SATA Raid and Boot disk restore problem

I have Western Digital 250 gig SATA drives on a FastTrak S150 SX4-M Promise Raid card running RAID 5. On Windows 2000 server/sp4.
Running ver 7 build 584 (that's what the download gave me when I bought this 4 days ago).
I tried to boot from the 6 boot disks, and got the GUI, but it indicated
there were no hard drives found.
What am I supposed to do to get the boot/restore process to work?

Are there similar problems/concerns booting with SCSI Raid?
I see nothing in your documentation about this.

Report.txt was too big to upload, so I removed some of the memory dump to get it down to less than 100kb and uploaded..

Aram

 

Hi, aram

Welcome to Wilders and Acronis TrueImage Forums.

Try getting the newest version update:- Latest Builds

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Installed ver 613, and tested.
Recognized SATA drives on Promise controller so that is better.
Tested a system partition, C drive image backup and then restore.
Booting after the restore got "Cannot find NTLDR.."
This was a RAID 5 machine.

I decided to try a RAID 1, so reinstalled everything from scratch.,
ran through the same test, and on reboot, got the Windows 2000
startup/loading GUI, but then BSOD with "Inaccessible_Boot_Device..."

Is RAID 1 or 5 supported with your product?

This is an urgent need for our business as we have contractual
obligations re: backup, and I need this working..This is a licensed version
meaning you have my $ already..Please help..

 

Hello --

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and for your interest in Acronis
True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/)!

Are you trying to restore the whole drive or only 1 partition? Are you trying to restore to the same computer or to another one (or even to the same, but RAID configured another way)?

Please read the information about restoring to the different hardware -

http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/faq.html#17

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Anton Gromov

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd. Suite 213
South San Francisco
CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis... Compute with confidence

 

The restore is to the C drive, one of 2 partitions on the drive.
Restore is to same computer.

 

If I might add my problems to this thread...

I too have the S150 SX4 card, (not the M, but that's irrelevant.)

The True Image 8 recovery CD can see the three SATA drives attached to the controller, but doesn't identify an array entity. As such, it thinks all drives contain invalid partition tables (which they do when you read them one by one.)

The "problem" is that the SX4 uses software RAID at a driver level, which is accelerated by the hardware XOR engine and cache memory. Linux kernel 2.6.x's support for this very card exhibits the exact same symptoms... not seeing the array, just the drives.

Right now, I can propose two solutions:

1. Fix the driver - or rather update it

2. Provide a plugin for bartPE http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

I prefer either, although I'd very much like to see it be possible for us True Image users to make use of BartPE and the ability to use XP drivers (I'll verify that the SX4 drivers work in it over the next couple of days.)

As is stands, I have no easy way of restoring my operation system partition, which will do for now, but I expect a solution be developed as I have paid for this software.

I hope this is useful to somebody...

Steve K.

 

My post was over a month ago, and you can see the attention it got.
Don't hold your breath, but maybe they'll surprise both of us with a fix.
Don't like to be cynical, but a company just dropping a support thread before something is resolved leaves a bad taste...

 

You have a point, although I am willing to try to help Acronis find a solution, even if it is just a temporary one.

I am going to attempt to create a plugin for Bart's PE that will support the fast track SX4 card, and also create a template for legitimate True Image users to add True Image to the PE CD.

In the meantime, might I suggest this:

Stick an IDE hard drive in the system, install 2000 on it and install True Image along with the SX4 drivers. Restore the OS partition to the RAID array. Take the IDE drive offline and restart... see what happens when you try to boot from the array.

If you get "NTLDR missing" try booting from the 2000 CD with the RAID drivers loaded, then load the recover console. Run "fixmbr" and "fixboot," this may fix the problem, but will of course wipe the mbr and bootsectors.

steve [at] stevekerrison.com

 

Oh, and Steve K = Kez = Steve K

- I'm now registered too, to make things a bit easier.

 

I too am frustrated with True Image's lack of support for RAID SATA drives/partitions. The key is to load the Raid driver at boot up so that the drives are correctly identified. The BART boot disk systems use a native windows idea of allowing the user to add the drivers in during boot up. The difference is that the boot disk contains the drivers already.

I nearly lost my whole C: drive over the week-end trying to re-image from a TrueImage image. For those struggling to find a way through this I stumbled across this somewhat combersome method:

Reinstall windows to boot up.
Install True Image
Use the Image explorer to view your latest image
Select all the files and directories and copy to a spare hard disk or at least to partition with enough space to hold all the files.

Reboot the computer using a boot disk with RAID drivers and program to view and copy files (a Windows Explorer shell or with somthing like XTREE).

First delete all the files off the C: drive (boot) partition). Since the drive is unmounted this is allowed.

Second select all the files you copied to the spare disk or partition and copy them to the now empty c: drive.

Reboot the system without the Boot CD and you will have restored your latest backup.

