What happened to my hard drive after attempting to install Paragon backup image?

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by pdsnickles, Jan 21, 2014.

  1. pdsnickles

    pdsnickles Registered Member

    Joined:
    Mar 30, 2009
    Posts:
    14
    Okay, so I have a Dell XP430 desktop computer, about 5 years old. (see specs below)
    The hard drive died and I bought a new one.

    When trying to install Windows Vista 64bit home premium on it (from the Dell reinstallation disc) it would not work until I went into the Settings mode and changed a setting to "Automatically detect RAID" or something like that. If you need the exact wording I might be able to find it but it was something like that.

    Okay, so then Windows Vista loaded and then I made a partition using Windows so that I divided my new 2 TB drive into more or less 2 equal parts - I think one was 1.2 TB and the other was .8 TB - something like that.

    Now I had Windows Vista on one partition and the other partition was empty.
    I transferred the Disc Image I had made about a year ago using Paragon Personal Backup 9 to the empty partition.

    I then started installing the image onto the C drive with Windows Vista on it.

    It started going through its paces just fine. As I recall there are 4 steps and it was on step 2, apparently proceeding normally.

    I left for a couple hours hoping to come back and find my Disc Image installed on my c drive with all my programs, folders, software etc.

    Instead, I came back and found the Blue Screen of Death.

    The error message was that it could not detect any hard drive to boot from.

    At this point I have not done anything because, being new to installing hard drives and making partitions and having never tried to install a backup iimage, I had spent most of 2 days doing the above and when I got the blue screen I was so frustrated that I just had to stop and forget about it for a few days. (I didn't mention that just installing Windows took me all day to research and figure out why it wasn't installing, before I made that chanage to "Autodetect RAID"...)

    So here are my questions:
    a) Does anyone here have any idea what happened? I have only theories and questions about it:
    Did my hard drive just coincidentally die while I was loading the image?
    Did Paragon Backup Personal kill my hard drive when it was installing the image?
    If my hard drive is not dead (how do I know for sure if it's dead or just not responsive?) How do I get it to be detected so I can re-install Windows Vista again?
    Did I do something wrong in the installation of the backup Image?
    IF I get the hard drive to be recognized and get Windows installed again, HOW do I get that disc image to install correctly?

    I appreciate any help you can offer on this as I am at my wit's end with all this and at this point I really wish I'd have just gone out and bought a new computer. However I want to save money and would love to get my disc image installed so I don't have to re-install ALL my folders, software, utilities, etc. as I have many programs and utilities that I use daily and it would take me weeks or months to get them all installed again in my spare time.

    Thanks much for any advice or ideas you can give me!




    Specs:
    Dell XPS 430
    Vista Home Premium 64-bit
    Intel Core™2 Q8200 Quad-Core (4MB L2 cache,2.33GHz,1333FSB)
    6GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 4 DIMMs
    750GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
    ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB Graphics
    Integrated 7.1 Audio (IDT/Sigmatel 6.10.0.6017 codec 5-22-08;
    6.0.6000.16386 HD Device 6-21-06)
    Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write
     
  2. fireworker

    fireworker Registered Member

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2009
    Posts:
    279
    Location:
    Russia
    I think that the BSOD appeared because that mode AHCI / IDE did not meet the OS restored from the image.
    If you have uncorrupted Paragon image, you will not need a partitioning and Vista new installation. Just restore that image and turn into the BIOS mode (RAID On?) which was at the time of image creation. The matter of 5-10 minutes.
     
  3. pdsnickles

    pdsnickles Registered Member

    Joined:
    Mar 30, 2009
    Posts:
    14
    Hi, thanks for the response.
    It turned out that in order to get the hard drive to be recognized after installing the Paragon back up file, I had to switch something in the BIOS which had to do with a RAID setting. I can't recall at the moment what it was but there were 2-3 options and I had to switch it. i think it was switching it back to AUTO or Off Auto.

