Can not Restore Archive Paragon B&R 11 Advanced Free

I recently had a disk crash on my HP Pavillion Laptop. I previously made a Paragon recovery disk on a scan disk thumb drive. I also have a valid Archive from 11/11/2011 and that is located on an external WD drive. I tried to restore the disk by booting from the scan disk with the WD drive connected to my usb port. I can only boot in the safe mode, normal mode gives a blank screen. When I try to restore, the Paragon restore menu does not find the external WD drive at all, so I can not retrieve my backed up data. I'm willing to pay for the software upgrade, but I'm not sure that will help me in this situation.

Also, in addition, I also tried re installing Windows 7 and then Paragon B & R 2011 Advanced Free. I tried recover my archive with new installed software. During this process the software indicated that the machine needs disk access it has to restart and the recovery would take place during restart. I got a write error as if Paragon B&R couldn't write to my hard disk. In summary, I have tried to do this 2 ways and it failed. I do know that my archive is valid and readable. Any advice is greatly appreciated

 

My guess is that the Linux recovery enviroment is not a good fit for your machine probably a driver problem of some sort. Windows can't be running when the active partition is restored so the machine reboots and loads the recovery environment so if you start the process within Windows or boot from the USB/CD you end up in the same recovery program.

This is the reason the WinPE recovery software is provided as a downloadable extra when you buy the paid program. WinPE is Windows-based so it has better driver support and it also has the capability of loading additional drivers if required to support your hardware.

I can't guarantee that getting the paid version and creating a WinPE flash drive or CD will allow you archive to restore but it is what I would consider as the solution.

 

Thank you for your reply, but I don't understand it. I don't have Linux. I'm trying to restore Windows 7. Perhaps the paid version and the WinPE would help because of the driver issue? Still, I don't see why when I tried to restore from the reinstalled Paragon 11 that it failed. Not sure I want to invest money in software that doesn't work.

 

Actually, maybe I'm miss understood. Is the Backup/Restore Softare LINIX? Why wouldn't it be a good fit for my computer. It's no different than any other standard laptop.

 

The recovery environment for the free version is based on Linux. This is not uncommon many imaging products use it because it is free. WinPE has a license cost associated with it and that is why Paragon chooses to offer it only with the paid version.

The Linux version works on most systems but it is more problematic than the Windows version since Windows typically has better driver support. Most often the problem is with newer hardware. Also the the Linux recovery environment is built with a finite number of drivers not all the drivers in the Linux world so if you have some piece of hardware that is not a good fit then you have trouble.

My friend was using Paragon free the other day and it would not work with his USB3 drive Since he had bought the paid version he booted up WinPE but even so he needed to use the WinPE facility to add the USB3 driver to get it to run at USB3 speeds.

 

Maybe I should pay the $39.99 or whatever and get the paid version. I'm not sure where I would get the drivers for my Western Digital Backup Drive. Is the WinPE straight foward. As you probalby guessed, I'm not a wizard at this...but I am desperate.

 

If I buy the paid for version, and I succeed in restoring my disk from 11/11 2011 that will wipe out my new purched paid for version. Can I get it back?

 

Is your WD backup drive a USB3 drive? If not, the drivers are likely present. When I bought my USB3 drive it came with the drivers but I imagine they are on the WD site.

Yes, if you restore your backup, any program not installed when the image was made will be gone. This isn't a problem since you can always store the paid program and the WinPE build program to a CD or flash drive or on a second computer after you download them. Also, you can always login to your Paragon account and download the programs again. Access to your registered products and the necessary serial numbers for loading is available in your account.

Good luck, sincerely hope it all works well for you!

 

Success! thank you for your help, seekforever, I bought the paid version and although it took a while I finally restored my data. I was a bit confused about the restore process but now it makes sense. I created the WinPE on my thumbdrive and when I did the restore, the program indicated that it needed to do a restart so it could access the disk. When it restarted, I had to hit escape and boot from the thumb drive. Thatstep isn't obvious but makes sense because if the computer restarted using the hard drive, there would be a problem restoring the partion to that drive.
Anyway, It's worth the $40.00 to get my disk restored.
Thanks again.

 

You're welcome. I also am very happy you got your disk restored!