Can't restore to internal hard drive using external WD portable hard drive as storage source for images
Hi. I've been trying to get this working for the past few days and it's very critical for the business to get it going as its dependent on tax season which started yesterday. The goal is to make sure I can restore these images I made of three separate notebooks last year using Acronis.
Last year I housed the images on my server and had no problems backing up or restoring from that via the shared network/LAN/ethernet connection. Having run out of room on my server, I needed to move the images to a newly bought 1TB WD external portable MyBook USB 3.0 hard drive. This is where the problems started and are remaining.
At first I couldn't get the software to recognize the internal hard drive at all, all it showed in the partition part of the restore was the external hard drive. I created a WinPe boot dvd and still couldn't get that to change. I tried using the WD Acronis edition boot dvd and could then see the internal hard drive but it was listed under disk 2 where as disk 1 was still showing the WD external hard drive.. making it look like it was still trying to restore to the WD hard drive (as well) which was storing the images. So unless I'm just not understanding this, because I need the restore to target the internal hard drive only, this won't work either. So I figured out how to slipstream the drivers into the WinPe DVD iso boot disk and I could see both hard drives with that one too but the difference was that the disk 1 showed the internal hard drive while the disk 2 showed the external hard drive. This at least seemed to be an improvement since the internal appeared to be the priority. But the problem is that it's still listing the target partition for restoration as including the external hard drive.
So the question is how do I make it so that I can use the images stored on the WD external portable hard drive to restore them ONLY to the internal hard drive of the notebook? As in, shouldn't the only thing showing up in the target partition for restoring the images show the internal hard drive and the external hard drive shouldn't show up there at all? Seems like either it should auto populate only the internal hard drive or there needs to be a way I can somehow manually change the partitions to only being the internal hard drive. Is an easy fix to just buy say a Dlink DIR-868 or DIR-857 and connect the hard drive or a USB flash drive storing the images to its Shareport USB 3.0 port to access it that way?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! My build is 6673 Acronis True Image 2014. Thanks.
Your problem appears to be very similar to this Thread: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/80462. Have a read and see if the recommendations can be of help in your situation.
Thanks for the reply. Read through it. So what I understand from that which actually makes sense is that I may have some corruption in the sectors, so if I run the diskcheck that should fix the sectors and partitions so that the auto populate can take place in the partition section of the restore process? That makes sense because for one thing the laptop runs really sluggishly, when I did a right click properties on some of the partitions at least one reported corruption.. but when I did another view with properties there was none which seems interesting. The other thing is there are a bunch of partitions, hidden ones and even a repeated one. Do you think I should just run diskcheck and then run those tools or should I somehow reformat the drive and just do the restore on top of that? Thanks so much for the help.
I noted in your first post that you state you have backups from three separate notebooks. Have you attempted a recovery to either of the other 2 notebooks? If not I recommend that you do so. For one thing if you can restore to the other notebooks then the problem is definitely the notebook you wrote about here. For another if you can successfully restore the other 2 then we know we are working with good backup images on the external drive and should indicate and confirm that the problem is on the notebook in question.
Whether or not you should attempt repair of the offending drive in the notebook, if that is the case, in question or reformat and restore depends on what exactly is found to be the issue with the drive. If say ckhdsk finds and corrects only file system errors then once that is done you should be good to go with the disk as is. It would be a good idea to download from the drive manufacturers support site any diagnostic utility that may be available and run it against the drive. Such tools provide health reports and can be vital in making a decision on what direction to take with a troublesome drive. If chkdsk reports bad sectors on the drive then I would strongly recommend replacing the drive with a new one and restore to the new drive. Same for the diagnostic utility, it may well report a condition that warrants drive replacement.
When running chkdsk you will need to test the entire drive. Since there are multiple partitions on the disk and some hidden you will need to run chkdsk on each partition individually. For lettered partitions for example you would run chkdsk c: /r where c: is the drive/partition letter. For hidden partitions you can use Windows Disk Management to temporarily assign drive letters to non lettered partitions to run the chkdsk command. Once the command completes use Disk Management to remove the temporary drive letters.
