Cannot restore system backup to OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD

Try to click on add new disk, select your SSD.

I tried that, however it does show up but its greyed out and i cannot select it.

It looks like there is some information left on the disk that indicates the disk is not supported by ATI.

Use secure erase to completely clean your disk back to manufacturing state and try again. http://www.ocztechnology.com/blog/?p=367

Used partition magic 11-24-11 and I secured erase. Worked in ATI 2011 but not in ATI 2012. I am at a loss. the drive literally has nothing on it. Still drive will not detect for recovery.

How is that OCZ SSD drive installed? In other words, is it supported directly by your system motherboard's own drive controller and BIOS, or is it handled via an addon card?

Sadly, the "bottom line" is that the device class filters and drivers included in the current ATIH 2012 release simply can't handle the full range of storage devices and controller types that the Windows operating system's own hardware abstraction layer normally can when it isn't being bypassed. In fact, ATIH 2012 is less capable in that respect than some previous ATIH versions. The current deficiencies can affect recognition, access and/or transfer performance for some USB and NAS devices and for some RAID configurations as well as for some SSDs. (In one extreme reported case, just installing it completely hosed a RAID 5 setup.) So you may just be plain out of luck until they fix those deficiencies in a future "update" release -- if they ever do fix all of them.

Something to try/stupid idea?: If your BIOS supports both IDE and AHCI mode, then change the SSD mode to IDE and then boot the recovery disk and see if the drive shows up. If it does then recovery the drive and then reboot the system and put it back into AHCI mode.

Do NOT switch the controller from IDE to AHCI, however. Depending on the Windows version, that can be very risky after the OS is already installed.

When doing a Acronis backup, do you use the Acronis .tib backup files or Windows .vhd backup files?

@TheBigPoop,

I am not sure that Partition Magic does an ATA secure erase. I would guess it simply overwrites the disk with a series of random characters with predefined patterns and repetitions to make the data on the disk unrecoverable. This doesn't reset the performance of an SSD for example.

ATA secure erase is different altogether. It resets the memory inside the SSD.

Please follow the OCZ guide to do a correct ATA secure erase on your SSD.

@Richard Virtue,

its installed in my dell studio 1737 notebook. so I assume it is using the motherboard's controller, intel.

You'd think with a newer version they would have better support than the previous version(s). :S

David Robinson,

using the .tib files. as before in ATI 2011

@ Pat L,

Yes it does, when you go to Erase disk it gives several options. the last one is secure erase, when prompted it states that the disk supports an internal erase command and ask if you would like to use this, as always I have been using this to securely erase my ssd. It takes literally 2 seconds to finish the erase.

I was hoping the new release of ATI 2012 build 6154 (i think) would have corrected this, but it has not.

Ich stelle meine ATIH 2012 Images schon immer mit einer ATIH 2011 Build 6868 Boot CD wieder her (Weil ATIH 2012 keine gelöschten SSDs findet).

I use a ATIH 2011 Boot CD to restore ATIH 2012 Images.

TheBigPoop wrote:

its installed in my dell studio 1737 notebook. so I assume it is using the motherboard's controller, intel.

Almost certainly. I was going to suggest changing over to the mobo's "native" controller if possible, but obviously that's not an option in the circumstances. In addition to its other quirks, ATIH 2012 doesn't seem to like some Dells much, especially some notebook configurations. So that's just one more "strike" against you.

You'd think with a newer version they would have better support than the previous version(s). :S

Not an unreasonable expectation, but Acronis seems to be headed in the opposite direction lately. Very sad. They were dependable "pack leaders" for quite a while, but I think the "marketeering experts" and gimmick promoters took over the reins from the real developers. I don't envy the latter trying to sort out this latest mess.

In particular, the fact that a WinPE-based recovery disk doesn't see the disk is weird.
The last thing I would try:
- boot the computer on the Windows installation DVD,
- choose install, repairt, command prompt,
- diskpart
- list disk. Do you see the SSD there?
- select disk X where X is the SSD
- clean
- exit

If that doesn't fix it, you should contact Acronis support. Support for recoveries remain free.

i will try some of these suggestions tonight. I will post my results when completed.

Thanks.

Pat L wrote:

In particular, the fact that a WinPE-based recovery disk doesn't see the disk is weird.

Why more weird in a WinPE build, Pat? If created via ATIH, the PE build will include the same primary device class filters and drivers as are installed with the main application, and hence many of the same HAL bypass support limitations.

It just rare that the WinPE-based disk doesn't see some hardware. Not unheard of, just rare.

Hi guys,

I was preparing to open a new threat, but BigPoop get there first. I had exactly the same issue!
Using a OCZ Vertex 2 (LE) 100GB as well. Tried to overwrite on this SDD a aih 2012 drivebackup. But it was greyed out and I could not select the drive. Tried then to delete the systempartition with Acronis Drive Cleanser. Afterwards, same issue!!!

I had to install my Windows new! :-(

secure erased via partedmagic and then boot into windows 7 repair command prompt ran diskpart and the ssd was indeed listed.

booted with AT2011 recovery media and restored my ATI2012 system image without a hitch.... so long story short the previous version media works like a charm whereas the new 2012 media sucks. I truly hope acronis fixes this issue. It still boggles the mind how the new rescue media version "loses" the ability to support former hardware.... :/ Some people who have purchased ATI2012 might not have access to the ATI2011 media if needed in such a situation....

