ATI Universal Recovery Thinks the Operation Succeeded But It Didn't
I recently attempted to upgrade a Windows 7 PC to Windows 10, and used Acronis True Image to create several backups (a full backup of all volumes, plus some specific file backups just in case) before performing the upgrade. And of course, there were issues with the Windows 10 upgrade that have forced me to try and restore the old Windows 7 build. I attempted to do this by booting the system with a USB stick containing the Acronis bootable media, and went through the steps of recovering from the specific backup I made of the C: drive of that machine. There were no issues locating the backup archive that was on another larger HD in the system, and it could also see the C: drive with no issues (as I had a small backup archive on there, which Acronis had no trouble finding). The recovery had to go through 9 stages, the longest of which was stage 2 where it was 'merging disks and partitions' for quite awhile, maybe an hour or so, then the other stages seemed to take only a couple of minutes. I got a message saying the recovery operation succeeded, and the logs show no errors, just each stage completing successfully. But, when I reboot the machine, the old broken Windows 10 comes back up, and when I go to the CMD option in the advanced repair tools, I can navigate each drive and see that nothing has been changed by Acronis. It seems to have been spinning the drives and doing something, but certainly wasn't applying the backup to the system. So my question is this: what WAS it doing? And how can I get it to actually perform the restore? The backups are there (and it DID validate the archives, hopefully truthfully). So I see no reason why it should have issues restoring the system. Any ideas?
I will go ahead and create another USB stick with (hopefully) the correct tools on it. Yes, I meant Universal Restore. Though, it doesn't sound very universal ;) I'll see if using the other bootable media works. Thanks for the reply!
Ah, now I remember why I used Universal Restore: It was the only one I was able to actually create bootable media from. The DVD I created on my PC turns out not to be bootable (something to do with choosing the Simple version over Advanced, though I have no clue why you'd ever NOT want it to be bootable). So, with my PC down and needing a restore, I have no way to correctly make another DVD (the drive is on my crashed PC). So, I tried to get a copy of the bootable media ISO so I could create a USB stick to use for recovering my system from backup. I got the ISO by logging into my Acronis account and downloading it from there. But, as I mentioned already, the USB also would not boot. The Universal Restore USB stick that I made in the exact same way, boots just fine. But it can't actually do a restore. I have backed up my system in every way I can think, and I did validations on all of them (and I have copies on a NAS drive, and two hard drives in my PC). But it seems the recovery/restore tools only work if they are running on a working system. Any suggestions on how I can recover/restore my system with Acronis? I'm starting to wonder if I need to start from scratch (and promptly request a refund from Acronis).
Thank you again for the earlier reply. I realize these forums are moderated by volunteers, and I appreciate your efforts. Any frustration I may exhibit in my posts is directed at the product seeming to fail me, not at those trying to help me get through it.
Robert, the Acronis Universal Restore media can include the Linux version of the rescue media but this is not the same as using the WinPE media created via either the Simple or Advanced options of the rescue media builder tool.
If you have created such media with the builder tool, then it is bootable media and if this does not work on your PC then there is some other factor involved here.
When using USB media, what size of stick are you using here? There are restrictions posed by Microsoft for such boot media that mean the stick should be no larger than 32GB and the media itself needs a minimum size of 2GB. Most of my USB stick media is using 16GB or smaller.
Next, when doing any restore / recovery using rescue media, this needs to be booted using the same BIOS mode as your Windows OS uses, i.e. both in Legacy mode or both using UEFI mode. (If you see an EFI System partition on your disk or in the contents of your backup image, then this is a UEFI boot system).
KB 65508: Acronis True Image 2021: how to create bootable media
KB 65539: Acronis True Image 2021: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media
When doing the restore of your backup, this needs to be done as a Disk & Partition restore and at the top Disk selection level.
Please see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document which shows a step-by-step tutorial for doing this type of recovery / restore.
If you cannot create the rescue media on the system where you need to do the recovery, then I would suggest installing ATI 2021 on your second PC and creating it there. If you encounter a message indicating that you have exceeded the number of licenses, then follow the steps in the KB documents below to temporarily transfer the license from the problem PC.
