Problem Doing Restore from External Drive

Thanks for responding Mudcrab.

I am only trying to restore one partition (from my old sick drive) to one partition on my new drive.

On the USB problem, I just kept trying different ports, as well as turning High-Speed USB back on in BIOS.

I have not tried the option detailed in Option II because I could never get to that menu like you did. But my next step will be to create a Rescue CD on my other computer and try everything again.

Will keep you posted........thanks.

 

MudCrab, I created a Rescue CD and booted from that, and I finally got the same menu as you showed. I pressed F11 and entered quiet acpi=off noapic parameters. I then selected the full mode so that my UBS drivers would be loaded. The system totally hung up while it was loading and asked me to wait (I waited ~10 min). I went thru these steps twice.

Then I repeated the process w/o pressing F11 & entering any parameters. As before, the restore process started but (appeared) to hang up again after I chose the partition to be restored. But now I wondering if instead of hanging up ATI is actually doing the restore. Unfortunately there is no progress bar, so I don't know what is going on. The image I am trying to restore is large (~37gb). Should I be more patient, or do you think the system is truly locked up? I hate it when there is no progress bar. Thanks.

 

There are still more steps in the restore wizard past the point where it's hanging, so I don't think the restore is starting. Are the internal and USB drive lights showing constant activity?

Have you tried the Safe Mode (SafeMedia) version? Depending on the BIOS, it may be able to see your USB drive, though the speed will be slow (that's why it would be faster with the image on the internal drive).

 

I thought there were more steps, but this is my first restore. The light on the UBS drive did flicker initially, but stopped. I can't see the light on the hard drive because of the way I have it temporarily installed.

I know the restore would be faster using the image stored on the second partition of the internal drive. But the user's guide states that "if there are any partitions on the new drive, they must be deleted first", so I was afraid that this image would be deleted when the restore process was starting.

OK, I will halt things, reboot and try the safe mode. Besides, if I am going to use the image on the internal drive, I shouldn't need the UBS drivers. Thanks.

 

MudCrab, I used Safe Mode and tried to restore the image from the 2nd partition on the internal drive. The process still continually locked up at the screen where I was asked Which Partition or Disk to Restore & I chose "Vista Install on Drive O (C)", which is the name of the partition I backed up using ATI. In other words, I can't seem to resore a full partition from this screen.

So then I decided to return to the Restoration Type Selection screen, and I chose to "restore select specific files and folders". I then selected one folder on my image, and low and behold this folder was successfully restored on the new drive!

When I was selecting which folder to restore, I noticed that all the folders/files were listed, so now I'm wondering what would happen if I select them all?

But before I do, I would like to describe what I see when I am at the list of files/folders. I see two high-level entities, each with their own little (but different) icon:
- A .tib file entitled "BU of Vista-32", which is the name I gave my ATI backup. I can't select the .tib from this screen
- A folder entitled "Vista Install on Disk 0 (C)", which like I said is the name of the partition I backed up using ATI, i.e., the partition containing my OS, programs, data, etc. I can expand this folder to include all folders/files on my old drive C.

So my question is - will I get a usable restore if I select to restore all the folders/files on "Vista Install on Disk 0 (C)"?
I ask this because everytime I select to restore the entire disk or partition, the system locks up on me.

Should be pretty obvious by now, this is my first restore, and I am struggling.......I do appreciate the help.

 

Mudcrab, I still hope you have time to answer my question above about restoring all the folders/files versus restoring the actual .tib image.

However, this thread has now become pretty convoluted; it began as an external USB dive problem, which has been resolved. Now I need help on the proper use of ATI - help I can't seem to find in the documentation.

So I think I will start another thread in hopes that there are others who have experienced similar issues. But I will forever be indebted to you for you patience and knowledge, and I hope you will stick with me until I get my old C-drive restored. Thanks......

 

Excuse me for butting in but why dont you just hook the old drive to a new PC as a slave and take your information off and then reformat? Also if you buy the insurance that allows you to re DL your APPs then you are good to go. What is so important that can not be replaced on your old drive?
Excuse me for saying this but I have heard it said that peeps should have a minimum of two backup locations going, one should be off site preferrably in case of fire.
Respectfully matt

 

Matt, I appreciate your comments but I don't understand some of them. I know I can slave my old drive, but fact is I did an Acronis image backup and now I want to really try to perfom a successful restore. What's important on the old drive are many installed programs and many parameters and settings (5 years worth). The purpose of using a product like ATI is to avoid "taking off the information and reformating".

I don't know what you mean about taking out insurance that allows me to DL (download?) my APPS. What does that entail and how would it help me in this situation?

