Cannot restore to original location

I am using Acronis TIH 2009 build 9,615 and using the rescue media bootable ISO.

When I go to do a restore I cannot choose original location. That option is greyed out? I can only restore to a new location.

In my recent case I had to restore the entire image of my C drive, when all I wanted was to restore the registry. I am doing some testing with Acronis and my system was no longer bootable due to registry changes. So I wanted to restore only registry to fix this, but could not do so as restore to original location was greyed out?

Dennis

 

Sorry this is too late for you now, but when you get a working system install the free ware registry backup ERUNT.

I use this and have enabled the option to automatically create a fresh archive every morning upon start-up, and it takes less than 10 seconds.

I also manually launch it whenever I want to do something dangerous with RegEdit.

Because I always have a good backup instantly available, I have never needed it !!!

There are however many who have needed it and swear by it.

Regards
Alan

 

@Dennis
What kind of image did you create?
- a data/folder-backup
- a full backup?


@Alan
Is your boot partition NTFS or FAT32 to where you restore the ERUNT-registry-backup?

 

My backup was a full image backup of my C drive, which should contain the MBR, the system state, and all data.

And you would think I would not need to use another product to backup my registry if I already have a copy in my acronis backup. All I wanted to do was restore the system state, or just the registry.

So now I have to make a backup of my system state, and a full image backup of the C in order to do what I want. Which is a duplication of time and space.

This product, it not even close to baked in. I am finding bugs daily in this software, this feels like a Beta 1. I created a data backup of my entire D drive using the My Data option. 10 hours later I had a 350gb image, which was great. But if you right click and edit the task (I currently have it set to incremental daily at 1am) nothing is checked, so to edit the task you have to remember all the settings, as nothing is retained on edit. But if you do not edit and instead run it again, it works.

I had a similar issue having it remember email settings. This is just a few examples, I have stumbled across several issues already and I have only been playing with this for a week now. Did no one test this thing before it shoved to market? I have another post here that talks about the fact that .tib is not associated with any program on my vista box, so I cannot explore any of my backups.

Acronis appears to still have the lead in this imaging market, but bugs like this, they won't hold it long. Already these issues caused me to search again for other choices and I am now evaluating Genie Backup as an alternative.

Here are some screens to show what I was talking about.
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-27_130951.png
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-27_131056.png
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-27_131253.png
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-27_131337.png

Dennis

 

And yet another bug, this time if you right click a task and choose change schedule, your settings are not remembered and you are presented with the following screen

http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-27_134706.png

My current task is set for daily at 1am

Notice also that it says "Error: Incorrect repetition period", which makes no sense, as my repetition is just daily, or does daily not exist in the Acronis world?

Full of bugs, should be pulled back to Beta status, this is ridiculous.

 

Download build 9646 at Acronis website.
Try it with it and let us know...

9615 is ... (no comment)

 

I use Windows XP Home Edition with SP3 on an NTFS partition.
My auto backups are held in C:\WINDOWS\ERDNT\AutoBackup

Regards
Alan

 

Can this POC restore at all?

I'm on 9646 and try the most rudimentary backup/restore of my system. I do not want to restore to the original location - guess why. But that's the only location offered.

Keep us posted on your Genie evaluation.

BTW: Sites like Top Ten Reviews most likely merely reads the data sheets, possibly the manual.

 

@MrMorse,

I downloaded 9646 and have the same issues. You cannot restore to original location when using the rescue media. But you can restore to original location in windows. Problem is, when you really need to restore to original location, like in my case, you cannot boot into windows. This is one of many bugs I found, but this bug is a show stopper.

Yeah I could restore to a new location, then use another program to move those files to replace the original files, but give me a break, this is one of the must have things to work.

Acronis gets and F for push to market before it is ready.

Moving on to test genie.

Dennis

 

Yes, this would be at me a show-stopper too.

But it doesn't appear at my Ti-installation.
If I create a partition-image I can always restore to the same location. Always.

 

Using the rescue media? You made a image of your operating system drive and are able to boot to rescue media and restore certain files to original location?

I have tried this on XP laptop and Vista desktop using the last two versions of this product and neither can restore to original location using the boot CD. I can do this on both using windows.

Dennis

 

I think we have to clarify something...

I make full partition images only. These Images I can restore always to the same hdd location.

And now you tell something about "certain files"?!?
It doesn't fit.

It seems that you create 'data/folder'-backups. I had asked about it but your answer was: "My backup was a full image backup of my C drive, which should contain the MBR, the system state, and all data."

From a partition-image you cannot restore "certain files".
You can mount the image and you can copy "certain files".

I'm a little bit confused...

 

MrMorse,

I am in fact using images and not data backups. And, maybe you were not aware of this, but with an image backup you have two choices on restore.

1. You can choose "Restore whole disks and partitions"
2. You can choose "Restore chosen files and folders"

So YES, I am using image backup. But when you go to restore an image, you are not stuck with restoring the entire image, you can in fact restore a single folder or file out of that image. If you do this in windows you are allowed to restore to original location or a new location. IF you do this using the rescue media then you can only restore to a new location.

My point is, this is crap or a bug. Because if you cannot boot to windows then you will want the ability to restore to original location, and especially doing so picking and choosing what files. Like in my case, my registry was the only thing messed up causing me not to boot. And I had many many changes to my system since my last image backup, all I wanted was to restore my registry, but I was forced to restore the entire image.