KB 65421: Acronis True Image 2021: How to activate license
KB 65548: Acronis True Image 2021 Essential, Advanced or Premium subscription: "Too many activations"
KB 59689: Acronis True Image: how to transfer license to a new computer
Robert,
I agree with Steve as the best way to move froward. There should not be problem in booting the Rescue Media you already created. In most cases making sure that the bootable device containing the ATI app is first in the bios boot order will get things working so I would do that first.
Hi guys,
Thanks for the replies. I went through a couple of the KB articles listed above, and I did learn one major thing: according to one of the tables in this article (https://kb.acronis.com/content/59877) I am mistaken about using Universal Restore in my earlier attempt. It appears that instead I have the Linux-based bootable media working (by working, I mean I can boot into it). This is what I was using earlier when I attempted to do a restore, and it acted as though the restore succeeded, but when I went to reboot the machine I found that it has not changed anything on the disk. I'll go through the other KB articles to make sure I wasn't making some mistake which caused that behavior, even though the process seems pretty intuitive. I'll reply here with the results, or further issues I have.
So, an update: Through the linked KB articles, I have confirmed that my bootable media is indeed the linux based one, not the univesral restore tool I thought I was running. I am able to boot into it, and perform a restore operation exactly as described in Steve's PDF (thanks for that, very well written). But, I can also confirm that as I said originally, the operation is being reported as successful but isn't actually doing what it lists in the operation steps. None of the partitions are being wiped/formatted, and the restore is certainly not taking place. It takes about 90 minutes to go through everything, and in the logs everything seems to be succeeding, no errors. But upon reboot, it goes right back into 'Diagnosing Your PC' and taking me to the repair options. Going into cmd from there, I can take a look at the contents of each drive and see that nothing has been changed by the restore operation. I am curios what it thinks it is doing (the lights that indicate HD activity are blinking the entire time) but it clearly isn't restoring. Any ideas what to try next?
Robert, a couple of further suggestions / thoughts!
First, when you did the latest restore, did you look at the Log messages for that operation and/or save a copy of the log? That would give us a better idea of what is happening here?
Next, when you first boot from the rescue media and the main ATI application panel is shown, go into the Tools option and select the 'Add new disk' option shown there.
Check that you are seeing the correct target disk drive for your restore, then if correct, use this tool to prepare the disk with the matching partition scheme as used when the backup image was created, i.e. MBR if Legacy, or GPT if UEFI. Leave the disk space as 'unallocated' space with no partitions created etc, then repeat the restore again, along with saving a copy of the new log for the same operation.
Steve,
To answer your questions: I did look at the log after the restore operation completed 'successfully' but I did not save a copy of it. All of the log entries where success messages for various steps, ex ept for two. There were two errors, both exactly the same, and they had something to do with a registry sub key. When I try this agin, I will try to save the log somewhere if I can for the exact details.
Regarding your suggestion: I have booted back into the rescue media, and in the Tools/Add a New Disk section, all of my storage devices are visible, and I do in fact see the disk that I use as the target of the restore. When I select it, down at the bottom it shows the partitions correctly, and furthermore I can look at the disk properties and it correctly shows MBR as the partition scheme. From there, are you suggestion that I go through the next steps and initialize the disk (which according to the warning message deletes all of the partitions)? And by the way, the target disk seems like it is already initialized. For comparison, the PC holds a small SSD drive used for caching operations, and although it is visible as well, it is listed as Not Initialized. Let me know if your suggestion in fact means to go through and delete the partitions, and then follow it up by attempting a restore again. Thanks!
Robert, the presence of the small SSD used for caching may be at the heart of this issue! Is this SSD removable or is it hard-wired to the motherboard in your PC?
Yes, to the question about following through on the 'Add new disk' panel and re-initialising the target drive as MBR to remove all current partitions from that drive before doing the restore.
Note: If you have other drives installed within this PC, then I would recommend disconnecting or removing any that are not involved in the recovery operation. This is to avoid any further issues and protect the contents of those drives.
Hi Steve,
I reran a restore after following your previous instructions, same result. The target disk does not get the partitions wiped or anything.
