Booting problem and unable to reach backups...
I have six True Image products in my Acronis account and I only have three working computers. This allows me to use the specific year-versions I like best and I have occasionally switched between some of them. I know this implies the need to deactivate a product in one machine if I decide to use it in a different one and I have done this in the panst a couple times with no issues.
I purchased ATI 2014 when it came out some time last year but didn't like that much and just removed from the machine it was installed and replaced it with a version from a previous year. So far so good.
Yesterday I decided that ATI 2010 was not working as good as it used to in one of my machines and I tried to call ATI 2014 back... Uninstalled ATI 2010 and installed ATI 2014, made a backup with it and then tried to Validate this backup. At this point, a message popped up reminding me that I had too many activations for the number of licenses. Actually, I only have one license.
In the process of deactivating and reactivating, I must have done something wrong, which I can't recall, and the result was that I had to make a hard shutdown and something happened that I became unable to this hour of booting this machine. At one point I did get a message that read someting like this: "Partition table is corrupt on disk... Failed. Error code 0x490".
My question is: I have one backup made with ATI 2104 sitting on an external HD (not validated) and several other previous validated backups with ATI 2010. I used Acronis bootable media to access one of the backup images of this machine but I seem unable to pass past the page "Archive Select - Select a backup from which to recover". Nothing shows up ant the Comments box just reads "No items to display".
I still tried "Browse" but the the external drive containing the backups is not anywhere to be found. How can it be reached?
Getting a little frustrated. Will be grateful for any help on this issue.
Many thanks.
Sure, once ATI is installed on the new system, you have various options to restore specific data:
- You can boot from the ATI bootable Rescue Media and choose a files/folders restore, selecting the files and folders you wish to restore.
- If ATI is installed, you could mount the backup and copy files/folders from it to the drive.
- If ATI is installed, you could double-click the backup to open it in Windows Explorer, then copy files/folders from it to the drive.
- Within ATI, right-click on the backup you wish to restore from and select "Recover Files".
That gives you four methods, so at least one should suit you. :)
And, here's an Acronis note on Restoring Specific Files and Folders from Disk Backup: http://kb.acronis.com/content/34879
Thanks for your kind reply, tuttle, but it seems like it would too good to be true... I have my troubled computer now running on Windows and I decided to reinstall ATI 2010, the reason being that I had a number of past full backups made and validated under this version and since I had had a bad experience with trying to recover the last backup (under ATI 2014), so I thought I would rather try to recover an older one (just a few days older) from the ATI 2010 lot than risk the newest one, which had not been validated and had given me enough trouble already...
Bad surprise: not a single backup showed at the list within Acronis and I could only see them in the external drive when searching for backup files. Then, when I select any of them into the box, an error message would appear stating the file is corrupt. Every single one of them!
So not being able to move the backup files into the Acronis environment, I don not know how I can mount them to try to move at least some of the files into my new system...
Any ideas?
Thanks again for your help.
If ATI is installed and working, double-click a backup to open it in Windows Explorer (as I explained in my previous post). If not, try one of the other methods.
Another option is to boot from the ATI bootable Rescue Media and restore from there.
"Corrupted" is, unfortunately, a rather non-specific error message, in spite of its rather specific sounding term. It really just means that ATI can't validate the archive, which can be caused by disk errors or connection errors, rather than any problems with the .tib file itself.
Validation failure is often due to hardware issues. To troubleshoot, see Grover's new backup and restore guides http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618 and http://kb.acronis.com/content/1517
Run chkdsk /r on each partition of the internal drive, and on the external HD. If there are hidden partitions, assign letters to them so you can chkdsk.
Also run a drive checking utility from the drive manufacturer, as those sometimes catch errors missed by chkdsk.
Don't connect via a hub, a port in a monitor, a USB extension cord, etc. Connect the external drive directly to a USB port on the rear of the computer case.
I have been trying all day to recover from one backup dated from July 7th, and after 7 full hours of going very, very slowly, it seems that the system may have finally given up...
The operation's progress, as shown by the green bar, seems to have stopped for the last 20 to 30 minutes, even though I see some dim flashes in the hard drive's light. I'll give it some more time, as it has been a gradually slower and slower process from the time it began, around 10:00 this morning. The progress bar went on to about 1,5 centimeters from the end as seems to be laying there for a while now. I wonder if there is any way to find out if something gets recovered to the point that the computer could boot, for example, or if the only way will be to click cancel and start everything from scratch.
In this case, I will still try to learn from the materials you provided about how to get the folders and files from the backup.
To my surprise, though, there is still no error message whatsoever about whatever may have happened. I had run a disk check as you suggested and everything was stated fine.
If you happen to have any recommendation on this predicament, I will be very grateful.
Thanks.
OK... The dread message finally came out. More than 10 hours after the start and with 7 millimeters (out of 125) of progress bar left for the process to complete, Acronis Rescue Media finally cried uncle:
"Failed to read data from the disk. Failed to read from sector 902.863 of hard disk 2. Linux device node with internal number 3 not found. (0x1000FF)"
The options offered were: Retry - Ignore - Ignore All - Cancel. I chose 'Ignore' and the message popped out immediately: "Recover operation failed." Options offered: "OK". No way out... As an afterthought, I wonder if trying to repair that "unreadable" sector would possibly solve the main issue. Also, if no reason is found (or at least suspected) for the unusually long time it took to process the attempted rescue that was not even completed, would using a more recent rescue media (say, from ATI 2014, which I also have) be possible and more likely to be faster or more prone to succeed?
I hope those messages I quoted may give you some hint of what may be the reason for the failure. First off, I would say, the sheer amount of time it took before the process gave up seems very abnormal to me. I had run a check disk on the external drive and everything was reported fine. The back up had been made using ATI 2010 and the Rescue Media disc was also for ATI 2010 BUT... it had been created in a different laptop. I wonder whether this could have made any difference.
Like I said before, I would appreciate any guidance you could still provide on how to proceed. I would like to get back, if possible, the OS files (Windows 7 Home Premium), the MS Office Home & Student that came installed with the machine, to recoup the Norton license and (my wife demands...) some games that she loves but are no longer available for sale in the market (old games that were acquired through download and for which we may not even have the license keys at hand anymore, even if the games themselves were still available for download).
Not the end of the world, of course, but lots of aggravation that I would do whatever reasonable for having them resolved.
If you can provide any guidance, I will deeply appreciate it.
Thanks