Failure to image WD Velociraptor 300GB
I mistakenly posted this on the "business" forum so this is a repost:
I'll be glad to read FAQs and other articles but at the outset, I am not a double-E major and many of the articles I have read already are poorly written, confusing, and overly complicated. I want as simple an explanation as possible and with no steps left out.
Environment: Windows 7 64-bit, WD Velociraptor 300GB, Acronis True Image Home 2011, both drives are currently set for Simple and my current C: drive has no hidden or diagnostic partitions. No RAID. Should be about as simple as it can get.
Situation: Upgrading my boot drive from 150GB to 300GB. The current drive works fine, it's just about out of space. The existing drive is a WD Raptor. I tried Acronis for WD and it did a little better than Acronis True Image Home but ultimately did not boot.
Goal: Image old C: on new C:, reboot, everything works as before.
Result: Never able to boot.
More detail with Acronis True Image Home:
Followed instrux I found on the forums to make a bootable CD with Acronis on it, selected the clone option, Automatic, then as soon as the "copy" message displays, Acronis does one of two things:
a) 3/4 times it freezes, makes no progress.
b) 1/4 times it reported immediate write errors and made no further progress.
After reboot with old C:, did a couple of things:
1) Looked at the new drive in Windows Explorer, appeared unformatted.
2) Went into Disk Manager, formatted the new drive, copied data to it, no errors, worked fine.
My conclusion is the new HDD works fine. I also loaded Windows 7 from DVD and it boots fine. The ultimate workaround will be to do that and reinstall everything but it's worth trying Acronis another time if it's going to work.
I don't understand what you're talking about.
"Reverse clone" means what? External enclosure? Why? I don't have one and don't plan on getting one. When I boot from the Acronis CD I have the option to clone one disk on another disk so both have to be attached to the motherboard. And this doesn't work; Acronis freezes as soon as it starts copying data.
Nothing under OR makes sense. First you mention "USD" which I think should be "USB" but how do I fit 100GB of data onto a USB flash drive? My current hard drive has >100GB of data on it. Your last step about CD comes completely out of the blue.
I think you mean to copy something onto a CD, then boot to the Acronis CD and restore that onto the new disk. Then what? Do I have to reinstall all my applications?
I am not familiar enough with the Acronis recovery options to know what you're talking about. Can you give some more details?
I appreciate your trying to help and I'm not giving you a hard time but you shouldn't take it for granted that I know Acronis inside and out. This is the first time I've ever used it.
I have asked Western Digital where I can get updated firmware for the new drive; my system BIOS is current. I believe the new HDD is fine but until I figure out how to update the firmware for all I know, that could be the culprit.
PS - When I said I have no hidden or diagnostic partitions, I had already checked that with Windows Disk Manager; besides, I put this system together myself. Those types of partitions are usually on factory installed systems aren't they?
I'll try chkdsk /r to eliminate that as a possibility. I routinely do it but you're right, there could be crud on the old drive.
Bogus comment so I can see new comments.
Steve,
After checking the source disk for errors
chkdsk x: /R where x = drive letter being checked for errors.
You may want to run chkdsk more than once as often times one pass does not correct all the errors on some disks.
You are correct about performing the clone when booted from the CD.
A couple changes I would make before performing the next clone procedure.
1. Reverse the data connector on the motherboard so the new disk is on the same MB connector as the original disk was.
2. Attach the source disk to another connector.
3. Boot from the TI Rescue CD. Perform the clone and shutdown.
4. Remove the data cable from the motherboard on the old smaller drive,
5. Reboot with only the larger drive attached. Confirm in Bios that larger disk being selected. It should as you only have the new drive attached.
6. After several successful boots, you can re-attach the old disk should you want to use as a data disk.
Also suggest you the "Read before cloning" link listed in tan/gold color in my signature below.
The above should succeed, but if it doesn't, the option 2 in post #1 by Pat L would be the next step.
Good luck.
Steve,
I corrected the spelling of USD to USB. Thank you for pointing this out.
You have 2 different things:
- the Acronis bootable recovery "CD" (you can use a USB flash drive also). This doesn't contain your backup. It contains a version of ATI that works outside of Windows. When you boot your computer on it, you can clone and backup without having Windows in your ways. Highly recommended for cloning a system disk. You create this "CD" by using ATI's Create Bootable Media feature.
- a USB disk (this is what I meant to write instead of USD). This is where you store your backup file.
Glad that you are sure you don't have a hidden system reserved partition. When you install Windows 7 on a new disk, it creates it by default, unless you instruct otherwise.
A "normal" clone is when you leave the source disk where it is, and clone it to another disk (the clone), and then put the other disk at the same spot as the origin disk. Always use the "CD" to do the cloning of a system disk. You should never boot Windows before making sure only the source OR the clone is in the computer.