Regarding my other drives, yes, I can disconnect the SSD. For more background there, the system has a pz68 motherboard, in which it uses the SSD drive as a cache for a RAID0 volume. The RAID0 volume is what I am trying to restore to. Everything will work just fine without the SSD there. But do you think the fact that I am using a RAID0 volume is causing issues? Acronis clearly picks up the drive, and I am able to do backups from it, even in the current state. It uses Intel Rapid Storage Technology to manage the caching and all of that. Let me know what you think.
Also, I captured the restore log this time, and have included it here.
Robert, the Linux version of rescue media has no support for RAID drives, so you should be using the WinPE version of the media for this scenario.
If you used the 'Add new disk' option to initialise the target drive, then this should have wiped all existing partitions from the drive, so am puzzled by your saying that this isn't happening?
It makes me wonder if the RAID array is self-healing itself and rebuilding the initialised drive (assuming that there is more than one drive in the array to allow this)?
The MVP Custom PE Builder tool is the recommended tool for creating rescue media with support injected for Intel RST for RAID when you take the option for this in the tool.
I'm starting to get confused about all the various tools. And in fact, upon viewing the contents of my USB stick, it looks like Windows files, not Linux. I assume the UI looks the same for either, but correct me if I'm wrong. So, despite my earlier comments, I think I have the right recovery media, unless I specifically need to use this MVP Custom PE Builder to make a version that has Intel RST support. Do I have to provide the Intel RST drivers, or does it have that automatically and I just need to choose it to be added as an option?
The disks that I'm trying to restore to are 2x1TB SATA disks in a RAID0 (striped) array. There should't be any ability for the disks to 'heal' if some process is writing to them or removing partitions. Also, I can see the volumes in the rescue media tool, and it can read from them, to the point where I was able to successfully take a separate backup of the RAID0 volume from within the rescue media. It sure seems to me like it can work with the RAID stuff, but obviously something is amiss since it can't clear partitions or write the restore.
Robert, I can see you're having a hard time here. It's also very frustrating to read this thread. Every new post makes me think something different because more information is added. There just isn't enough information to tell you exactly what is wrong.
It would seem that you do have WinPE recovery media from your last post. It's very easy tell WinPE from Linux recovery media when they boot. The Linux media will show you a message that says "Loading, please wait". The WinPE media will show a blue Windows 10 logo or the Windows 7 colored logo at boot.
If you see the RAID0 volume correctly as one drive (not two separate drives), the media does have proper RAID support. What it sounds like to me is that you are getting a proper restore. I think the disk is getting all the partitions deleted and then they are being recreated exactly the same by the restore process. I'm not sure of this, but that's what it sound like. If that is true, your problem is that the restored RAID0 volume can't boot. This would be the case if the original source disk wasn't on a RAID controller for instance.
Was the original source system on a RAID0 array or on a single SATA volume?
Was the original source system connected to an IDE/AHCI controller or a RAID controller?
What happens when you try to boot the restored RAID0 volume? Does it BSOD or just show a never ending Windows logo? A BSOD would indicate a BCD problem where the active boot partition can't be found. A never ending Windows logo would indicate a driver issue with the hard disk controller. In this case it would be the Intel IRST driver. Either way it can be fixed from the WinPE recovery media.
There's always a way to fix bootability problems. The more information you supply, the better chance there is I can help you fix the problem.
Thanks for the reply!
I am indeed having a hard time, and I appreciate all of the suggestions and help.
Here's all the details I can think of, as well as answers to your questions:
1) When I boot the rescue media, I don't get a "loading..." message or any windows logos. After the BIOS screen goes away, its black for a few seconds, then a blue screen with the Acronis Logo comes up, where I select between Acronis TI x64 or a couple other options. Then, it goes right to the Acronis True Image 2021 Home screen. By looking at the file contents of the USB I boot from, it looks like Windows files as I mentioned earlier. At any rate, it successfully boots up.
2) My RAID0 volume is definitely seen as a single disk. So, I tend to agree that I think it has the necessary drivers needed to communicate with the raid controller. And again, I have been able to perform backups on that volume, but just nothing that has successfully changed the partitions or writing any data to the volume.
