Reading from archive specific to original PC?

I have been going round and round with Priority Support for over a month now. I had a machine with a RAID 0 array where one of the 2 discs was reporting a bad S.M.A.R.T. status.

Before replacing the disc, I used a rescue disc to do a sector-by-sector backup of my machine with high compression to a Seagate Free Agent 500GB external USB drive. The process completed successfully and was also validated successfully.

I replaced the failing drive and used the same disc that created the image to attempt to restore. It could not see any hard drives. I paid the money for priority support and the telephone call/email dance begin.

After 7 ISO images, I still cannot restore the archive to my machine. I have given up on any probabillity of a successful restore. All I want to do is get to the data in the archive.

On another Windows machine I have tried mounting, exploring, restoring to different location... every option within the program to no success. I get varying errors from "Not a valid archive" to 0 byte files. I've moved the .tib to an internal IDE drive, validated the image, and get the same results. Acronis support's latest explanation is that my archive will only be viewable from the original PC.

Since this issue has been unresolved for a month, I insisted on being able to ftp the image to the "expert group," and they agreed, but them imposed a 20GB size limit. Problem is, the .tib file is 64GB! Sure, I could span the file with Winrar, but they won't budge on the overall file size.

So now I turn to you, the Acronis community for your advice. I've got the boss and the customer the computer belongs to breathing down my neck for results. Since there's a 9 hour difference in time zones, perhaps I'll get a faster and more comprehensible response here.

Please forgive my frustration, it's been a long month...

 

Hello center19,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are truly sorry for the inconvenience. Could you please let us know your Acronis request # (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which can be found in the subject of the letters that you received from our Support Team? We will try to expedite your case processing.

Once again, please accept our apologies for the current inconvenience.

Thank you.

Best Regards,
Alexey Bogomolov

 

I run TI 9.0.2337 and don’t have a problem with mounting and exploring an archive on a different machine. Mybe you could try this version.

 

The case number is 1197588

The archive was created using True Image 11 Home. Are those images backward compatible? If so, how do I get the older version of the program in order to utilize that solution?

 

This isn't help, but I'm jsut curious, doesn't your RAID manager automatically rebuild tha rray when you replace the bad drive? OR is your problem that the bad drive screwed up files in both disk inthe array?

This is the first that I've heard that a TIB can only be read or validated on the machine on which is was created! I belive it should be validatable and readable on any machine on which ATI works.

Of course, ATI doesn't work on all set ups.

 

The RAID manager doesn't automatically rebuild the array, but it will notify you which discs are present/missing. If you relocate the missing disc, you can boot as usual.

My machine would boot in Safe mode every time without fail, and I created the bootable media from a seperate installation of TI 11 on another machine, then used it to backup the failing computer to a USB drive.

I don't know if the bad drive screwed up files everywhere, but both before and after the image I was able to boot the machine in Safe mode. Once I validated the backup, I replaced the bad drive and kept the good drive (it was a 2 drive RAID 0, dunno if I mentioned that before), created a new array, and attempted to restore.

After the latest ISO image, I was able to see my array and proceed with a full restoration (though I still couldn't browse or selectively restore individual files). After about 2 1/2 hours the sector-by-sector restoration completed successfully, but after removing the bootable CD and the IDE drive with the .tib file, the machine won't boot.

Error message:

 

Ouch! RAID 0 isn't really RAID at all, no redundancy -- in fact, as you're seeing, it's jsut the opposite of redundancy with twice the probability of losing your data. With RAID 1 or higher, you probably could have just plugged in a replacement harddisk and been up and running, with the array rebuilding itself with the redundant info.

With RAID O you have lost whatever was on the RAID when you lost the one woncky drive. So a restore of a drive image is your only bet to get the old data back, as near as I can figure.

If you have a backup, try shutting down the raid and setting the bios to non-raid and see if you can restore from the CD. Once you have a restored disk, maybe you can rebuild an RAID0 array from that by restting the bios and using whatever RAID managment software came with the RAID hardware.

 

I don't know why it was set as a RAID 0 to begin with, probably just wanted to get the most performance they could at the time.

I didn't mess with the BIOS settings before creating a sector-by-sector backup of the computer. I wonder if the archive that was created really did any good at all now that you say it that way.

Here's what I did:
1. Use TI 11 to do a sector-by-sector backup of My Computer. The drive is 152.7 GB reported within TI 11 Restore Data Wizard. The actual compressed .tib file is 64 GB in size.

2. Before removing the bad drive, I booted in Safe mode and copied the My Documents folder so my customer could have some of her data in the interim.

3. I replaced the bad drive, created a new array, booted with the CD and attempted a restore. Up until Friday, I had never been able to see my RAID array. Exploring the archive says "Not a valid archive." I can't mount the image, either. Restoring the files to a different location gives me a 0 byte folder.

4. Created a BartPE disc with TI 11 plugin and had the same problems - the RAID disc(s) aren't seen, and the image can't mount. I get the error that a drive letter can't be assigned.

5. The latest build they sent me, a custom ISO using 11.0.8052 finally has the RAID drive showing up, and I did a sector-by-sector restore. You know the rest from there.

Am I hosed? Should I give up and scrap everything from here? The customer is very frustrated, and frankly, so am I. I've been unable to return her computer to her because Acronis says the image can only be restored to this one computer.