A "reverse" clone has typically better chances of working. In this procedure, you take the source disk out, put it in an external enclosure or on another connector in the computer. You put your new disk at the same spot the origin disk was. You boot on the "CD". You do the clone from the origin to the new disk. You remove the origin disk and you reboot.
Be aware that the cloning operations has risks that include the corruption of your source disk, whereas a backup and restore doesn't have these risks.
"Glad that you are sure you don't have a hidden system reserved partition. When you install Windows 7 on a new disk, it creates it by default, unless you instruct otherwise. "
I do have one of those. It does not display in Windows Disk Manager as hidden though. And by default, Acronis and another clone application I tried, when you use the "recommended" option creates a propotionally larger System Reserved partition on the larger hard drive. I don't understand the point then about keeping it the same size. Why don't Acronis and other applications do that for you as part of the "recommended" clone? (The reason for the question is, maybe a proportionally larger System Reserved partition is normal and expected.)
The words I have seen in other posts are "hidden diagnostic" partition or "hidden" partition, not System Reserved.
Right. Normally the System Reserved partition is not visible from Windows Explorer, because it doesn't have a letter assigned to it by default, but you can see it from the disk management console (search for "create and format hard disk partitions").
ATI resizes the partitions proportionally in automatic settings. I am not 100% sure that could result in breaking the alignment. If your automatically resized system reserved partition is such that the next partition doesn't have an offset divisible by 4096, the alignment would be broken. In doubt, I always go through the backup and restore where I can control what ATI does to my partitions.
Steve,
If your system reserved partition is the active partition (as shown in Windows Disk Management), you could remove the drive letter before cloning and there is a good chance TI would not resize the partition. You could restore the drive letter later should there be a need.
Using the manual mode in cloning gives you some controls. Click on the yellow link below and look at item #3-CC. This guide could give you a feel for the use of the manual mode but the guide does not specifically match your setup.
Can I send you a private message about "read before cloning"? I have some suggestions and questions about it and I don't want to seem like I'm flaming you out in the open. This is the first time I've been on this forum and I don't see a private message link.
I want to make sure I have this correct before I start:
1) Make the Acronis recovery CD and boot to it.
2) With the original C: attached to the motherboard, image that to an external USB HDD.
3) Connect new C: to the same connector old C: was on and reboot again using the Acronis CD.
4) Restore from USB to new C:
5) Reboot to new C:
I have my doubts because the issue was, Acronis never started copying data to the new C: drive but I'm willing to try it.
Is that correct?
Just some clarification to be precise:
2) Make a disk and partition backup of the entire disk (C:\ is one of the 2 partitions you need). Do not use sector by sector. Validate your backup after completion.
3b) In ATI, click on add new disk, choose your new disk (look carefully at the disk characteristics as partition drive letters are not the same as in Windows). OK that it will delete all the data on your new disk.
4) Since you restore back to a bigger drive, here is the proper protocol:
- in the first pass, restore only the system reserved partition. Look at the partition label and size, because the recovery CD might show drive letters that are not the same as in Windows. For example, the system reserved partition would have a drive letter, like D: in ATI on the CD. Its new location is your new disk. Make the restored partition primary and active. Do not worry about the drive letter. Leave the 1MB offset before the partition, do not change its size. Do not use sector by sector. This restore will be quick. Then,
- without rebooting, restore the C:\System partition. Do not change the offset on the left, resize the partition to take advantage of your new disk. Mark it primary, NOT active. Do not worry about the drive letter.
- without rebooting, restore the MBR+track0 and the disk signature.
If the recovery failed, this would be because of disk issues. You would have to go back to your old disk, run chkdsk /r on it. Do your backup again and try again.
Thanks very much for all the detail. I don't know when I'll be able to try it exactly but should be next few days. I'll let you know.
Hi Steve,
The link to private messaging is to the left-- under my avatar--just to the right of "send PM".
Your private message would be welcome.
"4) Since you restore back to a bigger drive, here is the proper protocol:
- in the first pass, restore only the system reserved partition. Look at the partition label and size, because the recovery CD might show drive letters that are not the same as in Windows. For example, the system reserved partition would have a drive letter, like D: in ATI on the CD. Its new location is your new disk. Make the restored partition primary and active. Do not worry about the drive letter. Leave the 1MB offset before the partition, do not change its size. Do not use sector by sector. This restore will be quick. "
This did not work. I think there's no point in continuing with Acronis but I'll wait for your comment. I contacted Western Digital who tells me my new drive does have the most recent firmware. Also, like I said before, I can load Windows 7 from DVD and boot to it so the hard drive does not appear to be faulty.
