What Makes a Restore Go Bad

Hi Guys,

I understand that many of you, have had successful 'restores' from images, & that they are relied on heavily. My first restore went horrible, many applications, were broken or caused damage to others.

So what can make an image restore go bad, & what should one look out for when restoring from an image such as Acronis, etc.?

Thanks
Rico

 

Hello,

The image itself going bad or the restoration process not succeeding?

1. Disk gets damaged / not written correctly due to internal errors.
2. Incompatibility with hardware / software.

Mrk

 

My biggest concern has been if the image that I was restoring from was 100% valid. To date, mine have been. (My imaging software allows verification of the image after it's created so that helps alot in the peace of mind department.) I have never had an issue and I have restored at least a couple dozen times...

 

I had a restore problem with a trial version of Acronis True Image 9 back in 2005. Early releases of TI 9 were very buggy.

No problems with more recent releases, except that I cannot restore a drive from within Windows, only from the rescue CD, otherwise, I get a BSOD.

Indeed, I used to also backup using GHost 10, but stopped doing that on 3 Nov 2006.

 

Rico,

Run ATI again and be sure to verify image. Also make a "new" restore cd.

After image is run / backed-up. Re-start box w/ restore CD in CD Drive. Just follow the on-screen directions. ATI on my machine takes a while to start the actual restore process, maybe 5min's.

If you don't have an app like FD-ISR, just create a system restore point prior to the back-up operation. <-- just in case

Keep us posted.

...screamer

 

Another issue to keep in mind with respect to restoring old images or backups is your drive geometry. If you have changed your drive geometry (i.e. active partition, number of partitions, partition order, boot order, partition drive letters, etc.) since making your image/backup then you "may" be restoring a geometry that is inconsistent with the current drive layout - depending on what/where you are restoring to.

Thus, a perfectly "good" image/backup can appear to fail by exhibiting quite an array of broken links, broken or incorrect paths, incorrect boot.ini information, bad partition tables, multiple active partitions, etc. If you really need some particular data or files, try mounting the image and copying the files or try restoring/copying only the specific files you need to a temporary folder - rather than attempting a true "restore". That way you are avoiding dealing with partition/drive geometry issues.

Just a thought......

 

Hi Guys,

My horrible restore, was to a new Seagate HDD, from a sudden failure of the old Samsung HDD. The new drive was formatted to NTFS & had nothing on it, so hardware/software compatibility, seems not to fit. The imaging software used was Acronis 10 latest build. I have never seen Acronis complain on "validation" & the image used to restore, shows no problems, validation wise, post restore. Acronis fails to respond at, the forum & email support is very poor. Like, ask a direct question & they respond see "knowledge base" reply "answer not found, in knowledge base" Acronis seems not interested.

Without referring to my notes. Some of the problems, I remember were:

Outlook crash M$ office when using Outlook "attachment"
IPP "installed printer program" clicking it, Roxio 8 installer would run
Restore point bad
Adobe Flashplayer, crashes IE7, by trying to go to other web sights
iTunes parts of it missing
Epson scanner applets missing, scanner non functional
Battery backup software problems, Device Mgr.
SoundBlaster problems Device Mgr.
CCleaner broken
Boot Deleter broken
ABBYY OCR software non functional
error upon starting PhotoshopElements

The amount of fixing & troubleshooting I've done "post image" it would have been easier to reinstall the apps. from the original disks. Now with a healthy HDD, I have to ask:

1. Should I look for other backup software.
2. I'm very reluctant to do another Acronis restore, because of the problems & poor help from Acronis
3. What reasonable expectations should I have, using any image software.
a) no errors should occur
b) some errors should occur
c) my list of problems is typical, when using image software

Also the backup & restore took place using a Seagate (2 month old) ext. HDD.
Also this was my very first experience, restoring from an image. In part based on the responses, from this I will either give Acronis another chance, or move on to another backup/restore strategy!

Thanks & Happy New Year
Rico

 

Hello,
Well I did resotre on both Linux and Windows system partition, it worked well. No clashes with MBR / GRUB. Worked fine. I think ATI is a very good program. Cause isn't it said: "Love thy imaging programme and it shalt love thee."
Mrk