3) I know the restore operation is not working, because after it completes, and I try to boot from the RAID0 volume, I get the spinning blue Windows logo that ends up trying to 'diagnose my PC' after which I end up in the advanced repair options. From there, I can run a cmd prompt, switch to the drive that is represented by the RAID0 volume, and see that nothing has changed. It still has the same files and directories that existed at the time the PC crashed. To make 100% sure this is true, I created a few test files on that drive, attempted the restore again, and then confirmed that the test files still existed after the restore supposedly succeeded.
4) Some more background about the PC I am trying to get back up: its pretty old, and was recently upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10 Pro. It seemed to be working just fine for about a week, and then a power outage caused it to get shut off, after which it could no longer boot back up (goes to the blue Windows logo). After "preparing automatic repair" for a few minutes, it switches to "diagnosing your PC" and after a short time, a lighter blue screen comes up saying it failed to repair. It gives an error that refers to a log file called "System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt" which logs the fact that it has tried several times to boot, but failed, and does not have a root cause for the failure. After that, I go to the Advanced Repair options to get to a CMD prompt. I have tried every option presented in the Advanced Repair, which lead me to try and just restore the old Windows 7 system from the backups that I made before the Windows 10 upgrade.
That's about everything I can think of. If there are any other details that might help, or if you have any ideas, I'mall ears. Thanks again for taking the time to look at this stuff. I really appreciate it.
Okay, thanks for the additional information. I do understand better now.
You do have the Linux recovery media. That is clear by the fact you get a menu from which you choose TI x64.
I assume the original system was on the RAID0 array you are trying to restore to now. I can't explain why the Linux media is spending 1 1/2 hours and not restoring anything. However, your experiment with putting test files on the RAID0 array and seeing them still present after the attempted restore does seem to confirm that nothing is being restored. It may be that the Linux media does have some RAID support, but not the correct RAID support to actually write to the array.
It would also seem that the original system was corrupted by the power outage causing it not to boot. That makes it difficult to figure out what is wrong. However, your description of how it acts is exactly what I would expect to see from a driver issue. I just went through a very similar experience. I was trying to put a system that was on an NVMe drive connected to a RAID controller onto a 2.5" SSD that was also on the RAID controller as a single drive. The SSD would attempt to boot but fail in the exact same manner as you are seeing. The fix was to inject the IRST driver into the system from the WinPE media. That was very illogical because both the NVMe and the SSD were using the same RAID controller. I don't know why the existing IRST drivers needed to be installed again.
If I were you, I would do three things:
1. First, and foremost, you DO NEED to be using the WinPE media! You need to get TI installed on another computer. Then make WinPE media to use on this computer. Preferably, it should be a Windows 10 computer and make the Simple media. That will use a Windows 10 WinRE media that will have IRST support built in.
2. Next, I would use the WinPE media to inject the IRST drivers into the existing non-bootable system to see if that fixes it. Come back when you have the WinPE media that sees the RAID array properly and I will give you the instructions to inject the driver.
3. Do the restore to the RAID0 array again with the WinPE media. Hopefully, the test files will be gone and the system will actually be restored. That should boot because the RAID array will be connected to the same RAID controller on the same drives in the same position on the motherboard.
So... yeah. I installed Acronis TI 2021 on another computer (a laptop running Windows 10), and went through the process of creating the 'Simple' WinPE media. And... it managed to corrupt two 32GB USB sticks. I don't know if I have extremely bad luck, or what. But getting this product to work, at all, is proving to be far more trouble than it is worth. I think it's time to just boot from a live CD of some Linux distro, format the drives, and start clean. I'll be requesting a refund from the Acronis folks. The amount of effort required for this is just far outside what I deem reasonable, and I have no confidence that I'll get it to perform a simple restore.
Thanks for all the help, I really do appreciate it. But I'm throwing in the towel at this point.
Don't give up. You're so close. The 32 GB USB needs to be formatted as FAT32 and should be empty. That should allow TI to successfully create the WinRE media. You can also use the DVD option.
Starting from scratch is way too much work and you're going to loose too much.
