Recovery partition inaccessible after clone?

I recently installed Acronis True Image 9 and cloned my old hard drive to the new Seagate hard drive. All appeared to be working without problems. Though I have found one today that I'd like to ask about.

But first let me say that I did nothing to "set up" the hard drive in the CMOS setup. I noticed this in the user guide after I had already cloned the hard drive! I'm referring to page 72 of the user's guide where it describes hard disk and bios set up, and it talks about things such as going into the bios and CMOS setup menu and dealing with the number of cylinders on the disk, sectors, boot sequence, etc. I didn't fool with any of this, simply did the "clone" or transfer. Should I have set up the hard disk in the manner described either before or after doing the clone? With one exception so far, everything seems to be working quite well.

Here is the problem I found today. My Hewlett-Packard Pavilion a324x computer did not come with a Windows disk, but had a "recovery" partition on the original hard drive. Supposedly I could restore either Windows or any other programs that came with the computer from this disc partitioned on drive "D.". When I cloned the hard drive, I chose both partitions, the main "C" drive as well as the recovery partition, "D." to be cloned. Today when I was booting up, out of curiosity I selected the "recovery disk" option instead of the usual "Windows XP" option. This should have taken me to the recovery partition, but instead I got the message "disk read error occurred -- press control -- alt -- delete to reboot".

Does anybody have any ideas why I cannot access this recovery partition? I sort of have an idea why. When I originally set up the computer several years ago, it gave me the option of making some copies to CD of this partition, and it said I would only be allowed to make one copy, which I did. Those CDs are around here somewhere. Could this be the reason why this "copy of 'D' -- (that is: clone)" is not accessible? Whether it is or not, any ideas of how to overcome this problem? Also, I noticed the "D" partition shows under Windows Explorer as having about 5 GB in it, about the same as on the old hard drive. But when I go to the first and only subdirectory under "D" which is titled "Recovery", it only has about 300 kB in it! Very strange. If I set up The Acronis Secure Zone, would I even need this recovery partition on my disk, or would it be redundant?

This is the only hitch I've been able to find so far. I was even able to back up to DVDs without any problems on build 3567! I have not yet installed version 3625, much less 3633, but the backup to DVD appeared to work.
Thanks In Advance,

Bill

 

I'll attempt the Bios query. Most modern motherboards have those Bios settings set to Auto so it is no longer necessary to set the figures that Acronis recommends. Must be an old part of the guide that no one has corrected.

However the boot sequence could be important when it comes to booting with a bootable CD. The preferred boot sequence in the Bios is:

Floppy
CD
Hd 0
Hd 1

 

"When I cloned the hard drive, I chose both partitions"

Is this even an option when cloning Are you sure you cloned?

Did you just image and restore without the MBR?

 

Thanks for the responses! Regarding whether or not I might have simply done an image and restore without the MBR:

After physically installing the new disk and connecting it alongside of the old disk in the computer, I rebooted and started WinXp, then started Acronis and selected "clone disk" from the 4 choices, and followed the prompts in the wizard using "automatic" mode. Maybe I mis-spoke by saying I "chose" both partitions. After I selected "clone disk" and then the "automatic" mode, there really wasn't much else for me to choose from. But I am pretty sure I remember seeing both partitions being dealt with separately and automatically in the wizard, after which I was directed to reboot. And then after the reboot, I'm pretty sure I remember both partitions being copied on a blue DOS like screen from the original disk to the new disk. In addition, the partitions were resized proportionately to account for the larger size of the new disk, all automatically if memory serves. Then I believe I was directed to shut down again and remove the original hard drive and switch the connections from the second hard drive to the cable from the original. So I'm pretty sure I did the clone, unless it is somehow possible not to do so after selecting "automatic" and then simply following the recommended prompts? I didn't see any wording about "image/restore" during all of this.

Do you think from the above description that it would be possible that I did something other than cloning? I'm pretty sure I cloned, but any error is possible with a newbie like me! But let me reemphasize that everything else, from booting up to Windows to all programs that I have so far checked on, everything seems to be working normally. Except for not being able to access the recovery disk ("D") during bootup.
Thanks Again,

Bill

 

OK – you cloned. But you did not “choose” which partitions to clone (that’s not an option), which is where the confusion came in. When imaging, you are prompted to select disks/partitions, but not when cloning.

I have a Gateway with a Recovery partition and its size specs are - Capacity: 3.44GB, Used Space: 921MB.

I only have questions, no answers – sorry. But maybe someone else will see your replies and be able to help.
Were you ever able to boot with the Recovery option?
Do you still have the old drive so that you can mount it and examine the Recovery partition?
Did you ever run scan disk against either the old or new D: partition?
Did TI create a log you can check for errors? I’ve never cloned; don’t know where such a log would be kept.
You might check with Hewlett-Packard to see if cloning/resizing the Recovery partition would affect the ability to boot (disk ID, partition location).

Good luck.

 

I appreciate your efforts, even if you can't come up with answers. Like you say, maybe somebody who has dealt with a similar problem will see this and respond.

Yes, I believe with the old drive I was able to select and go to the recovery partition during boot up. Yes, I still have the old drive which should still have a whole data intact, and I may end up taking that option to remount it and examine the contents, and see if I'm able to go to the recovery partition.

I ran "check disk" right before starting this process, but I can't remember if I ran it only on "C" drive (this seems the most likely) or on the other partition also.
But the more I think about it the more likely it seems I only ran it on "C" drive only and not the recovery partition. I have not run scan disk on either of the new partitions. Maybe I should give that a try.

My suspicion is growing that it has something to do with, as I already mentioned, the fact that I had copied the recovery partition to CDs, as directed when I set the computer up new a few years ago. The instructions said that I would only be able to make one copy of this partition. So I know that I could not normally copy this partition to CDs or DVDs. I wonder if what ever it is programmed in the original computer to prevent more than one copy to CDs also prevent Acronis from cloning this part of the drive to a new hard drive? But if that's the case, you would think I'd get some kind of message from Acronis that it was unable to copy these files. In addition, there is the mystery that when I checked the properties of the new D:/recovery partition, it shows about the same number of gigabytes (about 5 Gigs) as on the old drive, as far as "space used" goes. And yet when I examine properties of the subdirectories of "D",(recovery- the only subdirectory), only a small fraction of the original data appears to be there.

Bill

 

Hello Bill,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

First of all, please try booting into the recovery partition from your "old" hard drive.

If that does not work either then the issue is not related to Acronis software in any way.

If you are able to boot into the recovery partition from the "old" (source) hard drive then please do the following:

- Completely unplug the "new" (destination) hard drive and install the "old" one in it's place, boot into Windows and create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

- Swap the drives back, i.e. completely unplug the "old" (source) hard drive and install the "new" one in it's place, boot into Windows and create Acronis Report once more;

- Rename the reports created to report_source.txt and report_destination.txt accordingly.

Please submit a request for technical support. Provide the reports collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov