Acronis Trueimage Question

I bought ATI a few years back, and every time I restore an image, it messes up my hard drives and changes them around. For example, D: becomes F: and F: becomes D: etc, and then I have to manually change them back.

What is causing that and is there a solution?

That's why I been looking for an alternative imaging program because it's very annoying when ATI does that.

 

Not sure...but I've seen many imaging tools do this...sometimes they leave my non-system partition with no drive letter. Unless it's a huge deal for you, if you have no other issue with ATI besides that maybe it is something you can live with?

 

It's been a while since i've had to restore an image but my understanding is that when you boot up windows with a new formatted drive or new partitions, it will automatically assign drive letters. Once those are assigned, they remain the same unless you change them (and they're tied to physical drives).
So, if you are putting in a new non-system drive and want to restore an image to it, if you first partition and assign drive letters in windows, you can then restore specific partitions from you image file to specific partitions on your drive and it should be fine. But as I said, it's been a while since I've done this.

 

Only Paragon, when restored an image, will load Windows and be done with it.

But Acronis Trueimage messes with my drive letters, and then in toolbar always appears an icon about installing device drivers and that I need to reboot Windows.

Same thing happens in EaseUS, when restored an image, and windows loads, it starts installing some device drivers and tells me I need to reboot windows.

Paragon was the only one that didn't do it. Once the image was restored and windows loaded, that was the end off it. No device drivers installing and no reboot needed.

So I wonder why Acronis and EaseUS does it, but Paragon does not?

But Acronis is the worse as it messes with and changes all my hard drive letters around, besides C:, it remains the same, but D: changes to F: and F: changes to D: and having to manually change them back is a pain!

 

Mozart,

As napoleon said, that's not unusual (drive letters are somewhat arbitrary assignments). The best remedy is to label each drive/partition with a meaningful title. For example:

C: [System & Programs]
D: [Docs & Data]
E: [Backups]

So even when the letter assigment changes, you can depend upon the label to accurately identify the drive/partition!

Scott

 

TheMozart,

Can you post two screenshots of Disk Management? One before and one after restoring the image. That should give us an idea of what is happening.

 

No need. It's easy to understand. Drive D: is changed to drive F: and F: is changed to drive D:

I then need to load "Manage" / "Disk Management" and change them back to their original drive letter.

This happens every time I restore an image.

Is there a solution to stop ATI changing the drives at restore?

 

It might be easy for you as you can see the data I need to see but to understand it I need to see the screenshots. For example you haven't described what happens to E: and you haven't told me the partition order, primary or logical, etc.


Edit .... one screenshot will be enough.

 

I have already restored image so that's why I can't give screenshots.

But it's easy to understand. C: is same, E: which is DVD is same, but D: has changed to F: and F: has changed to D:.

I then have to change them back to original state.

Does anyone know why this is happening and how to stop it?

In addition, when I boot, Windows pops up a window saying Windows didn't close down properly. Why is it doing that?

 

Maybe it is drivers problem

I think you should try their WinPE bootcd, basically WinPE 3.0 based bootcd will have better hardware support

But unluckily, their winpe bootcd is on paid version.

If you are using Acronis and EaseUS with no problems, then you can forget Paragon.

 

I know how to stop it. I've been caught before by folks describing their Disk Management and leaving out critical details.

 

are you are using the acronis boot disk for the restore? a lot of times this has to do with the way the drives are loaded by the bios when using a boot disc vs running in windows. i have seen this issue many times and i have smetimes when i switch the sata cables around they then would again be switched back in a boot disc env. but then reversed inside windows. i normally do not see this when running from a current winpe boot disc however (except the easue one they have something weird going on just in general with their program imo) i could be totally off track but i do see this issue as i described many times in fact i have one mobo (a asrock 1156 socket) that when doing the windows install the drives are reversed (drive 1 is really drive 0) but when in windows they are normal...

 

I am using the VistaPE boot CD with the Acronis BartPE plugin enabled that is free because I paid for the program. It works great at restoring an image, and very fast.

Anyone else know why when restoring an image my D: changes to F: and F: changes to D:?

This is a mystery for me and I am hoping someone can pin point the issue?

 

Hi zfactor.

I am using the VistaPE boot CD + Acronis BartPE plugin.

Do you think that's causing it?

 

I know what you mean!

 

Thanks for the backup.

I'll also need before and after screenshots of
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices]

TheMozart will have to do some tests to give us this information.

 

What tests do you want me to provide?

I am hoping to stop Acronis doing this. It's always so annoying to have to change D: back to F: and F: back to D: and then having to reboot.

And I cannot paste here all that appears in my MountedDevices, because it's like 12 pages worth of text.

What should it look like inside MountedDevices?

 

You only need to copy the bottom section beginning with

\DosDevices\A:

Actually you don't need a screenshot for this. Just copy and paste all of the \DosDevices into a post and we'll see what it looks like.

Edit... My mistake as you can't copy/paste. Can you screenshot this area?

 

http://i42.tinypic.com/5vssx0.jpg

When I restore, Vista begins to "install device drivers" and changes D: to F: and F: to D:. All the other drives remain OK. E: is my DVD drive and J: is my Truescrypt travelers virtual partion. G: is my external USB hard drive when it's plugged in. And I think H: is when I plug in my 2GB USB stick.

Does that help you Brian?

And why didn't Paragon change D: and F:? Why does Acronis and not Paragon?

 

Excellent. Now I need one Disk Management screenshot (present system is OK) and one screenshot of [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices] taken after a restore when the drive letters have been reversed.

I know it's a pain to do but it will help.

 

So Brian, you mean do exactly what I have done, but AFTER restore when D: and F: has been changed and copy the same area again?

 

That's correct. The same area as your recent screenshot.

 

TheMozart,

I also need one Disk Management screenshot. Can you take it immediately after the TI restore when the drive letters have been swapped?

 

Your D: drive has an offset of 0x47efa000 (little-endian, reversed bytes) which is LBA-603,443,200

Your F: drive has an offset of 0x0b038370 (little-endian, reversed bytes) which is LBA-92,389,816

 

Ok I found a solution that fixes these issues, so now when I reboot a restored image, I no longer get the Windows error page and D: and F: no longer swap around.

The soution is.. Uninstall Acronis Windows program and DO NOT create images from within Windows as windows is running. Instead I boot the Acronis boot CD and create the image from the boot CD instead. And then when I boot the rescue CD and restore that image, everything restores and works fine.

So obviously, the problems happen when using Acronis windows program and creating images from within windows as windows is running. So I recommend others to NOT DO THAT, instead create images from booting the rescue CD instead. That way windows is closed and not running when creating an image...and then the restoring of the image works better and doesn't confuse and mess around with windows.