I agree with you on multiple backup locations. For the computer that crashed, I had 3 ATI backups, all in different places. This includes one on an external hard drive that I keep away from my computer. Regards..........

 

Since Safe Mode does this too, it seems there is something about the drive/partition/chipset/computer/etc. with which (all modes) are having a problem.

This means that TI can at least read files out of the image and restore those.

You won't get a bootable partition or a working system with this type of restore.

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Do you have a test computer/setup that you could install the TI 2009 trial version and create a CD with it?

 

Well, that's not very encouraging.....I've used ATI for a couple of years to do backups of my computers, and now that I finally need to do a restore, it won't work. I might add that I am trying to restore to the same computer from which I did my backup - the only thing that has changed is a hard drive replacement, and both of those are Western Digitals. Plus, I used ATI to again verify my archive backup before I started the restore process.

Is there any way to make it a bootable partition if I restore all the files/folders?

I do have my new Vista-64 computer plus an older XP laptop that I could download and install TI 2009 trial version, so I will go away and try to create a CD with it.

Thanks.........

 

Perhaps this has been covered before but have you tried using the restore option to restore the entire disk--by checkmarking the disk--rather than only one partition. Use the rescue cd and restore the entire backup. Performing a disk restore will destroy any other contents on the target disk. This is illustrated in my restore guide on line2 of my signature below.

 

Grover, believe it or not I have read your excellent tutorials, and most of the TI Help. On page 6 of your Restore Guide, you show a chekmark beside the disk, as well as all the partitons.

My screen doesn't look like that. There is no checkmark beside Disk 1. There are checkmarks only beside the two partitions:
- "Vista Install on Disk 0 (C)". This is the name of the partition I backed up using ATI, i.e., the partition containing my OS, programs, data, etc.
- "MBR and Track 0"

If I check MBR, it does a quick restore. But if I check my other partition, the system total locks up (and I've waited as long as 30 minutes to see if anything happened).

So what am I doing wrong? Why won't ATI perform the one time I need it to do a restore? Thanks......

 

Grover, I forgot to mention that I am restoring my partition to a new hard drive (~500gb) that is larger than my old drive (~120gb). And the size of the partition into which I am trying to do the restore (97.66gb) is a different size than the single partition I am trying to restore (63.68gb). I did partition my new drive into three partitions before I started the restore. And I copied my .tib image to one of these partitons to expedite the restore process.

I didn't see anything in the TI documentation that indicated this would be a problem or would take special steps if I didn't buy a new drive the same size and partition it the same way. But then I ran across your 37-page guide on restoring with resizing. I simply am not smart enough to follow all the steps shown in this guide. So maybe you can give me a couple of easy things I can try.

All I'm trying to do is to restore my backup single partition onto a new drive that I purchased and installed right back into the same computer. I thought ATI would do that for me.

Am I indeed doing something wrong and can you help me straighten it out? Thanks.......

 

As for why the Disk option is not showing on your restore screen, I believe it is because you created a backup of only partition 1 (Vista ultimate 32) and did not include your second partition within your backup. Are any of your multiple backup archives one which includes all partitions? Is there any chance your disk also had a small EISA or recovery partition which you would only see if you were looking at a graphical view of the Computer Management display. I am leaning more and more to a fresh install of your OS and copy any personal files from a mounted copy of your old system archive.The troubles you are encountering is one of the reasons why all the regulars on this forum advocate testing your recovery procedure before you really need it. If your recovery plan does not work, then recovery becomes much more difficult.

Below is just a gathering of some of what has transpired within this posting--for those who are attempting to follow:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=236966

The IDE drive size is 112gb - 64gb first partiton (bootable) and 48 gb second. The first partition is what I imaged, resulting in the 34.3 tib. Is that what you mean by a partition image?

I am using Vista Ultimate 32-bit.
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When I bought this particular PC several years ago, the two SATA drives were in a RAID0 configuration. I later undid this and ended up with two SATA drives, each having 34.5gb capacity
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My IDE hard drive crashed, so I replaced it with a new one. The Acronis image that I want to restore is contained on an external USB drive. Both high-speed USB and Legacy USB are enabled in the BIOS.

The problem is that when I connect the external drive, the booting process hangs up (I can't even get back into BIOS Setup at that point). If I disconnect the external drive, all is well and I can boot into ATI. But then of course, ATI can't see my external drive where the backup image is located.
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Originally Posted by MudCrab
At what point in the booting process does it hang?
Have you verified that when you have the USB drive connected that the computer is still trying to boot from the CD and not the USB drive?

Have you tried plugging in the USB drive after TI is already booted and running?
It hangs up at the first Intel data screen, where it says to press F2 for Setup.

