Problems restoring from backup
Hello,
I am having a hard time restoring backup images from Acronis. This involves a mixture of Acronis 2012 and 2013. I have purchased 2013 but I haven't gotten around to installing it on my computer. I am running a Windows 7 64bit computer.
I run a regular incremental backup of my entire main drive (primary drive, including C, hidden partition, and MBR/partition table) every Monday, and I validate the backup every time. I have not seen any notifications that anything is wrong with the backups. I use the latest revision of Acronis 2012, installed in Windows to do this. The primary drive is an SSD. The archives are stored on an external usb 3 drive and are split into 4gb chunks.
Last week after a reboot my windows explorer started crashing, so I decided to restore to my Monday status. I have learned that the best way to restore a system drive is to put the target drive in place in the system, and to use the boot CD. I had a new larger SSD drive, so I decided to restore to that larger drive, which would let me keep the original (crashing) drive intact for later. I plugged the fresh drive into my primary SATA cable, hooked my usb 3 hard drive up, and booted to the boot cd for Acronis 2012.
First problem: The acronis 2012 boot media would not recognize the usb 3 drive that contained the backups, even though it was hooked up to a usb 2 port. I have seen that windows computers install new drivers for usb 3 devices, so I figured it was a driver issue.
So I went online and downloaded the 2013 media (build 6514). The recovery wizard recognized the usb 3 drive. Everything has been extremely slow in the recovery wizard. Every step I take takes at least 2 minutes of wait time to get to the next screen.
I was able to browse to the backup archives and restore the hidden partition, the c: partition, and the MBR/partition table to the new SSD. I was also able to expand the c: partition to fill the new drive. I hit go and went to sleep.
The next day I got a message: "operation failed" (or something close to that). No indication of what went wrong. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can troubleshoot this?
I'm working under the theory that acronis 2013 isn't compatible with 2012 backups. I am doing A LOT of work to clear up space in a USB 2 drive so I can put my partition backups on that drive and see if the restore operation succeeds from the Acronis 2012 boot disk.
Does anyone have any other ideas for how I can troubleshoot this?
Thanks!
Is your usb3 drive one of this which gets its power from the usb3 cable?If yes, I have heard of power issues with this method. Any chance of trying a different or better usb3 cable?
All of my many external HDs are bus powered, and this has never been an issue with True Image nor any other software. Such bus-powered drives are a mature technology that works well.
But of course, you should try a different USB port on the rear of the PC and a different cable, as it's always possible that the particular cable has a problem as could happen with any USB device (including those powered by separate AC adapter).
Hi, thank you both for your responses.
I will try a different USB cable. Note that the drive is USB 3, but I am using it in backwards compatibility mode by plugging it into a USB 2 port. I am working on a desktop, and I get the idea that power over USB issues were mainly with laptops but I can try using a powered hub to rule out the possibility.
Thanks for the advice on clearing out the existing data from the drive, that drove me nuts recently! I have been using Acronis for 5+ years and I had never been so confounded.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I did check the box for the entire disk (and my backups were made for the entire disk). I don't recall being asked about a disk signature, but my memory might be hazy as I was in a hurry.
The partitions appeared to be set up correctly, with the 1MB before, and the size of the hidden partition was maintained. The main partition was automatically sized to have some 10MB left over at the end of the operation. I went ahead and expanded it to take up the whole disk. Maybe I needed to let that 10MB alone.
I'll report back in when I get another chance. Right now I'm working on some other problems and I'm transferring 200GB from usb drive to usb drive to see if everything works better with the TI 2012 disk and a USB2 drive.
BTW, I don't know if this is related, but EVERY SINGLE STEP of the recovery wizard took like 2 minutes to load (try swallowing that on a Friday night). Is this a common problem? Maybe it is an indication that even the TI 2013 disk wasn't happy with my HD.
Thanks!
I will try a different USB cable. Note that the drive is USB 3, but I am using it in backwards compatibility mode by plugging it into a USB 2 port. I am working on a desktop, and I get the idea that power over USB issues were mainly with laptops but I can try using a powered hub to rule out the possibility.
