Upgraded motherboard, ATI refuses recover disk backup
Build # 6613
Not for the first time by any means (sigh) ATI lets me down when I'm most depending on it, leaving me high and dry.
I have upgraded my Asus mobo, which supported legacy MBR boot-disks as well as GPT, for an MSI Z170-A PRO mobo which (I've found) doesn't.
All three of my (MBR-style) HDDs remained in place unchanged, including my system disk (C:\ drive containing Windows 10). This had been backed-up using ATI on a weekly schedule, most recently on 11 Oct 2016.
(I created a boot rescue disc shortly after upgrading to ATI 2015 , but never had cause to use it 'til now).
After installing the new MSI mobo my PC would not boot into Windows. I used a clean-install copy of Windows 10 I have written to a usb-stick to get to a Command-prompt terminal, and by invoking DISKPART discovered that my Disk 0 was without an EFI partition and that the C:\ drive on that disk was showing as "raw"/unformatted (even tho' it contains the active copy of Windows 10 I'd been using up to that moment). Attempts at repair using 'fixboot' and 'fixmbr' were fruitless.
I then turned to my trusty (ha! ha!) ATI Boot Rescue Disk. It could see the backup .tib file (stored on an external usb HDD) but was unable to recover my system disk from it: no button to click-on to activate recovery ever appeared.
Next I tried to install a clean copy of Windows 10 from the usb-stick but upon selecting Disk 0 got the error-message that it could not be installed to an MBR-style HDD, only to a GPT-style one. So that stopped any progress with installing Win 10. So I was forced to resort to using DISKPART -> CLEAN to completely clean Disk 0, and following that to convert it to GPT and then install onto it the clean copy of Windows 10 from the usb-stick.
I was trusting that by in this way restoring the previously-missing EFI partition, as well as formatting the C:/ drive as NTFS, ATI would be enabled to do its stuff once more by recovering to that disk the disk-image which it had created, stored on the external usb HDD.
I WAS WRONG!!!! All attempts so far made to get it to do this have failed.
As a cross-check I have just made a new "test" disk-backup of disk 0 (note that this is a backup of my system disk as it now is, following upon installation of a clean copy of Windows). ATI REFUSES TO RECOVER FROM THAT BACKUP EITHER!!!
Please tell me what more I need to do that I haven't done already to get ATI to perform the functions that I paid for.
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Bobbo
Your prompt response much appreciated! Answers:-
- The old system supported both legacy (MBR) and GPT disks. It used UEFI (not BIOS), but was able to boot to a MBR system-disk. When I upgraded to it I kept all my disks as MBR-style seeing no reason to convert to GPT. With the new mobo, nothing but UEFI boot options are offered. The Acronis rescue disk was unable to recover the backed-up system disk and I couldn't find any other means of booting into Windows (presumably because of the absence of any EFI partition?).
- Yes it is.
- Yes it does.
- (not using RAID).
- I'll try it, when I'm able to re-boot using the rescue disk once more.
- The bios as now set up does (as you say) have "windows boot manager" as first boot priority (but I haven't as yet had a successful recovery, alas).
- Watch this space.
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OK, reporting back...
Bobbo
I now feel a complete idiot.
First things first:- my backup has now been recovered!
What happened was that on my 'to do' list following swapping mobos was "update BIOS" - but it was #2. #1 was installing the new mobo's firmware off the provided CD/ROM. Having done that, I was enabled to update the BIOS from within Windows.
So, when at step #3 I had tried the first time(s) to recover my ATI backup to a formatted, converted-to-GPT, C:\ drive, failed, and posted the OP above I hadn't then gone back into the bios. Only when I subsequently did so (after writing "watch this space") did I discover that updating the bios had had the effect (unbeknown to me before then) of negating what I'd written in the OP: the updated bios now does give me the choice of either legacy+UEFI or UEFI alone.
Once I had activated the dual setup ATI was able from within Windows (NOT from the rescue disk though; I tried that first and it still couldn't see the external usb HDD where the backups are stored) to get ATI to recover the backed-up system disk. On all previous attempts to do that, after re-starting the computer it had just gone straight back into (unchanged) Windows; this time it opened in the pre-boot environment and did its stuff.
I'm most grateful for your help in pointing (shoving?) me in the right direction, and I withdraw the rude things I said about ATI!
As soon as I'm able I shall be making a new boot rescue disk which will image my setup as it now is (including new mobo and an EFI partition), so as to be better-equipped next time.
Thanks again.
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Good deal! Yeah, bios upgrades can vary from system to system. On my Dells at work, bios upgrades, are really smooth and all settings remain in place (unless new features are added, then they may need to be tweaked. On my custom build using a Gigabyte motherboard at home, anytime I update the firmware with this one, I have to go back in and configure all of the bios settings from scratch!
Main thing is you got it working and found the issue in the process so you're now all the more wiser :)
Definitely make sure to build and test the reocvery media to make sure it sees your internal drive and the drive where the backups are restored. Better to get that sorted out before something happens to the system and you can't use Acronis from within Windows. Only thing to watch out for when using the rescue media is that you restore in the same method that the OS was installed as. Typcially, if you have a legacy installeed OS, then you want to boot the recovery media in legacy mode too. And if the OS is installed as UEFI, then you want to boot the recovery media in UEFI mode. The reason being is that Acronis will set the drive to MBR or UEFI depending on how the media is booted so you typically want it to be the same. In some cases, you can convert from MBR (legacy) to UEFI and it will work (not all though). However, you can never go from UEFI back to Legacy (it will let you do it, but it won't ever boot).
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