HDM 2009

Hello. I've used Paragon HDM with XP several times to restore my C drive when my system wouldn't boot. But I had a problem booting today so I booted to Paragon's Rescue CD. After choosing "Simple Restore Wizard" while connected to an external drive, the screen went black for a long time. Then I disconnected the external drive to reduce the no. of factors which could be a problem. I rebooted to the CD & chose "low graphics" & "safe" mode. Again, the system hung on disk scanning even though no external drives were connected.

I rebooted to Safe Mode with Command Prompt & ran "CHKDSK /R". But after rebooting, the system is hanging at the Windows logo. Does anyone have any suggestions which would enable me to run CHKDSK to make sure there aren't any HD errors or to find out what else could be preventing Paragon from being able to scan the internal drive? TIA.

 

If you have archive for XP system, you can use another PC for recovery.

Try the following :
1) Connect your WinXP HDD to another PC (via SATA\eSATA\IDE - USB adapter or directly)
2) Open Windows Disk Management and run CHKDSK:
*right-click My Computer and select Manage
* go to Disk Management section
* find your WinXP HDD
* right-click all partitions one-by-one and use "change drive letters and path" to assign letters
* then run CHKDSK X: /F (where X - assigned drive letter for selected partition)
Once completed, check if Windows boots.

If it still fails to start, you can try to :
1) Backup entire WinXP HDD from another PC (to restore this new full backup prior to restoring system partition backup)
2) delete all partitions from the WinXP HDD from another PC (via Windows Disk Management).
After clean-up, connect WinXP HDD back to the source PC and boot from Paragon Recovery CD to make restore.

If you have only System partition (C) backup do the following:
after restoring the new full WinXP HDD backup , run Restore wizard again and restore system partition w\o resize from workable backup you have.
Once completed, check if Windows boots correctly.

 

Mech_An,

Thanks for your suggestions. I did run chkdsk for all partitions & the PC said they were fine. I also was able to use the PC manufacturer's boot CD & run system diagnostics which didn't find any problems.

In the middle of one boot-up attempt, I needed to do something else for a half hour & when I came back, the Paragon restore screen had appeared. So, it looks like the program was just taking an excessively long time to start. I noticed then that while the external drives didn't appear, both internal drives did. Since the program was able to see the archives saved to the 2nd internal drive, I restored them, even though they were over a week old. Since then, I can boot up & run Windows.

Once I was running Windows, I tried to use the Windows version of Paragon (which can see the external drives) to restore newer archives. But it didn't find them. Does that mean it only searches for ones it knows have been saved, rather that searching for any on the HDs?

Also, I'm not sure I want to continue to use Paragon if the pre-boot disk can't see external drives & takes 1/2 hour to load each time. Do you have any ideas aobut what could cause the CD to take 1/2 hour to load (while it's "searching disks") since just about 2 weeks ago it was able to load normally & see the external drives?

 

1. Restore wizard automatically loads list of created archives which are saved in archive database.
If you archive is not shown, please select link "Switch to File view" and locate the archive manually.
Then you can restore newer version.

2. I would recommend you to upgrade your HDM 9 to version 11.

As an alternative, you can use WinPE Recovery CD (available for paid versions on Paragon website from My Account - My Downloads).
Check if WinPE boots correctly w\o such delays.

 

I'm just throwing this out as a possible item for consideration.

I have had Windows hang at the logo and the cause has been a second internal HD not operating properly. I also have experienced it "coming alive" after a long wait when presumably the second drive gets operating properly.

 

1. That's exactly what I did - switch to File view. As a result though, the restore seemed to progress file by file instead of sector by sector & it took several hours instead of the usual 20 minutes or so to restore the C drive. During the restore, I saw the file names go by, which I've never seen before. Do you know if selecting the File view typically causes a restore by files instead of sectors?

2. Thanks for the suggestions about upgrading to ver. 11 & trying the PE CD. I'll give those a try but at this point, since this has been such an arduous restore process, I'm deciding whether to switch to another backup program, True Image. Have you ever tried it or heard anything about it, one way or another? I tried it for a while & I stopped after there were some irregularities in the automatic numbering of the backups but I know a couple of techs. who use it all the time & recommend it highly. In any case, I'll let you know if I have any luck with ver. 11 or the PE CD.