I have yet to try it on the other notebooks, but was going to next. I ran the Seagate tools tests and it says it has a bad sector. Ran the repair and it repeatedly got stuck on the 13% repair loop. So I reformatted using the recovery partition, ran the DOS test and it doesn't recognize the hard drive. So I guess it's a dead drive, which I'm thinking the reason it used sectors from the external hard drive was to compensate for the messed up ones in the internal hard drive? Yea that's what I'm thinking. Have to wait to get the 3rd back because in case anything happens to the other there's nothing to work on. So once that other one gets given back from someone who borrowed it I'll try it on the others. Yea. Getting a replacement hard drive in the mail in a few days with just 8 days left in the manufacturers warranty, thank God..
Ohh ok I guess I can try that though it's a bit too late I guess given they're sending out a replacement. I may want to do this with the other one as its the same make and model. If its reporting a bad sector that necessarily means hardware failure and it needs to be replaced right? I better test the other asap before the warranty expires too for that one.
Is there a setting I guess labeled temporary labels in disk manager? Thanks so much btw! I've tried getting support and man it's really bad from Acronis phone/email. Almost every answer is gimme more money and no real help.
If a drive tests show bad sectors then yes it is time to replace the drive. True Image hates corrupted drives! Any disk corruption be it bad sectors or file system errors will at times result in odd behavior for the application.
In Disk Manager select the partition that you want to assign a temporary letter by clicking on it. You will notice that the partition then becomes shaded. Then simply hover your mouse pointer over the selected partition and right click which will bring up a context menu and choose/click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
You had some luck with the drive still being under warranty.
If a drive tests show bad sectors then yes it is time to replace the drive. True Image hates corrupted drives! Any disk corruption be it bad sectors or file system errors will at times result in odd behavior for the application.
In Disk Manager select the partition that you want to assign a temporary letter by clicking on it. You will notice that the partition then becomes shaded. Then simply hover your mouse pointer over the selected partition and right click which will bring up a context menu and choose/click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
You had some luck with the drive still being under warranty.
Man hmm ok. I really hope that wasn't present when I did the backups.. which was pretty much right after they were purchased. Would that or could that translate to the backup images themselves? If they were able to be restored the entire time I'm guessing the image backups are ok?
K cool thank you. Just received back the 3rd laptop a Dell Inspiron 1505 but am finding out that the DVD drive now is not being recognized.. am hoping its just a driver issue from whatever the person installed on the laptop that messed with it, but if I can't access the disk drive I can't boot into Acronis.. also can't do a factory reset either in that case. While this is related to the same job, without wanting to hijack the thread, is there a way to do it via a USB flash drive? Or do you happen to have a link you could refer me to if it is hijacking it? Thanks so much! You've been very helpful!
You can create the Acronis Recoverable Media on a USB stick and boot from it. Here is a link to creating the Recoverable Media.
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2015/index.html#2…
You can create the Acronis Recoverable Media on a USB stick and boot from it. Here is a link to creating the Recoverable Media.
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2015/index.html#2…
Thank you. I tried the regular rescue media iso way, the way to do it by formatting it to FAT32 and both say no boot sector on disk when I try to boot with them. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.. The Dell Inspiron 1505 has Windows XP. Also not sure what a WIM file is or if I'd need to do it that way.
The ISO image must be written or burned as we call it to the media being used. It doesn't sound like what ever you are doing is making that happen. Unfortunately I have not used TI2015 tools to do this myself as I use third party tools for such tasks (Imgburn) is the app I use. In addition I am currently away from my PC so I cannot test it. Hope someone else will join in to help.
The ISO image must be written or burned as we call it to the media being used. It doesn't sound like what ever you are doing is making that happen. Unfortunately I have not used TI2015 tools to do this myself as I use third party tools for such tasks (Imgburn) is the app I use. In addition I am currently away from my PC so I cannot test it. Hope someone else will join in to help.
