I've lost drive D

I've successfully used True Image Home v10 for 2 years. Great. Since I did a major rebuild on the PC in January, the program has been slower and sometimes closed down. I have just backed up my D drive partition (logical drive) and after doing a restore from that backup, the computer can't find the D drive. I have validated the archive and explored the contents, and all seems OK, but the "restore" has hidden the drive?? When I click on shortcuts to files on D, the error message asks if I've disconnected the drive.
OS is XP Pro, SATA drive Western Digital, partitioned into C & D drives.
I'd appreciate some help, please.

 

Have you looked at your hard drive with a drive partitioning program such as Disk Director? It sounds like the D: partition wasn't restored and there may be just unallocated space there.

If you don't have a program like Disk Director, you can see what Disk Management in XP shows (Start button / Run and type in "diskmgmt.msc" without the quotes. Click OK and let us know what you see.

 

Thanks for replying so quickly, John.
I ran diskmgmt.msc and
the partition shows up as "healthy", but with no drive letter attached.
What do I do from here?

 

Warwick,

In Disk Management, right click the partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths, click Add, assign a drive letter.

 

Thanks Brian - it looks as if we are in the same country.!!
All is well. It looks as if the restore has worked and files are complete.
Now I want to know why it happened and why v10 is not happy with my rebuild. If I try to restore Drive C (active) it checks the drive and immediately comes up with an "error message C000B0 3EB A reboot is required for completing this operation" and when I attempt to reboot, Windows says it has had a problem and has to shut Acronis down (and no restore happens). An incompatibility?

 

Warwick,

Try starting the restore from the TI boot CD instead of from Windows.

 

Brian, I tried that last night but after the CD started, the program froze when I clicked on "Run Acronis" (rather than "Run Windows"). It sat there for 15 minutes doing nothing, so I clicked the restart button. Again, I ask "why", when True Image ran beautifully before the rebuild. I have reinstalled the program several times, but no real improvement. I'm happy to load it again, if you've any ideas.

 

Warwick, someone more familiar with the TI CD should be along shortly. Unlike us, a lot of those guys are asleep.

 

Warwick,

My V10 went wonky some time ago, on occasion it would freeze at restore, or the CD locked up, or it didn't see my second hard drive, etc. After searching for software problems, the problem was solved by replacing the SATA cable to my second hard drive.

 

What hardware did you change when you did the "major rebuild?"

The Rescue CD runs Linux and doesn't use any resources on the system or data hard drives. It does use the BIOS, so a BIOS update could have an effect, but it's not likely. What the Rescue CD has to do is recognize the hardware and install the Linux drivers into memory. Any hardware change such as a new PCI card, video card, etc. is a possible source of a problem. Bad cables are a source of problems as noted here.

A CD can get scratched over time, so you might make a new Rescue CD if that's a possibility.

 

John, it was virtually a new computer: Motherboard and chip, graphics card and one hard drive for C & D (changed from ATA to SATA). Old PCI card. The CD is in good condition - only been used twice, but was made on the "old" computer.
BTW, I notice people on the forum saying their USB sticks are slow to Autorun; I have the same problem. The stick is recognised immediately but takes 35 seconds to open. I don't think all these things are related??

 

On the rebuilt PC did you install an OS and then ran the restore program, or restored the image directly?

As far as the drive letter for 'D' going awol, I can only think that somehow the 'old' installation of Windows got confused when it was restored to a machine with a complete set of new hardware - I'm surprised it didn't demand re-activation. The drive letters will appear in two places, Windows XP/Vista/7 all keep track of the partitions and letters via registry entries, and rarely use the drive letter that appears in the BootParmeterBlock entries on the actual hard drive.

As far as the rescue CD is concerned, maybe it had problems with the chipset of the new motherboard?

Colin

 

Hi Colin,
After the rebuild I did a fresh installation of XP. I did not use Restore, because I figured that it was virtually a new computer and the old settings for MB, chip and Graphics would play up. After that I reloaded TI, but kept the old backups "in case". Since then I have uninstalled it, used the Acronis Removal Tool, and then reinstalled it. But it still seems a bit unhappy: slow running, "Acronis not responding" when manually starting backups or recovery - and things like that.
Does the newer hardware need a newer version of TI?

 

Not as far as the Windows version is concerned.


Colin