Restore from Windows is confusing, only works from rescue disk
From Windows Acronis 2013 it comes up with a prompt of the source as drive C: (which is what I did a full backup of, using Acronis 2013), then the only option to restore to is also to drive C.
The software does see the backup on my external drive Z, it is listed on the backup recovery tab. But if I click on recovery I get a source as C and destination of C--- no other choices. Have tried disk and partition mode.
But then that 4th picture makes me think it is just a naming issue, that the source is really from drive Z ? Maybe a language barrier problem here?
I always do a full backup.
Think I will go back to 2010 and put this 2013 charge in dispute- it is junk.
Now it does restore from recovery or rescue disk, well it recovered one file I tested with. So I believe it would work for the whole backup?
Then on top of all that Acronis still don't know how to count from 0. Darn that was one of the first things I learned as a programmer back in 1968! They have C as drive 1 and my Z as drive 3, they are really drive 0 and 2!
Thanks Pat, I did a Microsoft backup image and had a 4 day old 2010 Acronis image and recovery disk so I did some testing beyond restoring one file.
Complete image restore from recovery CD did okay, after the restore, files I put on for testing were gone (as they should have been) and things like Firefox started up with the old tabs opening, not the ones that were opened when starting restore.
Then I did a restore from Windows. I don't know if you looked at the pictures using a function called PST in Windows 7 I attached to first post, but it made me believe the prompts from Acronis were just misleading, they should put the path name in the source and not name of drive being restored. That is the way recovery CD works and all the past Acronis versions I used, back to Version 8. If you looked at those pic, you would see when I said restore to drive 3, it said can't restore to same disk. Light came on in my head and I said that source is really the external drive where my backup is.
Yes good idea, restore using recovery CD, much better prompts and logical naming.
On the recovery CD, I did get an error once tonight "Selected Boot Device not Available" F1 to retry. Not sure why? Unplug external drive and booted all went well and then part way through recovery mouse stopped working. Power down and tried again with everything plugged in and all went well. Who knows. That same error happen yesterday during testing and I thought it was because when creating boot disk I checked Acronis System Report, not a clue what that is. Recreated boot disk with that unchecked and test of restore from CD of one file worked fine. Now since I got that same error tonight and then didn't get it makes me think something else is going on, I have had boot problems when certain USB devices plugged in. If I try to boot Windows with wife MP3 player plugged in- it will never boot.
I think I will keep the 2013. Yea that starting their count from 1 is funny, I use to have assembly programmers that could never figure out counting from zero when having to process charters in fields, they would always offset by 1 and get the seconf position and then scratch thir heads wondering why.
BTW I got the Plus Pack as it was free, not sure what it does or if it just makes the standard TI worse. Also running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.
The Plus Pack just unlocks the Universal Restore for restores from Windows (that you should never do) and from the recovery CD (that you should always do for disk/partitions restores). Of course, the recovery CD has to be produced after the installation of the Plus Pack to see the feature activated.
Aside from this, the Plus Pack doesn't change the way ATI works.
The Plus additionally allows for easy creation of WinPE-disks, when the standard Acronis recovery CD doesn't work on the hardware.
Jerrold,
Simulate testing your restore again and when you get to where you assign the destination, look for the arrow on the extreme right of the same line as your problem #6. See attachment. You may or may not have any destination options but this is the point where the options would become available. In simulating your situation, when I clicked on the arrow, all of my disks were visible.
The destination wasn't what I found most confusing, it was the source. If you look at my attachments on Problem Step #2, you will see the name of the source. To me that source was not clearly from my Z drive as you can see in the Problem Step #11 the first backup in the list.
I wouldn't have questioned Acronis if their prompt of the source had the complete path name of the source and not just the name of what was backed up. Problem Step #2 actually looks like source and destination is the same.
Now when I did Problem Step #3, then on Problem Step #4, it is clear, only then, that the source is Z drive where the external full backup is.
I think it is more of a perception or communication issue?? Now with the recovery CD, there is no questions and it is very clear which is source and destination, full pathnames are used and not name of backups.
Then again, it could just be me as this must not be a common complaint heard. Actually I am not sure my attachments came through showing my testing.
Thank you for your replies and support of the Acronis forum.
After further investigation, when you activate the Recovery option from within the Acronis (Windows installation) backup task, I find there is only 1 place where the actual filename being used for recovery file is identified by actual file name. After all selections, when the Recovery actual starts and the Recovery window pops up, the file name is identified--as per this attachment example.
As you have pointed out, this could use more clarification as I could see possible confusion if task names have similarity to others. Selecting the recovery from within a task needs to better identify actual file name earlier in the process so there is no assumption or guess work.
It would almost lead you to believe that you should locate the backup file first and work backwards from there rather than selecting from task first. The actual file name should be posted ( as soon as identified) on the very next screen after the Recovery button is activated. It shows the task name but not the actual backup file name.
I will ask that Acronis look at this thread for future change consideration.
Thanks for looking into this, makes it worth the time to document concern and post.
I would never had seen this as I never restore from within Windows--always from the CD when doing a disk option restore and I do not do files only backups.
A safer way would be to open Windows Explorer and browse to the storage folder and select the backup file you wish to use.
then, right click on the file name and a option will be offered named "TrueImage" and it has the recover , etc listed as options to choose. Its a back door entry into the main program.
I agree, I also would just use the explore function to restore a file. I was just testing the new download and trying to see the ins and outs. What is new though is the right click and seeing the true image option you mentioned, I now have seen it and see what you mean. What I have done in the past, and it worked, is I just treat the image like any other directory structure, navigate to the file or folder I want and copy and paste.
I have used the complete restore initiating from Windows, it still re-boots into what I have always assumed is some Linux operating system for the actual restore operation.
Then I have also used the boot CD which I figure is also the same operating system (Linux, SCO, Novell Unix) that the Windows booted into.
From now on, I will use the boot CD on disk restores. It is always good not to get into the situation to need a restore. I also try to backup once a month with the Microsoft image software.