Not sure how to verify whether computer is trying to boot from TI CD or USB drive. My system hangs and the booting process just stops (I waited once for 5 minutes, just to make sure).

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Yes I tried plugging in the USB drive after TI started running, but it didn't ever recognize the drive.
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If I connect this external USB drive to my other computer, it seems to work just fine......I can read it's contents and I can continue to back up data files to it.
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I finally gave up on being able to restore from an external hard drive (USB or firewire) - I tried three and ATI could not recognize any of them. So I copied/validated my .tib file from one of these external drives onto one of two partitions on my new hard drive. I then re-installed the new drive into my "sick" computer. My thinking was I would then have everything on an internal drive, so I could do my restore from one partition to another.

I booted from my ATI installation disk, and everything started out great. ATI could see both partitions on my new drive as well as the .tib file on the 2nd partition. So I started the restore process, and then the system locked up. It locked up at the screen where I was asked Which Partition or Disk to Restore. I had two choices:
(1) "Vista Install" (which was the name of the hard drive partition that I had originally imaged for backup purposes)
(2) "MBR and Track 0"

Contrary to visual instructions I printed off the internet, I could only check one box or the other. I chose "Vista Install", clicked Next, and then the system totally locked up, to the point that I had to power it off and back on.
-----------------------------​

 

Grover, you may be correct, but I didn't know I had to include the second partition in my backup. I almost did, but since it was "empty" I decided not to. On my new computer I have two 500gb drives. The first drive has three partitions - the first partition (100 gb) contains my Vista-64 OS and my programs/data, while the other two partitions contain backups of my other two computers using different software. So are you saying that if I want to backup my Vista-64 partition, I need to backup the entire 500gb drive? Just asking...

Unfortunately, my multiple Vista-32 backups are all the same. They just reside in different places.

I use Computer/Disk Management regularly, and I don't remember ever seeing a third recovery or EISA partition. This PC came with the XP-Pro OEM version (full CD), but a couple of years ago I upgraded to Vista. Next time my sick drive is in the UBS enclosure, I will check it again.

Yea, I now understand the importance of testing my recovery procedure. Since my backups/validations went without a hitch, I guess I just depended too much on ATI to do the image restore properly. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I could have done umpteen fresh installs in the time I have spent trying to make ATI 10 work in image restore as well as it did in image backup.

At last resort (before I use my ATI program disk in skeet practice), I am going to boot from a TI 2009 Trial CD as MudCrab suggested.

Thanks for everyone's help......much appreciated.

 

I'm having a similar problem use TI 8 and a Dell XPS 400. Using the box install CD, TI starts loading then the lights go out on my USB mouse/keyboard and the TI interface comes onscreen. Fine, except w/o a mouse or keyboard I can't do much. Nor will it recognize my USB external HD, telling me no HD found.

I've also tried connecting the mouse and the keyboard after the TI interface loads w/o any success.

 

bbarry,
While not a requirement, having at least one backup of your entire disk adds another tool to your toolkit when you get faced with restoring to a new disk. Windows knows you have x number of partitions on the disk. When you go to restore one partition overtop the same partition, it has no advantage. But, when you go to a new disk or larger disk, making the new disk the same structure as the old disk can certainly help if you need to invoke that choice. You can always delete an unwanted partition but it is hard to restore if you have no archive. Having at least one full disk backup just increases the odds of success when problems are encountered. Many users report performing only single partitions backup and that will suffice in many instances. The better you understand the program the better chance you have for a successful recovery. For me, I try to avoid the risk so I make sure I maintain at least one full disk backup at all times. I do a mix of all types of backups including backups made with TrueImage plus other vendors--even plain windows copying, etc. The bottom line is not put all your eggs in one basket--so to speak. Having a full disk backup may or may not have been a solution. You had usb recognition problems as well as TrueImage problems. Testing would have discovered the problem sooner.

For your new computer, I would occasionally create at least one full disk backup oif all partitions and version 2009 gives you capability of excluding files from the second partition if you choose to do so. Keep the archive for safe keeping and have it available should you have a need. Otherwise, you can perform single partition backups. Again, don't have all your eggs in one backup basket.

Before you start shooting, why not try Acronis Support again--maybe live chat and refer them to this thread.

 

kwiemer,
My suggetion would be to delete your post and post it a new single posting. I believe you will get a better response. This posting is confusing enough as it is. It your choce.

 

I think we can close this thread, and a sincere thanks to everyone who helped me......especially MudCrab, who went beyond the call of duty, and GroverH for his excellent tutorials.

Yesterday I was finally able to restore my Acronis backup image onto my new hard drive by downloading TI 2009 Trial, burning an ISO CD, and booting from there. Why I couldn't do it from the TI 10 boot CD that I purchased for $49 I will never know. I guess Acronis wants me to buy an upgrade to actually do a restore.