 

So let's take inventory here. You have a backup file of the image of a partiton/disk on a usb ddrive that validated successfully when created.--S you have a good backup

Your ATI versions couldn'tt see your newly created RAID.


Version 11.8052 boot disk, made from a iso, can see your RAID but, what, won't read the TIB file on the USB or won't offer the RAID as a target drive for a restore?

One point, if windows can see your RAID, the BARTPE disk should be able to see them, it uses the same drivers as windows, assuming you loaded those drivers when you built the PE disk. Other folks here are the mavens on Bart but my understanding is if ATI works under windows on your machine, then it will work on the BARTPE disk on that machine.

But if you have a good TIB and you can get Bart PE built with the right drivers, then you should be able to restore that tib.

Why a TIB would care what machine it came form, I have no idea. In fact, in the past, Acronis cited as a valuable use for ATI is being able to take an image form one machine and migrate it to another when you where trading up to a new machine.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

Also copied that backup to an internal IDE drive to eliminate the USB errors and explanations I read about on the forums

Correct

I used the TIB file on the IDE drive. It sees it, offered the RAID as a target drive for restore, completed the process, and after rebooting gave the error message <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll missing or corrupt

 

Short of doing a windows repair to fix things on the new raid, have you checked that it's not just the raid isn't being assigned "c" for a drive letter? There are a few threads on the fourm (such as this https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=172919&highlight=hal.dll) that maybe can help you with that. It is sometimes the reason a restore doesn't boot.

Sorry if this is covering old ground.

 

Maybe I'm just having an off day, but I can't seem to make sense of any of my search results on fixing drive letter assignment. I can recall reading somewhere in a post about either a program or a plugin that corrects the problem when ATI incorrectly assigns the root drive something other than C: but I can't find it at the moment.

Also, booting with bartPE does not see my RAID array.

 

Do a google search on the text below. This provides lots of hits about drive letter re-assignment.

Code:

jonyjoe81 + justboot +site:www.wilderssecurity.com

 

I wanted to say thanks to all of you for looking over my issue. I had to give up the ghost on it. I can't count the number of man hours that went into trying to resolve this problem, not to mention all the hair pulling frustration felt from the language barriers and repetition with Acronis support.

All I am left with now is my .tib archive which I cannot explore or mount successfully. If any of you out there are willing to give it a shot at extracting information from it, I would be willing to make some sort of compensation for your effort.

From what I gathered in independent research is that the TI 11 program probably only copied a sector-by-sector backup of 1 of the 2 discs in my RAID 0 array, thereby leaving the backup completely ineffective and useless.

The computer is gone now, the client demanding a clean install of the OS and drives placed in non-RAID. At this point, the continued effort on recovery is for pride and reputation only - I HATE giving up...

Let me know if any of you would be willing to give it a go.

 

Forgive me for jumping in late on this thread.

Here are some thoughts for your consideration:

1. There is much confusion in this forum about the term sector-by-sector backup. Do you know for sure if you elected the sector-by-sector option during the backup with TI 11? You need to actually check off the option in a check box during the backup process to do that. If you did, the image should be the same size as the partition you backed up. I don't think a true sector-by-sector backup can be mounted or explored. My guess is that you did a partition or full disk backup in the first place. Did you check off the partition only or the disk (say Disk 1)? If it is partition or disk backup, it should be mountable.

2. You say BartPE can't see your RAID array. That can only mean you haven't successfully added the proper RAID drivers. If you had, the A43 File Management utility would see the array.

3. What happens when you try to mount the image in another computer running TI 11? TI 10 or TI 9 won't be able to mount or explore the image because TI 11 uses a new image format.

4. You won't have any luck restoring the image to a different computer and getting it to boot. Using TI 9.1 Workstation with Universal Restore is not an option because of the new TI 11 image format.

5. You might try restoring the image to an empty partition on another machine. You don't need to use RAID. If the image is viable, it will restore to any non-RAID partition. Then you could see if Windows could recognize the restored partition and recover data.

6. You may have an image of a broken RAID 0 array that is worthless.

7. If you're ready to give up and would like me to try to recover data from the image, send me a PM to make arrangements.

 

Yes, I ticked the box for the sector-by-sector backup, selected the destination as the external drive, created a new full backup archive, changed the compression level to high, and checked do not show messages and dialogs while processing because I had to leave for the night and wanted the backup to run overnight without need for interaction.

I added the UBCD4WinDriversV20 from the guide I purchased on your site. I assumed the drivers were included within.

I get the Error message "Selected file is not Acronis True Image Home archive or is corrupted. Please select another backup archive." When attempting to explore, the .tib on the external drive prompts for a password which was never entered. When I attempt to explore from a copy of the archive on an IDE drive, the directory tree never populates.

I assumed as much. All I want to do is restore a few files.

I don't have the resources to try this option.

Yes, it would appear this is the case. Despite the validation performed on 2 seperate instances. Validation = worthless = worthless backup utility.

 

The fact that it is a sector-by-sector backup seriously limits you posibilities.

You say you don't have the resources to restore the image to a different computer. Given that you know it is a true sector-by-sector backup, restoring it is your only option. Once restored, if a Windows system can't see the partition with its files, you would need to use a data recovery program like Get Data Back to see files could be recovered.

I'm afraid you can't blame True Image for your mistake.