Invalid Partition Table
Hello, I'm evaluating Acronis True Image Home 2010 Standard to see if it will do what I want. I tried to perform a disk clone from an 80gb to a 30gb (the 80 is only using 11gb). I took both drives and slaved them into a computer that has the trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2010 Standard. It requested to reboot to perform the clone, which it seemed to complete without incident. When I took the 30gb into the original computer and booted up to test the message "Invalid Partition Table" came up. I tried doing a fixboot and fixmbr using an XP disc, but still same error message. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. If I can get this to work, I will definately be purchasing this product. I have been searching for a while for something that will allow the cloning of a hard drive to a smaller one.
Thanks
Mark
Mark:
#1 would not have mattered.
#2 was definitely the cause.
Glad everything worked well for you!
I am actually having the same problem, except my hard drive has no errors on it. After recovering the drive and booting up the computer it gives me the message "Invalid Partition Table" with a blinking cursor.
EDIT: I found a solution. I used my original full backup instead of the incremental backup. Why didn't the incremental backup work, and how can I get it to work?
Evan:
I missed your edit when originally posting this. The incremental image restoration should have worked. At the moment I can only think that it might have been a "glitch". If you're up for trying again, see if you get the same result after restoring the incremental image again.
Does the image validate correctly?
I tried recovery with the incremental image multiple times and got the same result.
Some other possible scenarios for the problem are:
1. I used the 50XX build for the full backup and the 60XX build for the incremental backup
2. I used the 50XX build for both backups, but the bootable recovery tool was from the 60XX build (the 50XX build of the bootable recovery tool crashed)
I apologize, but I already deleted the backups, so i can start over fresh, so I can't validate the image.
Evan:
I'm curious about the root cause of your issue. Some reasons for an "Invalid Partition Table" error message are if during execution of the MBR code, more than one partition has the "Active" flag (80h) set. Or, if more than one of the four partition slots has any value other than 00h in the first byte then this error will also result.
By chance does your PC have 240-head BIOS geometry? Lenovo and Compaq PCs (and some others) use this nonstandard geometry while most other PCs use the standard 255-head geometry. Errors like you saw can occur if the disk being restored is not mounted internally so that the proper BIOS geometry values are applied during the restore operation.