Thanks all for the help.... but the issue is still there if you don't have a ATI2011 rescue media.

The main culprit appears to be their new fltsrv device class filter and driver. In previous versions, the snapman service driver was used directly as a filter for the DiskDrive and Volume device classes. Fltsrv is now used as an intermediary both in the main ATIH 2012 application and in any WinPE recovery discs created by that ATIH version. Obviously, it didn't get the pre-release testing it should have received on a wide range of storage devices and controllers and they're now struggling to catch up with what they should have done previously. It'll likely take a while. One of their reps here said they were waiting for their new year budget allocations just to acquire some SSD types for testing.

In the meantime, the "upgrade" is more like a downgrade. Its new gimmicks are only marginally functional, and even that is putting it kindly in some cases.

Richard Virtue wrote:

In the meantime, the "upgrade" is more like a downgrade. Its new gimmicks are only marginally functional, and even that is putting it kindly in some cases.

And why does this NOT surprise me with software companies... ZoneAlarm (Checkpoint), Symantec, Intuit, Adobe, Microsoft and sadly Acronis are all guilty of this.... Though symantec is starting to come back with a solid product... I don't care about added features I want a solid product that works as it should... back up and recovery.

So it seems that fltsrv/snapman is the disk backup world's StarForce. The idea of a live backup is nice on paper but I would never do that. What Acronis should do right now is provide a patch to bypass the drivers for users who don't want to use the live backup function or disable them altogether. Shouldn't be that hard. I can't imagine many people willing to trade live backup for dead USB drives.

Sorry, Marty. The initial installation of some specific ATIH services could be made optional if Acronis were so inclined, but the totality of what you are suggesting (bypassing their drivers) would be something like a grammatical double negative.

The whole purpose of the Acronis device class filter services and drivers is to bypass parts of the operating system's own hardware abstraction layer. In other words, what it really boils down to is the fact that, by installing an Acronis application, you are transferring to that application some of the hardware control functions that are normally handled by your operating system. Furthermore, once you've done that even on a trial basis, reverting to the status quo ante can be highly problematic as reflected here in the many "blue screen" death trap reports of people who try.

The way ATIH and other Acronis programs currently work requires their own access to certain system hardware components (storage devices and controllers) in order to carry out some of the application's basic functions. If that weren't so, ATIH would just run happily on top of the OS HAL itself, taking advantage of its full range of capabilities for handling those device classes. In the circumstances, however, everything depends on how well Acronis can match that range of capabilities in its own drivers without introducing a whole new bunch of quirks and problems. Obviously, they're having more that a few difficulties doing that lately, not helped by the self-admitted limitations of their hardware testing facilities and (apparently) its bugetary constraints. And not helped either, of course, by the marketeers insistence on "faking it" in order to meet their schedule for promoting new "upgrade" gimmicks.

So we have a situation where intsalling the software might work or might make it worse and if it does make it worse, there is no reliable way to undo it.

As I developer, I get budget restrictions but the developers do have access to a wide range of hardware configurations to test with - the forum members here. Heck we are doing that anyway and for those who don't have the option to restore a prior image of their system, could installing a debug version make things any worse?

Without any knowledge what what causes the specific issues, it is possible that finding our why the OP's OCZ SSD doesn't work could lead to a broader solution for other drives without having them to test or a method to better isolate the problem if it shows up again.

marty56 wrote:

Heck we are doing that anyway ...

Yup, you got that right for sure. But I feel less sorry for us here having some access to mutual support than I do for completely innocent trial users trying to figure out on their own why they can no longer acccess and use storage devices that were perfectly okay previously. There certainly are more reliable solutions (some of which, in fact, are actually built into driver versioning capabilities of the Windows OS itself) but almost any of them would require some very major attitudinal re-thinking by Acronis leaderhip at the topmost level who currently seem content to congratulate themselves by comparisons with the worst of other bad actors rather that with the best.

In fact, in a rational world, all of your comments would make completely logical sense. But the marketing world isn't always rational, and certainly not always farsighted enough to discern or care about longer-term consequences where "quick profits" are anticipated. The best hope, as I see it, is not for any immediate turn-around, but that maybe (just maybe) they may get the message that they've shot themselves very badly in the foot this time, or perhaps even higher in the anatomy, and shouldn't repeat the performance again in the future. Personally, I'll stick with an older ATIH version (plus Windows own backup and recovery) while looking carefully at other options in the meantime.

I'm missing something. Did restoring the OCZ 120 GB drive not work using the boot CD (or USB)? The boot CD is based on Linux and should therefore not suffer from the problems with the Windows filter driver/bypassing the HAL.

As for switching from AHCI to IDE; I had to do that with ATIH 2010. Windows doesn't like switching but you can switch as long as you do not boot Windows. Procedure:

- System down
- Boot bios, change AHCI to IDE
- Boot Acronis CD
- Restore image
- Boot bios, change IDE back to AHCI
- Boot restored Windows

This was my workaround for ATIH 2010, maybe it works also with ATIH 2012 is such cases.

If ATIH 2011 can restore 2012 images maybe Acronis should supply a ATIH 2011 bootdisk to ATIH 2012 uses who do not own ATIH 2011 to bypass issues like this.

I like the idea of providing the 2011 recovery CD to 2012 users who could benefit from it.