Here are the issues:
a) Minorish: If I do a "Recover disks and partitions", I see no option to turn off sector-by-sector during System Restore recovery.
b) Major: First time I started the System Reserved recovery, my system rebooted unexpectedly and I had to reset BIOS. This made no sense.
c) Next two times I tried it Acronis freezes as soon as the operation starts. The cursor doesn't move and there is no progress.
Is there any point in opening a support case? Does Acronis have support and if so, is it competent? This looks like a bug in their software. FWIW, I also tried writing ones and zeros to the new drive with a similar result (no freezing but also no progress).
Did you leave a step out? After I add a new disk I'm left with Unallocated Space, which means the entire disk is unformatted. That's probably why it's doing sector-by-sector. How am I supposed to restore the rest of my data to an unformatted disk?
Which, by the way, I'm not clear when I'm supposed to do that. Is it the step after restoring System Reserved? The C:\System step?
Steve, normally you don't need to format the disk before restoring. Don't worry about the restoring sector-by-sector. If you restore a disk and partition backup, ATI will take care of the formatting.
b) that is weird. Did you make some BIOS changes between the backup and the restore? Are you sure you are not confused by the changing drive letters? Is the target drive the only drive in the computer (aside from the drive where the backup is)? Is the backup on an internal or external drive? Some users have had issues with backups on internal drives.
Try this: boot on the Win7 DVD, launch Diskpart from a command prompt from the DVD, then type list disk, select disk X, where X is the letter of your new disk, type CLEAN. Retry the restore of system reserved.
After that, I am running out of ideas: maybe you have some issues with the Linux version and a BartPE or WinPE disk will work better. I would contact Acronis Suppor
Thanks again for your help!
No BIOS changes. This is a new system with AMI BIOS and I've noticed that from time to time apropos of nothing, BIOS loses state and I have to go in and save my configuration, which is no big deal because I'm not using any unusual settings. I mainly just make sure that the boot order is correct.
I don't care about changing drive letters. When I select the restore source, I select the .tlb (?) file on the external USB hard drive and the target is Unallocated Space.
During the restore, there are only two devices attached: the external USB HDD and the new HDD. The old C: drive is not attached.
I don't think the diskpart suggestion will work. When I last booted, with only the Acronis CD, the USB HDD, and new C:, BIOS did not detect any hard drives due to the fact that new C: is unformatted and unallocated.
I'm going to go another route first (using Retrospect backup software, which worked like a charm with XP) and if that doesn't work most likely I'll spend the long weekend reinstalling everything. Whatever works... I paid for a Retrospect support incident and I think that is a more likely path to success. In the past I was able to recover everything using Retrospect but when I tried it last week it wouldn't boot afterward. Anyhoo, I will update this when/if I get something to work.
I might contact Acronis support anyway because I'm not the only person who will ever have this issue.
Steve,
The BIOS should detect the hard drive, even if it is not formatted.
Did you check you have the latest BIOS version for your board?
You might want to try to do the restore in another computer. You can do this if you boot on the CD as you did.
I do have the latest BIOS. I have one computer so trying it on another isn't an option.
Like I said, at this point I'm punting on Acronis and I'll come back to it most likely after I find another solution. I think it's worth reporting to Support because they need to know and because somebody else is going to run into this. I'm doing nothing exotic. This should "just work"
The situation worries me though because if my original C: drive had failed, I wouldn't have been able to try any of this. I need a solution that will protect me in that event as well....
Hoo boy. I'm going sideways and work is very busy but I will update this as soon as it comes to some kind of resolution. It's looking more likely that my 300GB HDD is bad but I'm not certain of that. Thanks to everyone for your advice.
Resolution, I think...................
During this process, I replaced my C: drive and the external USB HDD on which I stored my backup. The original cause of the failure to image could have been anything, possibly the new C: drive, which must have been faulty from the git-go. It behaved normally at first; like I said, I could format it, copy data to it, and Windows 7 would load on it.
But as time went on new C: started exhibiting strange and horrible behaviors, like causing Windows to crash if it was installed as the second hard drive (not the boot drive), failure to be formatted, etc.
What I ended up doing was backing up old C: using Roxio Retrospect, installing Windows 7 from DVD on new C:, applying all Windows updates, then restoring data and registry to new C:. Time-wise it's impossible to say which is better. Loading all the Windows updates took an hour or two but the Retrospect backup and verification completed in about 2 hours, whereas the Acronis backup took about 6 hours.
I have no way of knowing if Acronis cloning would have worked instead but after all the time I've spent on it and the ongoing work crisis, I'm not going to try to image using Acronis anytime soon.
Thanks again to everyone for your help. There was no way to anticipate when I started down this road just how long and strange it would become.
Under time-wise, make that 4+ hours to back up and verify using Retrospect. Each part (backup and verification) took about 2 hours.