Robert,
After reading the last half dozen or so posts to this thread I believe that confusion is at work here still. Your mention of an SSD used as a cache for a raid 0 provided by IRST I think is telling.
As you say your machine is rather old. I believe it is also running an older version of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology application based on your recent answers to the questions asked of you here.
In older version of the Intel application there was a feature known as Intel Smart Response Technology. This feature leveraged an SSD drive along with a regular HDD in a hybrid raid 0 arrangement in which the SSD, used as a caching device, would store any recently used data so that recall of that data would be accelerated beyond what the HDD was capable of. The reality here is that this feature is a software trick that was not long lived.
So I believe your issue here is that the Intel IRST driver is configured to use raid functions of the controller in an unconventional manner which is in turn at root of your problem. The ATI app and the Rescue Media are not at fault here except that they do not support this hybrid drive arrangement. This I believe would be true of most other if not all other backup apps as well.
I think Mustang is on the right path for you here. Injecting the driver without the SSD acceleration I believe would get things working. You will need to remove the SSD from the equation however to be successful. Disconnecting the data cable to the SSD will achieve that goal.
With the SSD removed the Rescue Media will not be confused about which drive should be written to and therefore will perform the recovery as expected. Keep at it here and you will achieve success.
Enchantech,
Good post. I would think the small SSD would need to be reconnected before the restored system would boot.
Mustang,
The SSD, in the case of ISRT feature is a simple cache. It contains no boot information and the implementation is such that the feature can only be enabled on a singe OS disk after the OS is installed. What occurs is that the Intel software copies user requested data to the SSD and retains that data for quick retrieval. If the user frequently uses this same data then the software keeps the data on the SSD. If the user does not use the data frequently then the data is flushed from the SSD cache to make room for data that is used more frequently. The software can be configured to use a maximum of 64GB and has a minimum space requirement of 18.6GB If I remember correctly.
The technology was first introduced with the Z68 platforms.
Enchantech,
I am familiar with the Smart Response Technology and I agree that your description is accurate. So, I take it you think the restored system would boot successfully without the cache SSD connected.
Mustang,
Yes I do. In fact, I think because of the attempts to restore have rewritten the HDD the SSD is now visible and shows unallocated in the rescue media as a result of the fake raid being broken.
Another way of looking at it is, without Windows loaded, the SSD is not usable and therefore disabled. So boot occurs solely from the HDD then once Windows loads the Intel software makes the SSD available as a cache device.
Enchantech,
Thanks for the insight. It sounds reasonable.
Thanks again for all the replies....
So, the good news... I got it working!
The bad news, I did end up restoring the full backup of the Windows 7 system before I updated it to Windows 10. I think the older hardware is at the root cause of whatever caused Windows 10 to be unable to boot, and unable to repair itself or generate any meaningful error messages or logs. I have a working system, but not on Windows 10. I'll tackle that issue at some other point though.
The solution to the problem was this (a bit wordy, I apologize):
After I decided to give up on using Acronis tools to restore the system, I went ahead and did a fresh install of Windows 7. With that, I was hoping to be able to easily restore the boot volume (which is the RAID0 volume in question) by using Windows' own backup/restore tools to restore the system with a full image that I created on the same day I took the backups with Acronis (I wanted to give myself every possible option if a restore to Windows 7 was needed after the upgrade to 10). When trying to do the install, I had a hard time getting the installer to view my RAID0 volume as a valid target for the installation. At the point where I was able to install drivers, I used another USB stick that has all of the latest drivers for my old PZ68-V Pro motherboard (this includes LAN, USB, Bluetooth, the intel chipset on the mobo, and of course, Intel RST). Even after getting the drivers loaded, I was not able to target any of the drives for the installation. All of them gave the same error: 0x80300001. I tried to research this error, and most people who experienced it had the issue of using a CD/DVD for both the Windows installation media, and for their drivers. The solution was that they had to open/close the CD/DVD drive with Windows in it for the disks to become usable for install. This wasn't the case for me, since I kept all of my current drivers on a USB