I'm not out of the woods yet, however, because when I boot from my new hard drive, I get the error message bootmgr missing. I hope to use Windows Repair to fix this problem, but now I've discovered that my DVD drive is not working properly - will read CD's but not DVD's. So I'm off to town this afternoon to buy a new DVD drive, after which I hope Repair will fix my bootmgr problem and return my old computer to an opertional state.

Thanks again for everyone's help. And Grover, lesson learned about multiple backups (I had those - TI 10 would not restore any of them) and having at least one backup of my entire disk (I didn't have). I just don't know if my faith in TI has been "restored"......should I purchase TI 2009 to ensure that I can then do backups?

Bill

 

Yes, we are indeed fortunate that MudCrab has the both the time and willingness to help get us out of trouble. I know that I certainly appreciate the assistance that he has rendered to me! The people posting questions on this forum are all fortunate for the many volunteers who repeatedly expend their time and try to assist them with their computer problems.

1. Version 10 was not written for Vista. You will get better support from TI 2009. You can order TI2009 from http://www.ugr.com at a reduced price. Once you have your serial number, you can input it into the trial version you have already installed but you will need to make a new Rescue CD once you have input your serial number. Be sure and register your new serial with Acronis and write the serial number on the Rescue CD. Retain your v10 Rescue CD for a "just in case" situation. A Sharpie marker is good for writing on the CD. If you haven't bought your DVD writer yet, consider one which has the Lightscribe labeling option. These are great at writing a label on a CD or DVD.

2. In your situation with your past troubles, I could additionally consider the purchase of Mustang's scripts for TI 2009. Check the last line of my signature below. The link pretty well explains why I like to have this bootable CD as additional insurance for copying files, etc.

3. In the final analysis, it was your backups which has enabled you to avoid a reinstall. I think many of the Vista users with v10 have done most of their backups and restores from the Rescue CD and many have been at the disk level-but I am not 100% certain of that conclusion. There have been other numerous other posting regarding Vista with prior versions of TI.

4. Many of us do not rely on only one backup/imaging program. Many also compliment their backup strategy by using a Windows copying program such as Replicator of Syn-toy(?). I personally maintain current backups using TI 2009, Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2008 Suite; and use Replicator to additionally copy my personal files to other drives--both internal and external. I do not want to left in a lurch if one program should fail for whatever reason. I do backup and restore using both imaging programs and have restored numerous times with both.

5. If you have the time, the links inside this link makes for interesting and informative readings.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=237582

 

Thanks for all the good info GroverH. I will admit that I had better luck with TI 2009, since TI 10 didn't work at all. But my feeling is that if it's not written for Vista, then it shouldn't be advertised as such. Here's right from their website:

December, 2006

Powerful corporate solutions
Now with Vista support
Rating: 5/5

Acronis is a data backup and disaster recovery application that enables users to schedule and perform backups of everything on the computer, from program settings and specific file types, to the whole system.

A snapshot-style function can create an image of the entire system drive, compress and save it to another disk. A built-in rescue-media builder is used to create a recovery CD from which to boot and re-deploy everything.

Aside from Vista support, version 10 introduces specific tools for backing up Outlook emails, contacts, calendar entries and all the means to store program-specific settings, which is ideal for any user who likes to heavily customize their software.

It also features facilities to save archives over FTP and set up email notification to tell users that an operation has completed. Archive files can be compressed as they are created to save on disk space and split over several volumes.

A wizard guides users through the process, offering clearly explained instructions for the various options along the way. And when the backup is created, users can delve into it to recover individual files. A password option prevents others from doing the same.

Acronis True Image 10 Home is easy enough for beginners and flexible enough for those with more demanding needs.

Personally, I really like Vista. But I am getting tired of these software companies like Acronis advertising Vista compatibility, and then making you pay for an upgrade to REALLY make it work.

I am most impressed with the members of this forum, and you all have helped me struggle through a problem (of my own doing) after TI 10 then wouldn't do my restore as advertised. So right now I am still of the opinion that TI Version 10 is one lousy, dishonest product.

Again, thanks so much for everyone's support......

 

Just to let you know, because I knew the suspense was killing many of you (lol)........with further help from MudCrab, my sick computer is now operaional. A new DVD drive allowed me to boot from the Vista DVD and then do a Windows Repair.

So thanks again to all those who helped me and those who thought about it. I am very impressed with this forum and the knowledge base represented thereon......you are a bunch of very smart and dedicated people.

Wish I felt the same about Acronis......I still think they ripped me off for $49 on a program that only did half the job it was advertised to do. Image backup is nothing without the ability to restore.

Rgards...........Bill