If this helps, see these screen shots
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-29_230605.png
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-29_230648.png
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-29_230716.png
http://webpages.charter.net/dlevens/acronis/2008-11-29_230725.png

These pictures are when it works in windows. In the rescue media these are the same except restore to original location is greyed out.

Dennis

 

You are right, I didn't know the possibility to 'restore' folders from a partition image.

Under rescue-cd you start linux. Linux has annother handling regarding the drive letters.
If you want to restore e.g. a folder called "C:\myfolder\mysubfolder" the Windows has the right drive letter information. The Linux not. The restore will fail.
Because Acronis is aware of this they grey out the field.

 

I just test it myself.

You are right that Ti greys out the field 'original location'.
And this is correct from Ti!
It is so I mentioned in my previous posting. Ti cannot know the right location because of the drive letter handling of Linux.

But chose 'other location' and go to the next dialog step.
And here, here you can choose the right destination. You choose the original location where data came from.
Then you have the functionallity you want to get:
Restore to the original location.

BTW:
In Ti11 you have the same behavior. But in Ti11 you have not the step to distinguish between 'original location' and 'other location'. This step is skipped by Ti11. It goes directly to the step to choose the destination...

 

actually this is not the case. I stumbled across a case today where I had a full image of a system that I needed to restore, before restoring the image, I booted to the rescue media and chose to restore just a few files and could choose to restore to original location. This was on a Lenovo Thinkcenter 8171-CTO system. I was restoring an image that was made last year using acronis 9 server edition. I used acronis TIH 2009 rescue media and for some reason on this system I had the option to restore to original location.

By the way, your suggestion about using different location does not work, you can choose the right location, but it will not overwrite any files.

Dennis

 

Does the Safe Media version of TI exhibit the same behavior?

Does TI go through the steps of the restore and say it's successful, but just not replace the files or do you get an error message?

If you delete the files before you restore, does it work?

---

Restoring system files (like Registry files) by using TI in this fashion, may not work properly. Many times, files restored when booted to the TI CD don't have the permissions set correctly and cause problems in the running Windows system (this may have been fixed in TI 2009 -- I haven't checked).

 

What do you mean by safe media? I could delete the file first using a linux boot cd but I am not looking for a product where I need to do this extra work. I will retest the replace using other location to see if it was an error.

Dennis

 

You can download the Safe Media version of TI from your Acronis account. Once installed, you can create a new TI CD that contains both the Full Mode and Safe Media (Safe Mode) versions of TI using the Media Builder program.

Are the options set to allow TI to overwrite existing files? I don't usually restore files this way, but the manual says the default is to not overwrite newer files.

I'm not trying to make excuses for the program -- it should work they way you want. However, when troubleshooting, it's helpful to know what works and what doesn't, even if that means using a workaround to figure it out.

 

Hi Dennis,

you tell us that on one PC the option is greyed out but not on annother (the Lenovo).

Can you tell me what partitions exist on the Lenovo and on the other PC?

 

A few more updates:

@MrMorse, on the Lenovo there is only a single SATA drive 160gb Seagate and only one large C volume.

@MudCrab, I was able to restore using a new location with no errors. So I have a work around. I did not use the safe version, just the normal rescue media. I chose restore to new location. You cannot use absolute paths, as that just makes a folder on root of drive called Drive(c) or something like that and then restores the files in that folder and maintains paths. This was useless as it did not go to the original location. But if you pick the root of C and do not put a check in absolute paths, and then manually browse to the folder location that matches the files you picked to restore you can restore those files and as long as you choose "overwrite files" in a later set of options, this works. A huge pain in the freakin bumm, but it works.

Dennis

 

I assumed this because then also Linux has no problem to give the one existing partition a driveletter. And then the option is not greyed.

I assume again that the other PC has more than one partition. And Linux greyed out the option.

Ok, I see you have a workaround. Not convenient but it works.

 

yes, on one system is greyed out, I have 3 drives, one SAS drive and two SATA drives. The SAS drive is the boot drive.

On another non working systems I have a single 100gb SATA but it has two partitions on it, one partition is service restore partition and the other is an NTFS partition.

I have tested with genie backup manager pro v8 and it is an extremely useful tool but does not do full image backups. It is great at backups and restores of registry, system states, application settings and files.

I am moving on to ShadowProtect Desktop v3.3 and so far it looks promising.

BTW, even if the shortcoming to TIH 2009 is the linux restore disk, it would be a simple function to turn on restore to original location AFTER asking me which drive I want to restore too. If they cannot code to read a simple disk signature or ID, then at least give the user an option to tell it. Instead I am doing this the painful way (can only do one freakin folder at a time) by working around their issues.

I now have a new error on my scheduled File backup for my D drive, it fails every time waiting for me ignore the failed attempt to backup some folder or file called ". so have no idea where that came from as that folder or file does not exist. I tried viewing from command line showing hidden and system files, tried from explorer showing hidden and protected files.

I am beginning to hate this buggy mess of a product. I sure hope ShadowProtect got it right.

Dennis

 

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please let us investigate the issue you reported and do the following:

Make a digital photos of each step during the recover + photo where the original location is greyed out.

Please create Acronis Report, Windows system information file and Linux system information file (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. To expedite the resolution we recommend you to use our Live Chat service after that. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky