Reading Wrong Drive Letters

I just found it necessary to restore an image. While the restoration was successful it was a little unnerving. I have 3 internal hard drives, 2 optical drives, and a floppy drive. TI read the drive letters all wrong. I had to differentiate between the drives by judging the size of each drive. The assigned drive letters as read by TI were wrong. It had my optical drives confused with my hard drives. My hard drive D it saw as drive E which is actually my DVD ROM drive. If one was not extremely careful here the restoration could have been disastrous.

Is this a bug? I am using Version 8 build 786.

Dell Dimension XPS Gen 4
1 GB RAM
P4@3.4G

Roger

 

I have seen a similar thing.
TI 8 from the Rescue-CD seems to read the drive letters by reading the
positions of the partitions on harddrive.
My harddrive is splitted as following:

1. Position - hidden Device (no drive letter) with Dell Diagnostics
2. Position - boot-Partition C:
3. Position - driver-Partition E: (!)
4. Position - document-Partition D: (!)

this driveletters are in windows!

The TI 8 Rescue disc watches me following:

1. Partition - correct! hidden Device without a drive letter
2. Partition - correct! C: boot partition
3. Partition - incorrect! the driver-Partition, but it is called D (!!)
4. Partition - incorrect! ther document-Partition, but it is called E (!!)

when i make an image in windows, TI think correctly the image of my document-partition is from D.
when i try to restore the image with the rescue-disc, the driveletters are different!
TI wants to change the letter of the partition in the image (D) to E !
I didn't do so! If I had maked this, maybe the partition with is called E in windows (the driver-partition) would have been deleted in windows! (I thought so)
I don't know what windows do when it gets two partitions with the same driveletter.

 

I did not restore the image from the rescue disk. I restored from within Windows. I think this is a very serious bug that needs to be addressed immediately.

 

It is to be expected from the Resuce disk, because the rescue disk is Linux based and therefore assigns drive priority differently than Windows. Also within Windows, the user can change drive letters manually. The rescue disk doesn't know about this and will always assign the same letters for a given drive configuration.

However, it is not expected behavior within Windows. Please provide more details such as Windows version and drive configuration information (similar to what MartinH posted) - and hopefully Acronis Support can help! Because you're right, that's a dangerous bug if it's a bug!

 

I hope this screen shot picture will suffice.

I can't believe out of the thousands of users of this program that no one noticed this before. Aren't these things tested?

Damn! Why can't I insert an image here?

 

I give up. Why can't this be as easy as other forums?

 

TI shows the drive letters just fine on my machine in Windows. And probably most everyone else's machine too. It's not that no one noticed, it's just that no one has the problem. That's why I asked to post your config, hopefully it's something specific to just you....

 

I think one of the problems here is that Dell now includes a hidden partition on the system drive that contains a feature to reset the system to original factory settings. I believe TI sees this as a drive. In my case I have a third internal drive to which I clone the operating system using Casper XP. This is handy in the event of the physical failure of the system drive. This clone would also contain a copy of that hidden partition. So now TI sees two additional drives.

I wish TI could be configured so that it would not see these hidden partitions as hard drives. If a user is not extremely careful, image restoration in such a case could easily result in a disaster.

 

This has been an annoyance for me as well. I have two SATA drives in RAID 0 and a single PATA backup drive. ATI 8.0 never gets the drive letters right when I'm restoring an image. I always go by the assigned volume names and/or partition size to make sure I'm choosing correctly. Other imaging software I've used doesn't make this mistake.

 

I hope someone from Icronis is reading this thread and that this bug is fixed. I consider this to be a very serious programming error.

Klattu, what other imaging program are you using that does not make this same error? I may be interested in looking at it.

Thanks.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

Please note that Acronis True Image recognizes drive letters under Windows and from Acronis Bootable CD in different ways. It is not a bug because Linux and Widows use different drive recognition algorythms.

If you experience any further issues please send Acronis Report with the description of the problem to support@acronis.com (please see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317 to create Acronis Report). We will certainly help you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Please re-read this thread more closely. The user is experiencing this problem from Acronis TI WINDOWS. We understand why it's different from the Boot CD. It should NOT be different from within Windows. Please explain/investigate. The OP is probably on to something when referring to the hidden Dell partition.

In any case, there is a problem!!