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.
EVERY SINGLE STEP of the recovery wizard took like 2 minutes to load (try swallowing that on a Friday night). Is this a common problem? Maybe it is an indication that even the TI 2013 disk wasn't happy with my HD.
I saw that in older builds with a brand new laptop. It improved significantly with later builds, so I suspect that it may have been due to less-than-ideal hardware support for some of my hardware, and later builds improved support for newer hardware.
You could try running the Rescue Media from a bootable USB flash drive. If hardware compatibility is the issue, it may not be much faster, but for me the Rescue Media loads more quickly from USB than from CD-R.
Yes, sometimes I have seen the usb connection be a real pain.
Sometimes it is better to start the usb disk as part of the boot.
Other times, it works better if the usb is connected after the boot.
I too have seen the delays in past versions.
You may find that you would prefer to use the WinPE or MustangPE as the TI bootable recovery CD. This is is faster and is a Windows environment. However, you do need the extra cost Plus Pack in order to use this type Recovery CD. If necessary, usb3 drivers can be added. I personally like the MustangPE disk. See
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/17630
or the Mustang link inside my signature below.
Okay, I changed 2 things:
1) I didn't resize my C: partition, I left it the default size
2) I hadn't noticed the checkbox for "restore disk signature" before. I checked it this time. The recovery succeeded. However, I'm out a bunch of space because I'm now on a bigger SSD. I went into the log display and found the error codes. I will paste them below:
<log build="6131" product="Acronis True Image Home" task_name="Recover" uuid="A6E9B1B2-D140-1C18-4CE8-FD313DDBC2D3" version="15.0">
<event code="0" id="1" level="2" message="Operation "Recover" started." module="100" time="1377184919" />
<event code="1020" id="2" level="2" message="<bold>Recover Backup Archive</bold><endl/><tabpoint value=30><indent value=4>From file:	<indent value=10><textcolor value="navyblue">"G:\My backups\My partitions75.tib"</textcolor></indent><indent value=4><endl/>Recovery of:	<indent value=10><textcolor value="navyblue">Disks</textcolor></indent><indent value=4><endl/></indent><endl/>" module="11" time="1377184920" />
<event code="504" id="3" level="2" message="Pending operation 56 started: 'Recovering MBR'." module="1" time="1377184920" />
<event code="504" id="4" level="2" message="Pending operation 11 started: 'Recovering partition sector by sector'." module="1" time="1377184920" />
<event code="504" id="5" level="2" message="Pending operation 11 started: 'Recovering partition'." module="1" time="1377184920" />
<event code="502" id="6" level="4" line_tag="0x65B5EB70110946FA" message="Operation with partition 'C:' was terminated. Details: <indent>Internal error: number of copied sectors differs from counted (0x70001)    Tag = 0x2CBDD167CBCA95D8</indent>" module="1" time="1377188979">
<event code="1" id="7" level="4" line_tag="0x2CBDD167CBCA95D8" message="Internal error: number of copied sectors differs from counted" module="7" time="1377188979" />
</event>
<event code="0" id="8" level="2" message="Mapped from Disk BIOS num - 0 NtSignature - 1253379243 to Disk BIOS num - 0 NtSignature - 1253379243" module="57" time="1377188979" />
<event code="0" id="9" level="2" message="Mapped from Disk BIOS num - 129 NtSignature - -1531612416 to Disk BIOS num - 129 NtSignature - -1531612416" module="57" time="1377188979" />
<event code="0" id="10" level="2" message="Mapped from Disk BIOS num - 128 NtSignature - 733423472 to Disk BIOS num - 128 NtSignature - -795422632" module="57" time="1377188979" />
<event code="0" id="11" level="2" message="Bootability restore operation has started." module="29" time="1377188979" />
<event code="500" id="12" level="3" line_tag="0x9B087344D31C3553" message="Disk '\local\hd_sign(4AB50CAB)' has invalid BIOS number (0). The following value will be used: '128'." module="29" time="1377188979" />
<event code="500" id="13" level="3" line_tag="0x9B087344D31C3553" message="Disk '' has invalid BIOS number (0). The following value will be used: '128'." module="29" time="1377188979" />
<event code="0" id="14" level="2" message="Bootability restore operation has finished." module="29" time="1377188980" />
<event code="0" id="15" level="4" message="Recover operation failed." module="100" time="1377188980" />
</log>
OK, I tried everything the same except I enlarged the partition and the recovery option failed. This is really frustrating.