stick rather than relying on all of the manufacturer CDs for them. However, another user posted that they solved the problem by switching their BIOS SATA configuration to RAID mode from AHCI. That rang a bell. Although I already had my BIOS configured correctly for RAID mode, when I fed the Intel RST drivers to Windows Installation, I had to give it an entire folder, not a specific setup file. I took a look at this folder on the USB drive, and it indeed contains both the AHCI and RAID drivers in the same place. So, I moved the AHCI drivers out and into their own folder, and tried the install again, feeding only the RAID drivers to the install. That allowed the RAID0 volume to be selected for the install target. For some reason, when presented with both sets of drivers, Windows always picked AHCI over RAID, even though RAID mode is needed for everything to work. So, this made me wonder if the Acronis Rescue Media tool was doing the same thing. Since I had a fresh Windows 7 system up and running, I went ahead and installed Acronis IT 2021 on it, and opened up the tool for creating rescue media. Since I was back on my PC, I had the option of using CD/DVD for the media instead of burning through more USB sticks in case they got corrupted again (and by the way, I did start off with freshly formatted FAT32 sticks before). So, I made two rescue media DVDs: one with the Simple setup, and one with Advanced/WinRE. Just as it did before, the Simple DVD was not able to boot. The Advanced media gives you the option to include drivers, so I added just the RAID drivers for Intel RST. And luckily, this DVD was able to boot. From there, I went ahead and repeated the steps to do a restore (initializing the RAID0 disk, even though it seemed ok already) and then kicking off the restore operation: again. It ended up taking less than an hour (the backup file was about 320GB, and was sitting on a SATA drive in the same PC). I saw the exact same output in the logs as I did before, so I thought I had the same result, but when I exited the Acronis UI, the cmd window was still up, so I took a look at the content of the drives, and I could clearly see my old system was back, the restore indeed succeeded. I did a reboot, and the old Win7 system came right back up!
So, for someone who has as much trouble as I did, here are the steps that would have worked the very first time:
1) Create the rescue media on a working PC in Acronis 2021 with the 'Advanced' option. Use the top listed option for Windows PE/RE. If you have any tricky storage setups, ensure that you have the exact drivers you need included here. The tool will let you browse through whatever source it can read and you can include many, many drivers if necessary. But, as you saw in my case, only include those that it really needs. I'm not sure why each time I created media with the Simple option, it wound up not being bootable.
2) For the SSD cache over the RAID0 volume, I didn't have to disable or change anything. It worked just fine. Some people take the step of disabling write cache on the SSD, but in the case of Intel Smart Response Technology, I already have it configured in Enhanced mode, which means it uses a write-through cache, writing to the cache memory and the accelerated volume at the same time. This is how the system keeps going in the event that the SSD died or became unusable.
TLDR;
The key was having the Advanced bootable media, built on Windows PE/RE (not Linux) with ONLY the correct RAID driver from Intel added to it. If I had known about the AHCI driver preference, and that the rescue media created in Advanced mode would boot correctly, I think I would have had this done correctly on the first try. The backups themselves were all fine, and once the RAID0 volume could be written to correctly, the restore went fine.
Thanks to everyone who took a look at this with me and made suggestions. Each one gave some piece of the puzzle.
Robert,
Congratulations! I'm very glad to hear you stuck with it and had success.
There is a leaning curve and I'm sure you'll be able to handle it on the first try in the future.
Best of luck with the upgrade to Windows 10. You just may be correct that there is no driver support in Windows 10 for your old hardware. If the manufacturers of the motherboard or of the hardware components haven't provided Windows 10 drivers, you may be out of luck.
Thanks!
Yes, it should be much easier next time. One thing that should probably be passed to the Acronis team: the rescue media, when created with the 'Simple' method, does NOT create bootable media. It failed for me on multiple PCs, using both USB and DVD. That should be addressed. That may have helped me succeed my first time around.
I'm not too concerned about the Win10 upgrade. I'm actually building a new PC and retiring this one. New one is AMD/X570 based, with some very fast SSDs (NVMe, in fact). I can only hope it has the longevity that this Intel/PZ68 setup has had.
And yes, I confirmed that the mobo maker (ASUS) doesn't specifically list drivers for Windows 10. So even if I had gotten it to repair, I'd likely have more issues next time it updated, or was otherwise forced to reboot.