    The reason I did have to load a new Windows first was because it was a brand new hard drive. How do you add a backup image to a new hard drive without first installing Windows? Can it be done?

    I created the partition not because I had to but because I wanted to.

    Once I switched the setting re RAID in the bios, my Paragon image worked fine.

    However I still have one major problem that for the life of me I can't seem to fix and I've asked at Windows forums all over the net:

    My Windows Update Agent will not work at all.
    I cannot update my 1½ year old Windows Vista 64bit Home Premium Service Pack 1, so it is stuck without all the updates that have occured in the last 1.5 years!

    Anyone had this problem and found a fix?
     
  4. RPMtl

    RPMtl Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2007
    Posts:
    39
    I just put the laptop drive in an SATA to USB external enclosure (or use some other similar method) to attach it to another computer running the restore software and use that to restore the backup image to the drive. Then put the restored drive into the laptop and, if all works as it should, everything's back to the way it was when you made the backup.

    A longer and more tedious method requires that you boot the new computer from a bootable recovery CD (assuming the laptop had a CD/DVD unit) or USB stick and restore the backup file from an external drive (or whatever media contains the backup image) to the new laptop's hard disk.

    I find using another computer to do it to be a lot simpler and faster.

    R

    Sorry, I missed that it's a 3.5" drive going into a desktop computer -- so you'd need a way to easily connect that size drive to the computer being used for the restore. USB external enclosures are pretty cheap.
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2014
  5. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2006
    Posts:
    2,557
    A brand new hard disk must be initialized (as GPT or MBR). This can be done with the Windows disk manager, using another computer with a working Windows installation and connecting the disk with a SATA/USB adapter (the best method) or an enclosure.

    The initialized disk is then installed in the original computer. Next step is to restore the image using a WinPE or Linux boot medium. No need to install Windows first.
     
  6. RPMtl

    RPMtl Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2007
    Posts:
    39
    Any disadvantage to using another computer to do the restore?

    When using WinPE or Linux boot medium (which was years ago..) I always found the process exceedingly slow as it lacked proper USB3 drivers and even USB2 speeds (assuming the restore is from an Eexternal USB drive) seemed very pokey.

    Using a second computer always seems much less of a problem compared to getting some WInPE medium created and then getting it to boot. Most people can find a 2nd computer to use --- why not use it?

    Just wondering what benefits the WinPE or Linux boot medium offer if a 2nd computer is available to do it with?

    R
     
  7. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    The possible disadvantage is that Windows may not boot when the disk is installed in the original computer. Of course it should be possible to correct this, but it´s an extra step.

    The latest Linux boot media from Paragon are very easy to build, sometimes faster than the WinPE media based on Windows, and they usually support USB 3.0 devices.
     
  8. RPMtl

    RPMtl Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2007
    Posts:
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    I used to have that happen back in the Win98 and XP days. But since doing this with Windows 7 and 8 it's apparently no longer an issue. I just shut the computer down after restoring the partitions to the target drive and when popped into it's proper system it boots without an issue.

    Perhaps I've just been lucky. But I've done it more than 10x over the past 2 years and never had a problem yet.

    R
     
  9. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    Have you tried in a UEFI+GPT system? I think it won´t work, UEFI won´t find the boot disk. This is because the EFI boot entry for Windows is associated with a particular physical disk, in this case the original disk, which is not present.
     
  10. RPMtl

    RPMtl Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 11, 2007
    Posts:
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    The whole reason I moved to Paragon HDM14 was because my new Lenovo x131e laptop's drive (a Samsung 840 Pro SSD) is formatted GPT and the laptop uses a UEFI bios with Windows 8.1. I needed a backup solution that supports Win8.1 and would properly align the SSD when a system was restored. I tested it with a second Samsung 840 Pro SSD and there were no problems whatsoever.

    fwiw Windows 8.1's built-in backup utility is broken so I needed a solution that works.
    HDM14 works. I assume the recently released free v14 does too.

    R
     
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