I've also tried resizing but leaving some room at the end of the drive (~500MB). Still doesn't work. I tried Acronis live chat, where they kindly ignored my problem and pointed me to instructions on how to perform a recovery. I'm trying their email support.
Benjamin,
Acronis advertises and makes postings that they will help (no charge) on Recovery issues. I would pursue again with them via live chat.
Have you tried checking the disk for disk errors and file errors. Your backup may have these errors off the old disk and these may be transferred onto the new disk.
Try restoring again (same as orignal size wihtout expanding the partition and run check disk on all partitions on the SSD. Only after it passes or corrections made would I try to expand.
Another option would be to pre-create all partitions on SSD to their desired size and then restore the backup into the empty partitions.
Either way, I believe you have some errors (file or disk or partition errors) which will need correction.
Do you have any other disks which could the temporary recipient of the restore so all partitions on the disk could be checked for errors and then make a new restore which could be then restored onto the larger SSD.
Hi Grover,
Live chat just keeps asking me to wait and then disconnects.
I have used another computer to partition and slow format the entire new SSD and I ran chkdsk /r on it and it found no errors. The intel ssd toolbox diagnostic also finds no errors.
I tried restoring again without expanding, and after I booted to that, I created a partition in the empty space, formatted it, and ran chkdsk on it with no errors. I'm pretty sure the target drive is ok.
"Another option would be to pre-create all partitions on SSD to their desired size and then restore the backup into the empty partitions."
But if I don't restore the disk as a whole, won't that mess up my mbr and signature and such? Are you suggesting I open the drive in windows disk manager, create 2 partitions, and then in acronis chose those partitions as targets for my partitions during the restoration process?
I don't think I have file or disk errors at this point, I can recover the partition if I don't change the size and all of my scans say the target disk is error free.
I was really enthused when I found out that Acronis would offer free recovery support, but I have lost all confidence in the guy. So far he has pointed me to kb articles with very basic info and has not been able to keep track of what we are trying to do. I have told him that (from my experience and from online documentation) that I needed to mark the system reserved partition as active, and his response was to tell me that I will need to mark the c: drive as active (again, experience and the internet say he is wrong). So he couldn't understand that I was telling him a fact and he responded with mildly related and wrong information. Ugh.
"Another option would be to pre-create all partitions on SSD to their desired size and then restore the backup into the empty partitions."
But if I don't restore the disk as a whole, won't that mess up my mbr and signature and such? Are you suggesting I open the drive in windows disk manager, create 2 partitions, and then in acronis chose those partitions as targets for my partitions during the restoration process?
Yes, this is one option except I would rather NOT use Windows but rather use the "Add New Disk" option which is one of the TrueImage utilites on both the installed version and CD version. You could still recover the disk signature afterward which would require that you also restore mbr--but that is ok--just as long as you only boot with the new disk attached. Within the "Add new disk" process, there is one screen labelled "Create new partitons" and you can RIGHT click on the unallocated space and choose the create new partitions option. You can set the 1mb of free space before and adjust/set your partition size to what you need. Mark as primary and active, etc is all there for you to use.
Before you go that route, have you looked at item 1 inside my signature link #3 below. Which partition should be the active partition can be identified from within your backup--as per my guide.
If your orignal disk availble for a screen capture from Windows Disk Management?
What backups do you have available? Such as any old one prior to problems? current ones, etc.
If they exist, one option might be to restore an old backup when things were good.
Then, afterwards, restore C only from your latest backup.
One of your first jobs will be to do a disk check immediately following any restore that you make. There may be file problems or disk problems being restore from the backup.