UEFI: USB to UEFI: Hard Disk: Windows Boot Manager (it even shows the model of the NVMe drive)

-Reboot

-Machine fails to boot 3 times

-Enters Windows Automatic Repair

-“Diagnosing your PC”

-No boot

 

Update: I went into the command prompt from Windows Recovery and looked at the disk partition scheme (image #9) in case that adds any insight. I appreciate all of your help.

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You're doing everything correctly.  One thing I might suggest is to cold boot the PC after verifying the boot order changed.  

Also, if it continues to fail to boot 3 times, instead of recovery, does it give an option to do a safeboot?  I wonder if the disk is locked.  I had a similar issue in 2017 moving from SSD to PCIe NVME where the disk remained locked after recovery and safeboot was the key to unlocking it so it booted properly.

---------------

Alternatively, install Windows 10 "fresh" on the new drive - just do the bare minimum up to the point where you log in the first time.

Then, go back and restore just the C: partition from the backup over the new installation of the OS C: parition (so the bootloader partition is not involved) and see if that works instead.

I haven't tried to restore from a 2020 backup on my machine with a pcie nvme drive so can't say if this is a bugged behavior, or a a one-off here.  Unfortunately, the 2020 rescue media can't even complete a proper backup of my PCIe NVME drive so I can't use it.  2019 is working fine though so I am needing to stick with it for the time being.

Also, just curious, are you using the full 2020 version, or a different version that came with the drive?  I see that this is supposed to come with an OEM version from Crucial...

https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct500p1ssd8

Form Factor SSD: M.2 
Package Content: M.2 SSD PCIe NVMe Gen 3, Acronis® True Image™ for Crucial cloning software and installation instructions 

Gotta ask because the OEM versions tend to be older and modified and honestly, don't hear a lot of positive feedback about them.  

That said, I'm having all kinds of issues with 2020 rescue media using the full retail version right now, so that could be a problem in its own right.

 

Thanks Bobbo. Your cold boot suggestion was a good one. Add this to my process, and (for some reason) this worked:

 

-Shutdown PC from Windows Recovery

-Boot PC. (at this point it went straight to BIOS because it had cleared the Windows Boot Manager off of my boot order, leaving no boot volumes at all)

-Re-Select Windows Boot Manager in BIOS

-Reboot

-It booted to my restored data and seems to be working completely.

 

I have no idea why, but I am thinking that maybe your hunch about locked volumes or something might be at play. I wish I could say for certain for others who might be reading this, but for now I will say thank you so much to Bobbo, Enchantech, and Pat for your help!

I agree with Rob on the Safe Boot.  There is a chance of the drive being locked and Safe Boot is the way to unlock it.

I also suggest that you try turning off Secure Boot in your bios and then attempt to boot the NVMe drive again.  If you can get it ot boot that way then you can turn Secure Boot back on again afterwards.

Also, just curious, are you using the full 2020 version, or a different version that came with the drive?  I see that this is supposed to come with an OEM version from Crucial..

I am using the retail Acronis 2020 purchased for 1 computer. Thanks again

Nice!  Yeah, motherboards are finicky and not all firmware is created equal!  My old Gigabyte mobo was a real pain in the butt and I had to go beyond cold boots at times and actually re-flash the same firmware to get to to "forget" older settings that had been changed, but didn't seem to be applying!

Glad to see you have it sorted!