Restore not working?

For my client, a new TI 11 customer, I'm testing to be certain he can recover from a complete primary hard drive failure.

Unfortunately, I'm finding that things aren't exactly working the way we'd like.

The test platform:
XP Sp2, with a minimal number of apps installed, total size, about 8gb, in a 25gb partition. Box is running a recent ECS motherboard with Intel 630 CPU at 3 ghz, w/1gb mem. Box is highly reliable in all other respects.

I'm doing a Backup procedure, using all the defaults in TI11, saving to a file on another hard drive.

Then, to verify that our proposed process is valid, I am substituting a different hard drive, of some random size (larger than the backup size of course), and attempting to a> restore to it, and b> boot and run on it. I'm booting on a TI Recovery Cd made for this purpose.

I've been unable to do so. The restore goes as expected, but it never is able to reboot. The most recent failure results in XP booting up to a point where I get a blue screen, mouse pointer in the center, which sits there for quite a while, then I get alternating 'audio events' indicating that I've 'arrived at Windows' then immediately after, I'm 'leaving Windows'... over and over, looping.

I tried booting into safe mode on this same restore, with a similar looping failure.

Early on, I did try some save and restore tests which did work as expected. It's only now that we have a more fully mature, loaded system, which we're testing with, and now finding failures.

I've tried re-doing the backup and re-restoring to a different hard drive, and rebooted, to the same results. I realize this could well be due to just another moronic stupidity issue with Windows XP but it would be at least comforting to know that we might have a chance in recovering from a major failure down the road, since this is the primary reason we decided to go with TI in the first place.

This is not encouraging. Does this mean that in order to fully recover from a major failure, one must restore to a disk which is exactly the same as the failed disk on the backup? If that's so, this doesn't cut it.

Any ideas what might be going on here? And, more to the point, is this the kind of reliability I should be advising my clients to pursue?

eno

 

PizzaFoundry,


Not good at this, but at least you will get a bump

Is the drive you are restoring to bootable? If not, I don't think by just using the boot CD it will work.

Check FAQ's for below item.

"How to create an Acronis bootable USB hard disk"



Ken

 

PizzaFoundry,

Is that a blue screen with a small WinXP logo in the centre? But no other text?

How did you create the image? Your technique sounds good but I'd be interested to know about the HDs.

How many partitions in the source HD?
Are there other OS?
Is WinXP the first partition?
When you created the image, was the source HD the only internal HD?
Was the new HD partitioned or are you restoring to Unallocated Space.
After you restored the image, did you remove the source HD from the computer BEFORE trying to boot to the new HD? Sounds like you are. I think you are removing the source HD before restoring the image to the new HD.

It sounds like a drive letter issue to me and they are always due to operator error. Let's see.

 

definite drive letter change problem.

When restoring windows xp, you need to follow every step perfectly everytime or you will get drive letter change problems, it doesn't matter if you use true image or other image backup software. That's just how windows xp behaves when restored.

My recommendation to everyone who backups and restores windows xp is to use the utility "paragon justboot corrector" to fix the drive letters if your restored hard drive doesn't boot. I've used it a couple of times and it worked everytime. I can restore to a larger partition or smaller partition even leave both hard drives connected during first boot, all the common mistakes and I can still fix it so my hard drive will boot.

No matter how easy or user friendly they try to make backing up and restoring an entire partition, it is actually a very complicated process. With windows xp, you need to know how to manipulate drive letters to be successful. It never took me more than 5 minutes to fix a drive letter change problem with the boot corrector, it's quicker than redoing everything over again. If you already bought true image, might as well use it and get a utility that can change drive letters for those times when the restored drive won't boot. Other people here in the forums will tell you to do everything over again and follow the guide etc, if it's a drive letter change problem, I say just fix it, especially if it's a computer you need up right away.

My advice is to download the demo of "paragon justboot correcter" and use that to boot your non-booting hard drive. The demo will tell you if you have a drive letter problem. It's the first thing to check and rule out. If your clone does have a drive letter change problem, thats an easy fix, usually just going into the registry and changing the drive letter back to what it is on the source hard drive and rebooting will fix it.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958

 

Hello Pizafoundry,

Just a couple of questions.

When making an image of the source drive was this of the whole drive with the DISK box checked?

When running the restore, booted from the rescue CD, was the whole disk box checked again so that all the partitions and the MBR are included?

If the answer to both questions is yes the restore should have run successfully.

To Joneyjoe,
I have to point out that once again you are giving bad advice. I suggest that you carefully RTFM and the relevant posts by Grover who has written some excellent "idiot guides"

Xpilot