Healthy or Active?

What is the difference between Healthy and Active?

I have a XP Pro 372.60 GB NTFS "Healthy (System)" partition. But I'm going to soon activate an Acronis backup image and it says to make sure your partition is "Active".

What's the difference?

Thanks much!

 

Hi Daisy Duke,

The system partition must be a healthy primary partition that has been marked as active for startup purposes.
Wont boot unless marked active

 

Thanks for replying. I'm able to boot up on it and in Disk Mgmt. it says:
372.60 GB NTFS
Healthy (System)

I don't have a problem booting and using the computer. If it requires me to change something (from Healthy to Active) before I use my Acronis Backup, how would I change it?

Thanks!

 

Go to Start Menu-Programs-Admin Tools-Computer Management.
Then go to Disk Management and you will see the relevant drive.
Right click on it and mark as active.
If you can already boot and mark as active doesnt show- its already active,leave alone.
Also right click on Properties and be sure the drive has a unique name

If you cant find Admin Tools-right click on the Start button-Properties-Start Menu-Customize-enable Display Admin Tools.

 

Thanks Hairy! The "Mark Partition As Active" is greyed out. So I guess I'm good to go on engaging my TI 10 backup from my external hard drive.

Thanks very very very much. I sincerely appreciate this!

 

Well done,Daisy-everything will be fine

 

Well, I tried the backup, it rebooted after 2 hours of download and now the NTLDR is missing. CRAP!

 

The fact that you could previously boot into the drive etc, indicates you have an active primary system partition, as we discussed,therefore its owing to another reason.

If you are copying the contents from one drive to another,as opposed to restoring a backup image to the original drive-True Image has a CLONING TOOL which has to be used, in order that the Master Boot Record is also working.
This MBR probably is missing or corrupt in your case.

However,the drives must be from within your own system!

Could you explain where the image came from ie is it a backup image of your system or is it a copy of another disk which you wish to use

If its an image of a disk not originally from your system,you will not be able to image/copy it with Acronis


Also how many hard drives do you have-do you have another non system drive used for data storage.

Could be Windows is trying to boot into that.



edit; As per your other thread HERE,your boot file may be trying to start the wrong drive,such as your external drive.

Go to Start -Run-type in msconfig-OK-boot ini file-there should be only your active C system drive there.
Delete the drive which shouldnt be there -NOTHING ELSE.
If you named the drives,which is which will be obvious
CAUTION take care-only if you are confident.

What does Disk Management say,anything unusual from before?

Can you get into BIOS to make sure your active drive is now being recognised?
Try pulling out the plug of the external and forcing recognition,in conjunction with BIOS.

 

This is what I know (I hope). I have an XP Pro drive that I partitioned the C drive to 4 partitions (system, programs, music-docs-pictures, video). I used Acronis TI 10 and imaged this drive (all at once) to my external drive.

When my mbr screwed up I got it fixed and then reformatted with my XP disk so I could get back "up". So..........I'm back up with a clean system......

Then I wanted to get my backup image back. The Acronis Emergency boot disc would not work. It said, at one point, "The files activating the Acronis Secure Zone are not available. Please Run Acronis TI Home from Windows to copy the missing files to Acronis Secure Zone."

So I redownloaded the TI 10 to a flash drive and went back into Acronis Recovery Mgr. I chose the .tib backup that I wanted from my external drive and it began "recovering". When it came to which partitions did I want to recover, this time I only chose the system partition. When it began "recovering" I only saw the video partition, so apparently it did not recover the system partition. Why it recovered the video partition when I didn't tick that one, is beyond me.

I'm lost...........**sobbing**

 

Since I now don't have an operating system available on the C drive (ntldr) I can't get into Disk management.

Right now my BIOS are set with first boot DVD, then the hard disk.

I guess I'm going to have to put the XP disk back in and start over in order to get back up and then figure out the Acronis backup retrieval another way..............sigh

 

As discussed,Windows is trying to boot into one of the non active partitions.

When you get Disk Management active give each partition a unique name,such as Video,so no mistakes are made when restoring.
Right click on the partition and go to Properties.
Otherwise its all too easy to choose the wrong drive/partition when restoring,especially if the letters have changed.

This obviously has happened.

As you now have an external backup drive-get rid of that horrible Secure Zone.

You obviously didnt try any of the methods for booting to the correct partition.

Dont really understand whats going on-you say you reformatted.
Did you reformat the correct partition or the lot?
Hopefully only the C partition. Otherwise there may be problems.
I think TI requires that the items to be restored from/to have a family similarity.

You also say you got the MBR fixed-can you do this again?

Then do a COMPLETE restore of all the partitions.

In future backup all partitions individually.

This should fix;

Otherwise do a Windows repair install of your active c partition and then restore ALL the partitions not just one.

Looks like the problem here is identifying which partition is which.

Do you have a repair disk like Barts or UBCD4Win,which you could use to check and possibly help.

Try to get bootable rather than anything else,otherwise I think there may be a danger of TI not being able to restore.

 

Questions:

How do I get rid of the Secure Zone? Why and what's it for?

Why does my TI Recovery Disk tell me that files are missing?

When I originally did the TI backup to my external drive, I had already partitioned them with Partition Magic and named each drive Video, Programs, System and Documents/Pictures. So they're named in the TI backup.