 

Hello jimmytop,

In case the problem is under Windows we need to have screenshots and Acronis Report in order to investigate the problem.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Aw forget it. I'll just look for an imaging program that works. I don't have the time to trouble shoot this. It's not what I do. I know that if I am having this problem because I have three SATA drives and a computer from Dell then I also know that this program will not work in a lot of other computers. DUH! Isn't Dell the world's largest manufacturer of computers? It behooves Acronis to investigate this problem and fix it.

You tell the people here there is a problem and they place the proof all back on the user. I have tried every way possible to post a screen shot here. Do I need to post to a website to show a jpg here?

 

TI works....

Yes. But I think he wants you to email everything to the acronis support email address. See his signature for the addy. Sounds easier than posting a screenshot here.

 

Hello rwinegar,

We perform testing in our Testing Lab and we haven't encountered this problem. If you do have it we need some diagnostics information to solve the problem. That is why I ask you for the screenshots mentioned above.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

The following e-mail was sent to Ilya on February 17th:



This is being sent to Ilya Toytman at his request regarding this thread.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=375149#post375149

Attached find a screen shot of my hard drives as seen in Disk Management. The system drive has a very small hidden partition for the purpose of restoring the drive to factory settings. Drive G is a clone of drive C, thus two of these partitions. Drive D is a data only drive with the exception of the paging file.

I have no screen shot of how TI sees these drives as I do not wish to go through this whole process in order to obtain a screen shot. Besides I do not think it would work as the hard drive is locked during the image restore process.

If this problem is caused due to the SATA drives or because I have a Dell computer, it needs to be fixed. All new computers have SATA drives and Dell is the worlds largest manufacturer of computers. Other people have to be having the same problem.

Roger

 

OOPS! I forgot the Acronis Report. I attached it to this follow up e-mail sent the same day:



I apologize for not including the Arronis Report with my first e-mail regarding this thread. I have attached it here. Please let me know if a solution is available.

This is in regard to this thread.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=375149#post375149

Roger

 

Will anyone at Acronis advise me of a solution?

 

Hello Roger,

You will certainly get an answer soon. If you do not recieve any reply within 48 hours please PM your Acronis request # and I will take care of the situation.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

TI's response is shown below and my response follows. I am going to dump this program and look for something else.

Roger

Hello Roger,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Please accept our apologies for your inconvenience.

The problem is that Acronis True Image assigns letters to partitions in the way Windows should. However if you install Windows and then attach new hard drive this new drive will be assigned one of the remaining letters. This letter may not coincide with the one that should have been assigned if the drive was plugged when you installed Windows.

In other words, the current letter assigning scheme is non-standard for Windows. Acronis True Image assigns letters according to the standard and this will coincide with letters assigning when you install Windows.

It is recommended that you label each partition. In this case you will be able to distinguish one partition from another. Please note that Acronis True Image will show the labels of the partitions even if you boot from Acronis Bootable CD so this labeling is especially useful.

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Ilya Toytman


Ilya,

This explanation is unacceptable. TI sees more drives than I have installed. It assigns hard drive letters that currently represent my two optical drives. The small (39MB) restore partition created by Dell is supposed to remain hidden and was never assigned a drive letter from inception. Apparently TI thinks that I am the only person who ever installed additional hard drives in his computer. Your insinuation that I reinstall Windows for the sake of your lame program is an insult.

I also use Casper XP to clone my hard drives. It sees all my drives including two Firewire external drives. It never fails to properly identify each drive by it's assigned drive letter. It never confuses my optical drives with my hard drives. Maybe TI needs to contact Casper XP to learn how to rewrite your program.

I am going to investigate Symantec Ghost and may be discontinuing use of TI.

Roger

 

Hello Roger,

I am really sorry for the incorrect way of my idea expression. I didn't want to tell you that Windows reinstallation is needed. According to the Acronis Report and screenshot you have sent Acronis True Image assigned letters by standard and, of course, it doesn't know whether you have plugged some of your drives befre Windows installation or after that.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Having a cloned drive (which is what Casper XP does , it clones) visable to other imaging programs is asking for trouble in my opinion. All kinds of things can go wrong when there is a clone of the boot drive visable. As always YMMV.

 

beenthereb4,

I won't disagree with you one bit. I have it set up this way for two reasons. One, if my C drive fails I can switch the cable to the clone and I am immediately back in business. Two, have you tried to find an external enclosure for a SATA drive with either USB2.0 or Firewire interface?

Roger