WARNING

Note carefully the drive letters under the cd boot. They probably will not match you windows drive letters. The best way to avoid confusion is to label each partition clearly. I use "C_RAID_BOOT", "D_RAID", "E_IDE", "F_IDE".

BTW I have Silicon Image Raid as per ABIT NF7-S motherboard. 2 X Maxtor 80GB in RAID 0.

I have now decided to use Ghost to image my drives. It restores okay although I had to make the C drive active and unhidden using Partition Magic!

 

I've got the RAID drivers working on Bart's PE.

I have nearly got True Image working too (I think.)

My final step will be making my external firewire drive functional through BartPE.

Once I've verified this stuff works, I'll submit it to nu2.com (home of BartPE.)

If it does work, I will write a tutorial, as it will prove immensely useful I'm sure.

Update: I've got True Image to run but don't appear to have got the snapshot driver to load properly. I will work on this and hopefully get it sorted.

 

Hi Kez

I have a SiI3x12A SATA Controller (GA-7N400 Pro2 board) . Can you advise how you got your SATA drivers installed with Barts PE?.

Old1

 

Create a folder in /plugins called "dsk_fastsx" and put the .cat and .sys files from the fastsx driver download in there. Then grab the file I attached and change the extension to .inf.

I'm still working on true image... not had any more time to work on it yet.

 

Has anyone else had any better luck with this yet? I've had luck this morning getting the plugin built for the Fastrack S150 SX4 correctly, but so far nothing good can be said about making Acronis work properly. I'm going to start some work using the TrueImageServer rescue CD's files as a basis for that functionality, since they are obviously all that you really need. Anyone have some good info on the system? If so, please drop me a line at jason@pneudraulics.com and let's make this damn thing actually WORK!

Jason

 

here is some info that may help:

Link to possible info on running TrueImage under WinPE

 

That's a very interesting thread, but the last post really sums it up...

...why bother when you cannot rely on Acronis TI to restore properly!

One day this product may be worthwhile, but for now it's just way too risky for system backups. I'll stick with Ghost thanx!

 

just wondering whether Kez or anyone got True Image to work under BartPE & would you post your plugin if so. thanks!

 

hi, i have this card, i have a problem, i have 2 hard drives in channel 1-2 raid 0, the problem is booting from raid, i dont want this, i have a raptor in sata channel of my board, i was checking my bios and i was checking boot priority, i have only raptor to boot, all is disable, but i cant boot, what can i do?

 

Hello ir0nballz,

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

Could you please send the description of what is happening when you try to boot from your hard disk to support@acronis.com? Also please attach Acronis Report to the letter. Acronis Support Team will certainly help you.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Bashing post with advertising removed as per our TOS.

 

The latest PE plugin works now, but you must get it from Acronis. Once you are registered, you can download it from their site.

 

I have a new ASUS motherboard P5AD2-E Premium.

I installed a SATA drive as the main and only drive.

I backed up my system to a USB drive.

When I try to restore, I get the dreaded "Processing, please wait."

But I've actually gotten it to work a few times after rebooting and trying again and again. It will either work or it won't.

Turning off the USB drive doesn't seem to make a difference.

This ONLY happens when booting from the CD-R image (or when you run acronis in windows and it reboots the system to go to standalone).

So based on other comments, there is something very wrong with SATA disks that is causing TI 8 to hang in trying to look at the SATA drive.

I cannot use the "safe" version because I have to restore from a USB drive.

So what do I do? Give up?

 

also, you get a hang if you try "manage cronis secure zone" too.

I've found that if you reboot and try about 20 times, you'll get about 1 out of 20 or 30 where it won't hang and will work.

 

Hello stk,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please try the "acpi=off noapic" workaround as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

If that does not help then please collect the following information:

- Create Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

- Find the full version name and build number as it is shown here;

- Describe actions taken before the problem appears step-by-step;

Please also create Acronis Report in the way described below:

- Download and run Acronis Report Utility;
- Select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy;

Please keep your external USB hard drive connected while creating Acronis Report and Linux system information.

If you would not be able to create a sysinfo.txt file for some reasons then please boot from the Acronis True Image rescue disc once more and press F11 key when the "Starting Acronis Loader..." message appears.

After you get the "Linux Kernel Settings" prompt, please remove the "quiet" word, click on the OK button. As the startup messages stop scrolling please write down the last few lines of the output, or use a digital camera to make shots of the output screens.

Send all the collected files and information to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

well, removing "quiet" told me everything.

My system has "readers" for various card types (SD, etc.). I have 4 card reader slots so they show up as 4 devices at scsi5 from Vendor IN-WIN in the attached

Sometimes when it boots, it sees these and hangs on them (see the attached) for a while and then it will load the GUI. But then you get the dreaded "processing, please wait..."

Other times when it boots, these "disks" aren't noticed and they don't even appear in /proc/partitions

Therefore, I believe if I pull the power on this set of card readers, it should work reliably.

I will send you 4 different sysinfos via email so you can compare.

I did verify that with the attached sysinfo, acronis would hang with the message to please wait.