So, am I right if, after I reinstall XP and it'll be one big hard drive, then I can mark all 4 partitions that I want to restore, back to the C drive, or should I do one at a time? Personally at this point I don't care if they're partitioned off or not, just so I get everything back.

Because of the "missing files in the Secure Zone Recovery Disk" I'll have to use the TI 10 program from my flash drive.

So what's easiest way to do it?

Thanks very very very much!

 

What I REALLY hate is the fact that there's 108 Windows updates and being on satellite I'm only allowed 200 MB's per day. Thank Gawd I've got Sp2 on my flash drive.

What would really make it all worthwhile would be if I could get my TI backup file back with all my settings, programs and everything once I reinstall XP Pro.

 

I do have a bootable ubcd4win on my flash drive. But I've already reinstalled XP.

 

Something to think about DD ... on my XPSp2 systems (laptop and desktop) I do not do ANY updates at all. The only updates are whatever came with Sp2, and my systems run as slick as they did with the initial install. I just make sure to keep my firewall active and my anti-virus up-to-date.

 

Partition Magic - rewrites the boot sector - if PM is no longer installed or is lost in cyberworld, your computer will give you the NTLDR message as missing due to the reasons stated in the other thread.

Use an XP CD to perform a repair, make sure that when imaging with TI 10, you have the IMAGE MBR box ticked.

Colin

 

Holy Cow! I think it's finally working. I'll get back with you guys ASAP! I think I'm going to get to celebrate (pop a corona and turn the music on.....or hallelujah....katie bar the door!)

 

Hi DD,

Something is very odd here. You said that you backed up the entire hard drive, all partitions. That's exactly the backup you need.

As I understand it, you reinstalled Windows XP, so your system is bootable. You reinstalled TI and can make or have made a boot TI Recovery CD.

1. When you boot from the CD now, can you see your backups on the external drive? (You will have to use the Full version of TI not the Safe version on the CD.)

2. Make a new backup of the C partition and the MBR so that you can always get back to this point just in case there is a problem.

3. Restore the C partition from your entire drive backup. When you are selecting the location to restore to, be sure you pick the C partition. Also, this is where you have to set the partition Active! It's an option during the restore process. If you don't see it, go back and look again.

4. Test to see if the system boots into Windows.

5. If not, restore the MBR from the entire drive backup.

6. Test to see if the system boots into Windows.

Let us know what happens.

 

I'm not sure but I think perhaps when I installed TI 10 the second time from their site, I didn't install the full version. That's what it looks like. Also, it looks like the Emergency TI boot disk was worthless too. I created another one.

Also, when I went to my external hard drive to check out my backup archives just by going to My Computer, etc. etc. I could actually click onto the .tib file and they would show up. The last time I tried that I wasn't able to open them.

Then......I looked throughout the Acronis TI and saw a Mount point program. Didn't realize it had mount points for virtual. I resigned myself to simply using the 4 partitions as virtuals. At least I could view them.

However, because I downloaded the "FULL" version this time I believe it gave me more options.

As of right now, it is doing what I thought it should have been doing all along. It's now recovering the system partition. IT's already recovered one of the other ones. I have approx. 2 hours to go.

DANG I'M HAPPY!!!!!

As a pessimist, my only concern is, after imaging is over, will the MBR be okay.

I will post again when this is done.

Thanks for everyone's help and persistence. You guys are great!

I hope I'm not celebrating too early. haha

 

Well, I FINALLY got my Acronis Backup back on the computer! I feel like it's Christmas!

Let's all celebrate!

My only problem now is a drive parameter problem. All the drive letters change. I know how to change them back HOWEVER I can't figure out how to change the ones that don't show up in Disk Management (i.e. CF reader, MS Reader, SD/MMC reader).

Normally I wouldn't care what they're named but a couple of them are using the driver letters for my normal 4 partitions in C drive.

How do I change these to something else so I can get back those particular drive letters?

 

Never mind. I think Partition Magic will do it. Now the only problem is remembering what drive letters the 4 partitions were exactly. So far, I've remembered 2 out of 4.........sigh....not sure about the other two.

 

Why would it change the drive letters?

 

I suggest giving all your partitions/drives meaningful names - if using the rescue CD, this makes working out what is what much easier as Linux lists drives differently to Windows - names of course stay the same.

Colin

 

Hi DaisyDuke Sure glad you got things figured out. After all your hard work. Next thing we know we'll see you helping others here on this forum.

That seems like a very long time may I ask how much actual memory is stored on your drive?
2 hours would do about 120-150 gigs of memory on my computer. ( From an external USB drive to the hard drive) And that was only 1 partition, or did I misunderstand.
Darn I hope I haven't started something else now!!

 

Well it actually took longer than that. I really don't know why but at this point I'm just happy to have my partitions back up and running.

I do have a problem with my driver letters though. I changed them back to their original letters and used Partition Magic to reset all shortcuts; however, the one I'm having a problem with is my documents/music/pictures folder. It's still not set correctly for some odd reason.

I know I've done something but haven't figure out what yet.

Well, as long as I can access them I'm fine right now until I get it figure out.

You people are so very nice on here. I want you to know I've really appreciated EVERYTHING you've done for me.

Thanks again.

(I'll be around to read the forum).