"New Partition Location" shades out the drive I wish to restore to!
I really hope someone can help! I have a major problem on my hands, and I am relatively new to Acronis software!
I have a Dell XPS420 which has been configured a pair of WD 256Gb RAID0 (Striped) hard drives. One of the hard drives has failed, but fortunately I have a full system backup on an external drive (using True Image Home 2009).
I have purchased, unplugged the old, plugged in the new brand new replacement hard drive (which is identical to the old one... another WD 256Gb SATA drive.
Using the True Image Home 2009 recovery CD (build 9,796) I have been able to verify the external backup is good. The Dell uses the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and I can enter the config of this at boot up time. Doing this, I have deleted the old RAID array and created a new array using the two hard drives (one being the new one). On boot up now the Intel Matrix Storage Manager shows the RAID0 config to look exactly like it did befor the old drive fail.
So far, so good...
Now I boot up on the True Image recovery CD to start the restore. I select the Archive ok, click "Restore whole disks and partitions", select the "MBR and Track 0" and "NTFS (OS)(C:)" partitions all looking fine. The next screen is to Specify restore settings of Partition C. I click "New Location" and the New partition location screen comes up. It shows Disk 1 as being my external drive. Disk 2 and Disk 3 are both shaded out (and therefore unable to be selected) but show they are for my two 256Gb internal hard drives. The Partition names in this list simply states "Unallocated", which I am assuming is because they haven't yet been restored or anything installed on them yet?
I'm presuming I need to select one of these shaded out drives (presumably Disk 2 in the New Partion Location list?), but I can't!
This is the point at which I'm stuck! Acronis tech support haven't been able to help. They've tried sending me different ISO recovery disks, and even suggested configuring the RAID off and seeing if I can restore to a single drive. But all suggestions have resorted in the same problem.
Has anyone got any other suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated!!
Hi Mark
Thanks for trying to help! I have some good news... and some bad!
I've been trying various ways to get around the problem. My last attempt (before my post above) was to turn the RAID off, have the system recognise two non-RAID drives and see if I could restore to one of them? That was the last suggestion given to me by Acronis tech support. It failed in the same manner described above, with both drives showing shaded out.
Incidentally, my previous attempts when it was a RAID0 config was also showing two shaded out hard drives, so you first para comments was making some sense.
So I went back in to the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, recreated the RAID0 array using the two 256Gb drives, and rebooted from the TI rescue disk. Tried the backup wizard, as you suggested, and was excited to see it saying there was only one RAID drive! I then tried the restore, and this time it too allowed me to select the one RAID drive for the restore location.
2 hrs+ later, the restore has finished "succesfully"!! But when I reboot (without the CD in the drive!) it seems to get stuck immediately after the (normal) Intel Matrix Storage Manager screen. The screen/boot up appears to just freeze at this point, with the Matrix display showing what appears to be a perfectly normal RAID array.
I've gone back booting up on the TI Rescue CD and started the Backup wizard again, just to see what it says. It can see the one RAID drive, and interestingly it thinks it has data on it. There's a clue as to what the problem may be, but I don't know how to fix it... the backup wizard shows the RAID drive as having a "Flag" of "Log"... presumably for Logical?! The external drive can also be seen in the backup wizard disk list, and this is showing a Flag of "Pri"... presumably Primary?!!
I'm guessing the restore has worked but not returned the drive as a Primary, hence it doesn't seem to want to boot off it?
Any suggestions where I go from here?
Thanks once again for helping me in this matter.
Good news, Alan. I think you've almost got it.
For some unknown reason, TI will often default to "logical" when restoring a partition. You should repeat the restore procedure but this time, watch the wizard screens carefully. Make sure that you restore the partition as "Active", assuming this is the partition that the PC will boot from.
An alternative, if you have Acronis Disk Director, is to boot to the Disk Director CD and convert the partition from logical to Primary, and set the "Active" flag on the partition. If you can do this it will only take a minute and will save you from repeating the 2+ hour restore process.