Recovery not working properly?

Hi KennyK,

its funny, checked amazon for your question ...just TI2012 mention all W7 releases as supported... the older 11/10 didn't.

But I do remember, that I had to switch some years ago to TI10 because it was the only only one able to backup my W7 computer. (32 bit)

According your initial problem. I am facing a similiar issue.... had a laptop backuped initialy 1year ago with TI11 and did incremental backups over
the last year.
Last week the laptop run into a strange state and I wanted to restore it out of my backups. But most of the personal things like: outlook.pst and *.doc, ppt all personal stuff is missing within the backup. Check all the incremental backups as well..nothing. The only personal thing I found were the "Favorites" folder, this was the one which was filled with personal stuff.

Strange thing is, that I did a last full backup with my older Ti10, as I found no chance to the get the W7 running again, but this backup also didn't
backup any personal things except of the "Favorites" folder (of IE) and all the "standard" folders Programm Files, Windows folder etc.

So I am not sure if this is a permission problem. I booted from Ti10 CD and did the backup...I expected to have all stuff within the set (as I did it several times over the last year)

So to summarize it, lost 1year of personal data... and I don't understand why this happened...checking since some days all possible forums for a proper answer...but so far nothing usable

btw: my other 3 systems (W7 - but 32 bit) are fine, checked them and found my personal stuff... the laptop was W7 64 bit

Win 7 compatibility began with version 2010.

If the backup from TrueImage 11 was a full disk backup, there should be a good chance to restore the entire partition or maybe C only.

One of the many frequent problems is that the user has too many incrmental backups and not enough full backups.
As a result, each and every one of the inc backps must be present and healthy in order to restore any of more recent inc backups.
I don't know what the magic number to keep is but for my own use I would not keep more than 25-30 inc before creating a new full backup.

thanks Groverh for your answer.

it is currently a full disk backup of C: means I started with an initial full and than may 8 - 10 incrementals. But I checked them from beginning, nothing
available.

I wanted to restore it into a virutal box, because I don't have the original laptop (its my neighbours) I just need to verify if the data are really not available, because I still can't believe it!

The folders are their like "Documents" but the content is empty or at least only some windows standard subfolders (except the mentioned Favorites folder)

We will see ... I didn't stop, because I want to understand :-D

Steffen,
Re-check the folders but try other paths such as
c:\users\username\My Documents\try a few folders
or
c:\users\username\desktop\MyDocs

even try doing a file search on the backup for a known file name which is missing.

GroverH,

I did that already.

Yesterday i took the initial fullbackup an the following 5 incrementals. I found out, that the c:\users folder has in all of them the same timestamp 22.11.2012
It looks like nothing was changed within this folder (over the last year) so that TI didn't had to store anything.

I thought first that Ti is just showing me the initial fullback-up (and not the incremental state), but than i found the date of the current backup day on e.g. C:\windows folder and also pagefile.sys and hyberfile.sys dad the correct updated date. So it seems that it backuped somthing but nothing in the C:\users folder (other folders are also affected with this behavior, that only the initial date is available)

One idea was that i could try to convert the Ti backup into that windows backup...? TI is offering this feature. But honestly i start to believe, that the windows installation was somehow corrupted. It was a preinstalled Windows from Lenovo.

Also my last full-backup with the unrecoverable windows from last week show nothing personal in the C:\users\\ folder which is unlogical, because the stuff was their. Strange behavior. Never had such an problem before.

As far as i understand is that TI is checking the changes on a sector based level and recognize changes that way. So it should than recognize changes on folders like C:\user + subfolders because this changes very regular.

Running out of ideas...

is the backup a partition backup or a disk backp or a files & folders backup?

it is a partition backup - complete partition C:

did a check between inc-backup 3 and 4, which is a month later than the previous. the statment drive C: amount display says that between both
are 10Gig more data. But where do I find them? Is it possible to show the real differences between 2 backups? So what really changed?

http://download.cnet.com/TreeSize-Free/3000-2248_4-11653027.html

One option would be to use the Acronis/tools/mount option and mount each of the two backups so that each backup appeared as a new disk letter under Windows Explorer. There you could compare the backups and actual.

Another good tool is the Jam Software Treesize-free program. With the two backups mounted, you could start the Treesize free 3 times and have Treesizse load and view each of the 3 partitions being compared.

Thanks GroverH,

I did the mount of all volumes and compared. The data I need are not available and were not stored (seems like some kind of magic :-D)

What I learned from this problem? That is to do a regular check of my created backups. See if the files I need are their for sure.

So it is like in x-files ...trust no one... especially no software which is written by humans :-)

Thanks for your help and support!

Steffen,
Why not consider a backup type which includes everything on the disk including all partitions.
Click on link 2 below and look at the very first picture which illustratates a disk mode or disk image backup.
With this type backup, you can create an identical replacement disk whenever there is a need by restoring the disk image backup onto an old or new disk.