"Restore Operation Failed" after Restoring

hi!

Christian,

One reason not too many people have replied to your post is because it needs to be transferred to the TIH forum (edit the thread and select TIH from the drop down box).

Could you clarify, what build are you using of 2009?

You say that you are 'attempting to backup from an incremental backup'. Do you mean you've restored an image and now TIH won't image?

Are you able to boot the PC?

Did you begin the restore from within Windows or direct from the rescue CD?

Was this a disk or partition image?

Thanks Colin. Answers included below.

Could you clarify, what build are you using of 2009?
~9.646

You say that you are 'attempting to backup from an incremental backup'. Do you mean you've restored an image and now TIH won't image?
~I right click an incremental backup, select 'restore', Acronis transfers the image from the external to the internal (takes about 12 minutes), ~and after the progress bar completely fills up, as it should say "restore successful", it says "restore operation failed".

Are you able to boot the PC?
~I can not boot, no. The second I power on, the BIOS gives the error of (two different messages with two different restore attempts): "operating system not found", or "MBR1 has a problem or whatever"

Did you begin the restore from within Windows or direct from the rescue CD?
~I can only attempt to restore from the bootable CD.

Was this a disk or partition image?
This was a whole disc image, with the main C: partition and an MBR partition. Both are selected to restore from.

-Best to ya.

I see there is a latest build too: 9809. Maybe this will help. i will download and try it right now

Build 9809 didn't work.

Christian,

On your old Maxtor160 GB hard drive, did you ever use Windows Disk Management to look at your how your hard drive was partitioned? Is it possible that you had other unlettered partitions that you did not include in your backups?

Is your Maxtor 160 still available for use?

GroverH,

On your old Maxtor160 GB hard drive, did you ever use Windows Disk Management to look at your how your hard drive was partitioned? Is it possible that you had other unlettered partitions that you did not include in your backups?
~I really don't think it had more than one partition on it. It was just the C: drive. And when I select which partiotions I would like to restore, I select the C: partition, and, the MBR partition as well.

Is your Maxtor 160 still available for use?
~No man :(. I came in, and heard it clicking away. She's a goner. I might try the freezer trick though.

Simulate performing another disk restore. When you get to the screen where you select either the disk or a specific partition as to what is to be restored, look at the description of the user system partition.

Does the description include the word "active"?

Next, checkmark the disk as to what is being restored and click next
Now you should be on the screen where you choose the destination disk.
Note the bottom of the page, do you have an option to "Recover disk signature"?
If yes, did you select this the first time? If not, you may want to select this option & the target disk and continue with the restore to completion.

Let us now the answers and the results if your do another restore?

Note: If the partition is not marked as active or if you do not have the "Recover disk signature" option, that would imply that you had other partitions that were not included in the backup.

Do you have any recovery disks from Dell?

Christian,

As you are using a Dell machine and assuming it was running the original factory OS, it is more thna likely that there or ought to be one or two hidden partitions, one the Dell recovery partition the other containing Dell utilities.

When you select restore, do you manually tick C:\ and MBR or do you tick the Disk #0 box?

If you haven't already try using just the Disk box.

Colin & GroverH,
Thank you for your time. I really am grateful for you spending your time to figure a solution to this problem.

The drive was securely wiped, so there shouldn't be any hidden partitions (Dell Recovery) on the HDD.
I don't see the word "active" but do see "Pri., Act." under the C: partition that is being recovered.
I click the Disk #0, therefore all partitions underneath are then selected.
"Recover disk signature" is present, and I have selected that box, but after an attempted restoration, I still receive the "recovery operation failed".

Other points:
- I am doing attempting to recover while running on the Acronis Live Boot CD (latest build).
- The title of my folder that holds my backups has a "(" in the title, therefore in the path. This shouldn't pose a problem I'm guessing.
- I don't have to "consolidate" my 3 increments into the intial "full backup" do I? (I assumed not).
- Below are screen shots of the procedure.

Oh well, forget this!

By right clicking and "removing" my backups from the Acronis screen, it deleted them from my hard drive. Not very smart on my behalf, yet not very clear for complete novices either, like the way I acted.

I'm kinda screwed. I might have another remaining full backup I did a few months ago, with a title that Acronis decided to give with a string of digits like "2342344-234552352" at the end

The "Pri.,Act." is identifying the partition as being a Primary type partition and the ACT is identifying the partition as the Active partition.
You wrote (post 10), " the drive was securely wiped." I take that to mean that after you wiped the Maxtor 160, you then did a fresh install of windows and after that the backup (being used) was completed. Therefore, there was no hidden partition on the freshly installed Windows Maxtor 160 disk. Is this a correct interpretation of what you wrote?

Edited;
I assume you are selecting the 3rd incremental as to what is to be restored. Have you tried doing a restore of C only (no mbr) restore but select only the full rather than any incremental? Do select the "Recover disk signature". If you can get it going, then you could do a later restore just check marking the C as to what is to be restore on incremental #2, etc.

I don't hold out much hope in trying to use the tib file with the GUID type name. These are sometimes made if TIH is having a problem with the archive, for example part of an archive was manually deleted and TIH doesn't know about it. Consolidation can also isuue one of these files.

You'd need to validate the file to see if it is a genuine image.

If you have access to disk recovery software or have Disk Director, you can try recovering the drive, which might bring back all your deleted images, don't write anything else to that drive. Deletion on a disk only removes the first letter of the file name, so until they are written over, they are intact and re-inserting the missing first character will bring the files back.

I have this feeling that the MBR information embedded in the image expects to find the hidden partitions that would have been on your Dell originally, because inadvertently they were not included in the image, your system won't boot. The answer here is to try making a generic MBR.

If it is possible, install TIH on another computer and see if you can mount the images, this will at least give you confidence that they contain what you need.

Assuming of course you can recover the deleted files.

Grover, Thank you Sir.
You got that right: I did a secure wipe and installed Windows, then made an image.
Unfortunately, after all this time... I deleted those from my external backup by accident. Thank you god, there was an old backup image from 3 months ago that worked, and I did the same procedure as I was attempting before... without any problems. Something was going on with that image that didn't allow it to work.

If you were close, I'd buy you a beer. Actually, if you PM your address, I'll send you one. Serious, unless you're in India.

Colin, thank you too.
I have never created a generic MBR, but assume that you recover the C: partition only, and then boot off an XP disc and run FIXMBR and/or FIXBOOT in an unknown order to me.
I am running Recuva on the external now. We shall see if it does recover anything.
I will post back with the findings.

If you PM me, I'll be happy to send you a beer too because of your help.
best

Thank you Christian. I'm just another neighborly American but enjoy one for yourself . I'm always glad when there is a successful resolution--even if it was not quite current.

If you have your new drive working now, boot to the Rescue CD and make a new fresh disk option backup and be sure and validate.