Yea I followed the directions but nothing. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. If you when you can or if anyone else can chime in would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.
Here's a how to for creating boot media
https://kb.acronis.com/content/48338
Are you doing this as the how to outlines?
If yes do you have boot priority set in your bios to the media device that contains the boot files?
Here's a how to for creating boot media
https://kb.acronis.com/content/48338
Are you doing this as the how to outlines?
If yes do you have boot priority set in your bios to the media device that contains the boot files?
Yea this is what I do, selecting the ISO file type not the DVD ROM. I then have it go directly to the USB stick and keep hitting next. I have it go to the USB stick the DVD drive yea. Wonder what it is I'm missing.
Please visit the Support website, login to your account and Click on the Bootable Media tab and download the iso file. You will need an ISO Image burning tool to burn that iso image file to your choice of media. Again my personnel preference is ImgBurn which is a free download which you can find on the net. I strongly suggest that you get that utility from the ImgBurn website.
Here is a link to the download page of the ImgBurn website. Additional languages are available if needed.
Once you have the iso file and the utility, install the utility and use it to create a new boot media and try again.
Please visit the Support website, login to your account and Click on the Bootable Media tab and download the iso file. You will need an ISO Image burning tool to burn that iso image file to your choice of media. Again my personnel preference is ImgBurn which is a free download which you can find on the net. I strongly suggest that you get that utility from the ImgBurn website.
Here is a link to the download page of the ImgBurn website. Additional languages are available if needed.
Once you have the iso file and the utility, install the utility and use it to create a new boot media and try again.
But I need a bootable USB drive to work in Windows XP, why would do that and try to burn anything?
It sounds like you're just creating the Acronis ISO file on the USB drive. That isn't going to work. ISO files are meant only for burning to a DVD or CD. You have to select your USB drive in the selection window to create an Acronis USB rescue media not the ISO file. The screenshots below should help clarify what to do.
Acronis will not create USB rescue media on SanDisk branded flash drives. They are incompatible.
It sounds like you're just creating the Acronis ISO file on the USB drive. That isn't going to work. ISO files are meant only for burning to a DVD or CD. You have to select your USB drive in the selection window to create an Acronis USB rescue media not the ISO file. The screenshots below should help clarify what to do.Acronis will not create USB rescue media on SanDisk branded flash drives. They are incompatible.
Ahhh no wonder, think it is a Sandisk. Gah! No wonder it didn't come up in the part where you select DVD, ISO etc.. Gotcha, will try that, thank you!
It sounds like you're just creating the Acronis ISO file on the USB drive. That isn't going to work. ISO files are meant only for burning to a DVD or CD. You have to select your USB drive in the selection window to create an Acronis USB rescue media not the ISO file. The screenshots below should help clarify what to do.Acronis will not create USB rescue media on SanDisk branded flash drives. They are incompatible.
Ok so it worked, it booted up and I could go through the steps! Thank you! Only thing is I don't really get what I should select for the last two steps or so. The target drive I want restored is the internal C drive, I need to get the image backups from the D (MyPassport) external WD portable hard drive and the boot drive is the G drive (KODAK) USB flash drive. If you could explain what I should select for the 4th step on I think it should work.
The following screenshots will explain.
Georgette,
Nice attachments. Follow user Joey's pictures, but if you want a little more detail, look at my signature link 3 below (item 2 inside that link) which covers a disk option restore.
GH58. Difference between Partition Mode & Select Disk Mode backups. New
For later reading after you complete your restore and begin doing more backups.
Click on my signature link 1 below and review these links.
GH25; GH11, GH12, GH13
The following screenshots will explain.
If you check out my attachments you'll see that the later part at 5A it doesn't let me select the target disk, only the external hard drice (drive D/MyPassport). Also I don't seem to have the same options you do.
