Acronis FAILS to Restore Disk Image

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by mliving, Jul 8, 2007.

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  1. mliving

    mliving Registered Member

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    I purchased Acronis True Image 9.1 to create a standard corporate image for our organizations 7 laptops. 6 of the 7 laptops are identical. Dell Latitude 131L.

    Yesterday afternoon (pretty much the entire afternoon) I struggled to get Acronis True Image 9.1 (Build 3887) to restore our standard (valid) image WITHOUT SUCCESS.

    Heres the process:
    1. Start Acronis on laptop and select image to restore (on DVD)
    2. Acronis begins process reports that it needs to reboot to complete the process
    3. Acronis starts after reboot and launches.
    4. Just as restore process begins Acronis reboots the laptop WITHOUT restoring image and starts Windows.

    I've spent too many hours in these forums trying to find a solution. I have submitted technical support requests (purchased AMPS) and have not found nor been offered a solution.

    I need this laptop up and running tomorrow!

    It appears to be an ongoing issue with certain model Dell laptops and most on our laptops were purchased in early April (that's THREE MONTHS AGO) so I struggle to believe that this issue has NOT been resolved by Acronis.

    I purchased Acronis because it came highly recommended by IT professionals I work with. Unfortunately, for Acronis, their products have a 50% FAILURE rate in my experience which is completely unacceptable in this day and age and their technical support isn't far behind!
     
  2. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

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    Make the bootable True Image Rescue cd, boot with it, and try the procedure from its menu.
     
  3. mliving

    mliving Registered Member

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    I contact Acronis directly and received an updated boot disk ISO that worked fine.
     
  4. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello mliving and everyone interested,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Workstation Disk Backup Software.

    We are glad to hear that your issue has been solved and you can use Acronis True Image successfully.

    For further users of Acronis True Image who encounter similar issue we may recommend that you first follow DwnNdrty's advice and try to perform the restore process when booted from Acronis True Image Bootable CD created using the latest build of of the appropriate version of Acronis True Image. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

    If the issue persists, please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post. Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to 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 a solution.

    Thank you.
    --
    Aleksandr Isakov
     
  5. burntire

    burntire Registered Member

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    I am having the same problem with my Dell XPS desktop.
    I have the latest build 10.0 and the rescue CD boots but after selecting restore Acronis allows windows to boot without restoring the image.
     
  6. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    Did you try cloning from the Rescue CD?
     
  7. burntire

    burntire Registered Member

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    No matter what task I select windows boots.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2007
  8. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    If you have a future problem, be sure to check to see if there is a newer build of TrueImage available on the web site.

    That often is the solution to problems (or it may introduce new problems which can be entertaining).:)
     
  9. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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  10. dsmart[3000ad]

    dsmart[3000ad] Registered Member

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    Well, I'm having the same issue on my wife's Dell Inspiron 8500. This machine does not have MediaDirect. It has a bare 60GB HDD.

    Yes, I'm an experienced ATI user; so no referrals to threads I've already read plz. Thanks.

    Using the latest version of ATI Home 10

    Here is the scenario.

    In 2004, she bought this laptop for work. After removing all the Dell crapware, bloatware and patently ludicrous malware, I imaged it. I have no clue what version of ATI I had back then, but my guess is that it was probably v9 build something. The .tib files are dated 11/04.

    Anyway, I imaged the drive to DVD media and it created three .tib files. I stored these files so that one day - if needed - I could restore the HDD to its original pristine condition.

    That day came. And went. Yesterday.

    I have tried every freaking tactic there is. Not that I should have to. Restoring a drive image that you trusted to an imaging program, should.just.work. Anything short of that is unacceptable.

    So, here we are.

    1. I booted from an ATI 10 rescue boot disk, went to Disk Director and killed the partitions; leaving me with 55.89GB (of a 60GB drive) of unallocated disk space.
    2. Rebooted
    3. Went through the motions of attempting to restore the backup only to have ATI generate an exception (which is immediately cleared during the reboot) and subsequently reboot the machine.

    In order to remove the DVD-ROM drive from the equation, I copied all the three .tib files to an ext. USB hdd. I then connected this drive to the laptop and once again rebooted.

    Once again, after locating the .tib files on the USB drive (which ATI found with no problem), ATI generated again an exception and rebooted when asked to restore the backup.

    Funny thing is, when I select the option to verify the backup images, it does that just fine. Then reboots when its time to do the actual restore.

    So, any of you experts know something that I don't?

    Thanks!
     
  11. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    Are you sure this hard drive is fully functional? Can you partition and format the drive with Disk Director with no errors?

    Since you have verified the backup image on the USB drive in the TI recovery environment, the immediate reboot is very odd.
     
  12. dsmart[3000ad]

    dsmart[3000ad] Registered Member

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    Yes, its 100% fine. In fact, I got fedup of trying to do this, I just bit the bullet and re-installed the OS from the Dell original CD-ROM. As I type this, SP2 is still installing.

    What a pain. It is never ceases to amaze me that whenever you need to use ATI for recovery, you find that its failed miserably. As someone said earlier, a 50% failure rate is unacceptable.

    Heck, I'm so paranoid that not only am I making backups of ATI backups, but I also have a program that monitors the backups and makes backups of those to an NAS. Ridiculous.
     