 

One of the times, I did try booting to the rescue CD with my 2nd HD out of the system. Unfortunately, it didn't make a difference. But, I'm going to run CHKDSK for it now just to make sure it's not corrupted.

Someone suggested to me yesterday that it sounds like Paragon was searching for specific drives it couldn't find. That's possible since I rotate a few external drives & the drive letters change. But, if that were the problem, it raises the question again of why this never happened before with this CD & the same external drives.

 

I have used the File View because of archives not in the database. In fact, I'd just as soon use it all the time because I would rather manage the archives myself but that's another issue. It did not make any difference to the speed and I doubt if it could because of the way the archive is likely structured for a sector-based image vs a file-based image.

Although you were able to run various diagnostics, if you are able to, see if there any entries in the Windows Event viewer that might point to a problem.

 

When you've done this, have you seen the names of the files on the screen as the sectors containing the files were restored? Until the restore a little over a week ago, I hadn't seen that before.

I followed both of your suggestions. TheWinPE CD worked!! Paragon was then able to see my external HDs, regardless of what kind of connectors they had. Thanks very much for your suggestion. I wished I had known about this alternative boot CD to begin with.

About upgrading to ver. 11, when you've upgraded, was Paragon able to see your previously saved archives? In my case, they're faded out for some reason.

 

Update - I just tried to boot to the ver. 11 CD & it *did* see the archives created with ver. 9. So, it's when the program is open in Windows that the archives are grayed out when I click the "archive" tab.

 

To make archives visible back you need to manually add them to the archive database (remove archives first and use 'Add archive to database" button to add them back).
As an alternative, you can switch to 'Show Files" view of the restore wizard to get required archives missing from database.

 

Thanks very much. That worked. But, since I started using ver. 11, I have to do that for every single new backup. The other problem I'm having is that I can't back up 1 of the partitions, because an error message keeps saying "invalid partition id". Yet, XP's Disk Manager says all the partitions are healthy & the other backup program which I've started using doesn't have a problem with it. I booted from Paragon's boot CD & ran the various boot correctors but that didn't help. Do you have any suggestions, other than reinstalling the program?

At this point, I'm planning to install ver. 9 since that didn't have any of these problems. If you'd suggest using ver. 11 instead, what advantages is it supposed to have over ver. 9? TIA

 

I don't have HDM but you should be able to examine the partition IDs and see what it is and compare it to legitimate IDs.

Here is one list of IDs.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

 

As far as I understand, you're trying to use script generated in version 10 for scheduled backup or create differential backup in version 11 to the base backup made in version 10.
If yes, the script or diff backup may not work due to changed partition identify process.

If you use script, you need to re-create it from scratch in version 11 or generate script for diff backup to keep full archive made in version 10 as base for the differentials backups.

How to generate scrips with 10-version-like parameters:
* go through all Backup\Diff backup wizard steps
* at the last step select Generate script and use link on the bottom to open advanced settings
* in the advanced settings un-check the box "Use Ids" and proceed to create script.

This script should work correctly with mixed new\old archive types .

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As of archive database:
Please try to find arcdb folder in the root directory of the first partition in your config (it may be located in C:\ , D:\ or another drive)
Delete this folder and run Paragon program in full scale to generate empty archive database for version 11.

Then you will have to add all archives back manually, but most probably all further archives will be added automatically.

 

Mech_An,

I was trying to use a script for a full backup generated in ver. 9, not 10, to use in ver. 11.

Would this be necessary for full backups? Since external drives have so much space, I prefer to do full backups, rather than differentials. That way, if one file gets corrupted, it doesn't effect other files in terms of whether or not they can be restored.

I found a file arcdir but not the folder, arcdb. Is that the one that should be deleted for ver. 9?

I was able to add files manually according to the steps you mentioned. But, after I ran some new backups, they didn't show up either & I had to add each 1 manually. Could that be because the archive folder is still on my HD under another name?

Anyway, since I hadn't had this problem with ver. 9, I decided to uninstall ver. 11 & reinstall ver. 9. But the installation hung & could not be completed. I tried later on with the same results. So now I have an incomplete ver. 9 installed. Do you have any suggestions to avoid running into these problems if I give ver. 11 another try?

Thanks very much for your suggestions & answers.