Georgette,
Nice attachments. Follow user Joey's pictures, but if you want a little more detail, look at my signature link 3 below (item 2 inside that link) which covers a disk option restore.GH58. Difference between Partition Mode & Select Disk Mode backups. New
For later reading after you complete your restore and begin doing more backups.
Click on my signature link 1 below and review these links.
GH25; GH11, GH12, GH13
Thanks. As in my attachments I don't think I have the same options you have in your screenshots. Perhaps yours is an older version of Acronis? Joey's looks closer but I can't do what he suggests because it's greyed out.
EDIT: Ah I selected the wrong link, went to the third link instead if the one labeled 3. When you talk about partition 1 what do you mean? Especially when you say it isn't being restored. Confused on that and if it incorporates the difference between disk 1 and disk 2. If not can you address disk 1 vs disk 2?
Georgette,
My referenced link is a pdf.
Do be sure and read the top of each screen so you know what function is being performed via that screen.
Joey's restore #1 is same as my picture #7. This is the selection of content from the backup which is to be restored.
Everything on that screen is being restored when the disk itself is checked.
Joey's restore #2 is same as my picture #8 This is the selection of the target disk.
Whatever is currently on the target disk will be overlayed with the content of the tib backup selected on the 1/7 preceding example.
Joey's restore #3 is same as my picture #10. This shows what is being restored and changed.
No, my guide is not a current version but close enough to be usable.
Maybe read thru the pdf a couple time for a better understandiing.
Mine and Joey's guide restores the entire guide and requires "disk mode" backup in order for pictures to match your for real screens.
Reread my gh58 link. Is your backuup a "disk mode" backup or a "partition mode" backup.
Edit:
In your post #20, are you trying to restore onto your kodak flash drive? If yes, then all my instructins are invalid!
Georgette,
It appears that you now have a bootable USB stick form which to run the True Image app. That is good. In reading Grover's EDIT comment in the above post #22 there is some confusion as to which drive it is that you are attempting to restore the backup image to. Grover is correct in that jf that drive is the Kodak flash drive then all his instructions are invalid as you will not be able to restore to that drive.
Having said that however I have a question, in looking at your screenshot attachments, picture acronis_restore_4a.jpg shows disk 3 as NTFS (unlabeled) (C) 74.52GB capacity. Is that the target drive, the one that you wish to restore to? If so the check box for that disk 3 would need to be ticked/checked to select that drive as the New Partition Location. Looking at your screenshot attachment picture acronis_restore_3.jpg note that this is a view of Disk 1 which is where your backup image is stored and the contents of the Disk 1 backup are listed. Note that in this picture you have checked all 3 items in the list. Checking all 3 items is telling True Image to perform a Partition Mode restore of the 3 items selected. This is why you are seeing the next 3 screenshots that you attached to your post.
Looking again at screenshot acronis_restore_3.jpg note that there is a check box to the left of and next to Disk 1 directly above the 3 items which are checked in the picture. If you tick/check that box this action will automatically select the 3 items in the list and in doing so you are telling True Image to perform a Disk Mode restore. I believe that if you do this the next screens that you will presented with will be much different and hopefully get rid of some of the confusion here. The resulting choices you will have after tick/check of the Disk 1 box should be much more straight forward and understandable.
This is dependent of course that it is in fact the above mentioned NTFS (unlabeled) (C) 74.52GB disk you are attempting to restore to.
Georgette,
My referenced link is a pdf.
Do be sure and read the top of each screen so you know what function is being performed via that screen.
Joey's restore #1 is same as my picture #7. This is the selection of content from the backup which is to be restored.
Everything on that screen is being restored when the disk itself is checked.Joey's restore #2 is same as my picture #8 This is the selection of the target disk.
Whatever is currently on the target disk will be overlayed with the content of the tib backup selected on the 1/7 preceding example.
Joey's restore #3 is same as my picture #10. This shows what is being restored and changed.No, my guide is not a current version but close enough to be usable.