  13. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    I'm sorry this has turned out so unsuccessfully. The real truth is that you never know you have a backup until you have restored it.

    In your case, the problem appears to be that the TI Recovery Linux environment won't run the Restore - it just spontaneously reboots. In that case, it might not matter how many backup images you had.

    1. Did you ever restore an image of the boot drive successfully on this computer?

    2. Have you tried the tips using F11 when booting from the CD using noapic, etc. as described in the stickies at the top of this forum?

    3. Have you tried making a BartPE boot disk so that you can run a recovery from a Windows environment?
     
  14. dsmart[3000ad]

    dsmart[3000ad] Registered Member

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    Hi John,

    Come to think of it, no; I never did have to restore the image for this laptop since I first imaged and tested it back in 2004.

    Yep, tried the F11 tips. In fact, thats the first thing I tried even before I realized that my efforts were doomed to fail.

    Tired my [always on standby] BartPE disk. In fact, the ATI plugin installed on it, won't even start; though it starts on another machine.

    Its scary really. I remember back in the day when Norton literally gave up the Ghost. The end result was that most of us just move on to, to ATI it seems. If this crap keeps up, the same will happen to ATI when the next gotta-have-it comes along. If it weren't for the fact that it somewhat offers some features (e.g. file backup/restore works fine and I've used it on occasion) which do actually work and its all-in-one nature, I'd give up.

    In fact, I've already made up my mind that I'm never -ever - upgrading again. v10 is the end for me until I see convincing evidence that they're actually fixing problems instead of wasting time on bloat and inconsequential features.

    Get this: I recently tried the trial version of the workstation version. It couldn't backup to a network drive nor a NAS!!!! I tried to backup to my Synology CS-406e which other backup programs (Windows Backup, GenieBackupPro 7, Novabackup Server 8, FileBack, ViceVersa, CascadePoint) backup to just fine. Then it wouldn't backup to ANY drive on the LAN (I run an internal Gigabit LAN). I reported it. Then I get email
    #1

    That didn't work. I reported it and the next day I got email #2

    That was back on 06/13/07

    At that point, I just uninstalled it.
     
  15. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

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    Some of us here have opted to stay with ver 9 build 3677. Personally I need nothing more.
     
  16. jmk94903

    jmk94903 Registered Member

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    OK, so this isn't a new problem. It's just a problem that wasn't recognized before now since you didn't need to do a restore.

    Darn, that was the great white hope.

    That sounds like the BartPE disk did boot properly, but TI wouldn't run although other apps on the disk did run.

    I'd make a new BartPE disk with the newest plugin for TI. With luck, that will run.

    Well, I'm using TI 9's last build because it works on my hardware which is a few years old.

    When you buy a new system, you are often forced to get the newest backup software for compatibility. Until then, what works will continue to work.

    Was that from within Windows? That's really odd. In Windows, you have the Windows NIC drivers that support everything else using the network. The problem often appears when you boot from the Recovery CD to do a backup or restore from the Linux environment which turns out not to have the correct drivers.
     
  17. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello dsmart[3000ad],

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

    Please follow the instructions in Aleksandr's post.

    As for your support request about network, Could you please let me know your Acronis request number which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? I will find out how the solution of your issue is going.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
  18. dsmart[3000ad]

    dsmart[3000ad] Registered Member

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    Acronis #1038096
     
  19. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello dsmart[3000ad],

    Please be aware that, as I can see, your case is being worked upon by our expert team. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
  20. dsmart[3000ad]

    dsmart[3000ad] Registered Member

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    Don't care really, since I've un-installed the trial version already and have no intentions of re-installng it.

    I don't see how you folks could be selling a product that is designed to work across a network, but does not.
     
  21. jldodge

    jldodge Registered Member

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    I am having the identical problem and it appears there was no resolution to this issue. I have Acronis TI 10. Have successfully created and verified backups AND restored backups (under previous verions, not 10.0) on this computer. However, I am in a somewhat desparate/time sensitive situation so willing to "pay" for a fix. My current backup is version 10. I am running Windows XP SP2. My thought is to upgrade to 11.0 and see if that works using my 10.0 backup. Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether or not this problem could be solved with 11.0 OR am I just too desparate and naive?
     
  22. AKAJohnDoe

    AKAJohnDoe Registered Member

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    I have yet to have a successful restore of an ATI 11 backup.
     
  23. jldodge

    jldodge Registered Member

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    This is not looking good! After reading the string, it appears that there is not a solution to this problem that resolves the issue (Note: On a number of posts, Acronis suggests a "possible" solutions and then asks for the details to be sent to them for "technical support".). This is not much better than Symantec telling you to uninstall and then re-install to solve the problem!!!

    Can anyone give me some help here? Thanks again ...
     
  24. jldodge

    jldodge Registered Member

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    Okay, here is the final chapter. I downloaded and installed Acronis True Image 11.0 and "recovered" the 10.0 Backup files. Not the way it should work but I am more interested in the end result than how I got there. For the record, not sure I will buy version 11.0 as that may be pouring good money after bad. It's a shame that such a good alternative to Norton has apparently become it's competitor. Will wait and see how others weigh in on Acronis before I commit to version 11.0.

    Thanks for the help ...
     
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