Maybe read thru the pdf a couple time for a better understandiing.
Mine and Joey's guide restores the entire guide and requires "disk mode" backup in order for pictures to match your for real screens.
Reread my gh58 link. Is your backuup a "disk mode" backup or a "partition mode" backup.Edit:
In your post #20, are you trying to restore onto your kodak flash drive? If yes, then all my instructins are invalid!
Ah I selected the wrong link, went to the third link instead if the one labeled 3. When you talk about partition 1 what do you mean? Especially when you say it isn't being restored. Confused on that and if it incorporates the difference between disk 1 and disk 2. If not can you address disk 1 vs disk 2?
I have no seeming problems until I get to my pics 5 and 5A. Nah I'm trying to restore the back up images to my C internal hard drive that is unlabled. The images are stored on the MyPassport external Western Digital portable hard drive (D drive) that is directly connected to the laptop, and the KODAK (G drive) is the USB flash drive I used to boot into Acronis. So it makes no sense to me why it only will allow me to select the KODAK at the end as a partition when I want to restore to the internal and said so previously. I don't get it. I just select Restore on the left I don't select anything in a drop down box if that's what you mean. Need to carb up then I'll look through them again, but it is a little confusing especially because the versions and options aren't the same.
Georgette,
It appears that you now have a bootable USB stick form which to run the True Image app. That is good. In reading Grover's EDIT comment in the above post #22 there is some confusion as to which drive it is that you are attempting to restore the backup image to. Grover is correct in that jf that drive is the Kodak flash drive then all his instructions are invalid as you will not be able to restore to that drive.
Having said that however I have a question, in looking at your screenshot attachments, picture acronis_restore_4a.jpg shows disk 3 as NTFS (unlabeled) (C) 74.52GB capacity. Is that the target drive, the one that you wish to restore to? If so the check box for that disk 3 would need to be ticked/checked to select that drive as the New Partition Location. Looking at your screenshot attachment picture acronis_restore_3.jpg note that this is a view of Disk 1 which is where your backup image is stored and the contents of the Disk 1 backup are listed. Note that in this picture you have checked all 3 items in the list. Checking all 3 items is telling True Image to perform a Partition Mode restore of the 3 items selected. This is why you are seeing the next 3 screenshots that you attached to your post.
Looking again at screenshot acronis_restore_3.jpg note that there is a check box to the left of and next to Disk 1 directly above the 3 items which are checked in the picture. If you tick/check that box this action will automatically select the 3 items in the list and in doing so you are telling True Image to perform a Disk Mode restore. I believe that if you do this the next screens that you will presented with will be much different and hopefully get rid of some of the confusion here. The resulting choices you will have after tick/check of the Disk 1 box should be much more straight forward and understandable.
This is dependent of course that it is in fact the above mentioned NTFS (unlabeled) (C) 74.52GB disk you are attempting to restore to.
Yea thank God it at least started booting from the USB drive. As with the previous post, I'm trying to restore the image backups to the internal C drive of the HP laptop, using the backup images that are stored on the MyPassport external hard drive (D drive). The KODAK (G drive) is only the USB flash drive I use to boot into Acronis. The thing I don't get is why it's wanting me to make the external hard drive (MyPassport D drive) under New Partition (as seen in the 5A screenshot) Disk 2. Unless I'm not understanding what it means by new partition it sounds like its wanting to make the external hard drive part of where it restores the backup image to as well, even though that's only where I'm storing the backup images.
Yes it is, I want the C unlabeled drive as the target drive, but it isn't done with a check box there, you just select it, which is why its slightly greyed. You said " Looking at your screenshot attachment picture acronis_restore_3.jpg note that this is a view of Disk 1 which is where your backup image is stored and the contents of the Disk 1 backup are listed. Note that in this picture you have checked all 3 items in the list. Checking all 3 items is telling True Image to perform a Partition Mode restore of the 3 items selected. This is why you are seeing the next 3 screenshots that you attached to your post. " This is what I may not be understanding. Ok so on the pic 3, my understanding was these are the images, what is in the backed up images I want to restore to the target internal C drive. Don't I want them all checked off? The MBR allows it to boot the C drive is the content and the FAT32 is.. the FAT32ness whatever that does? Or because it does boot I should only select the NTFS Windows C drive and only have that box checked?
AHHH I missed that. Before when I did it via the ethernet shared network where the image backups were on my server, it would automatically have that all checked off! No wonder. Thank you for catching that! I didn't know it would be a different mode if that wasn't checked off, thought it was the same thing. Yes! Definitely! Lol. Man its stuff like this where other eyes can be such a blessing. Thank you, will definitely try that. I'm hopeful it should help change what I see after that.
You guys are awesome! Appreciate the help Enchantec, Grover and Joey! Got everything working, can now do backups and restores on all the computers! It was because I didn't select the top check box to auto select the rest that it got all messed up as you said. Once I did that, it fixed it and could restore. Had just a couple other questions for you if I may.
If the hard drive has a bad sector(s) and I can do a backup of it, which I can, will that capture the bad sector into the backup image where if I got a replacement laptop and tried to restore that image to it, it would carry over the bad sector to the hard drive? Or is it because its related to a hardware issue and the backup is software it won't take that into the image creation?
The other thing is I just got a newer router, a Dlink DIR-857 that has a Shareport USB 3.0 port. Would you have any info on how to do restores using a flash drive in the Shareport over the shared network? Thanks so much!
The bad sector "could" be transferred to a new disk. You should check the old disk for errors, or if it is a newly restored disk, it also should be checked for disk errors.
Regarding your router, I can only tell you you need to access the target via the Acronis backup destination option. Your device should be listed along the Windows left margin but maybe hidden and you have to open such headers as computer, netwark, share, etc.
The bad sector "could" be transferred to a new disk. You should check the old disk for errors, or if it is a newly restored disk, it also should be checked for disk errors.
Regarding your router, I can only tell you you need to access the target via the Acronis backup destination option. Your device should be listed along the Windows left margin but maybe hidden and you have to open such headers as computer, netwark, share, etc.
Great.. so I guess it would then be more so a corrupted section via software then as opposed to a hardware issue. It works and is functional, a bit sluggish, but it's been like that from day one. Looking to getting it replaced. The thing that's weird is the Seagate Seatools DOS detected the hard drive with having bad sectors but the HP/Windows tests detect nothing. I guess their tests suck.
K I'll try it out. Dlink said you can only access it via the Shareport app, but I've seen others map the flash drive with a letter to bypass needing the Shareport app. https://kb.acronis.com/content/1526.
As Grover says, check your disk for errors. I realize that your existing disk tested bad using the Seagate Tools and you should trust that. The chkdsk command will not find all errors at times as it looks for file system errors. The Seagate tools does this as well and also checks for physical damage. You can test/check/repair the Windows system file by running the sfc /scannow command from an admin command prompt and it would be wise to do that on your replacement disk after your backup recovery. Once you are as confident as you can be that the OS is in good shape then any left over corruption that may surface should be limited to user data files or installed application files both of which can be fixed in one form or another. Glad you are back on track with the TI app.
As for your Shareport you should be able to assign it a letter and map it as a network drive. You can then test to see if it will work or not.
K. Will do that. Can I still do that after doing a recovery in universal mode and the other modes of restoration?
Well apparently the errors/bad sectors did carry over. I tried doing a restore and it warned that it would not boot up, it had many weird hidden partitions and failed to restore. What made it work was I did the other mode where I just selected the FAT32, the G drive restore partition and the C drive and it worked. But I wonder how well it will go along if I go back to the other mode and interchange between both modes of backing up things.
Me too! Thanks to you/your guys help via this forum. I had to update customer service on what I found out to fix things.. Will try that thank you so much!