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Cannot recover multiple partition boot disk

PaulG195
Level 4

SSR 2013 R2 suggests that my drive is failing when I try an incremental backup. The recovery program indicates it is a BIOS boot but my system uses UEFI. I built the system myself. MY guess is that the system boots from BIOS into the UEFI then into Windows 10. There are 3 partitions on the drive. A small 100 MB system-Primary,. the C: drive and a 450 MB Recovery partition. I can find no way to duplicate the drive to a new drive. SSR 2013 complains any time I try to recover more than one partition to the new drive. You can see what happens when I try to recover using the backup.

 

14 REPLIES 14

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
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When you select the Index file, SSR should automatically recover all partitions from that given restore point.

PaulG195
Level 4

I should be clear. I am running Windows 10. There was no Windows 10 selection for operating system when I started this discussion.

Just to be clear I have the new drive plugged into a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter. When I select recover my computer from the Tasks window I only get one file for each recovery point. Wnen I select it I get the list of the three partitions for that recovery point. I then have to use the custom option since I want to recover it to a new drive and not the original drive since it is the one that is failing. When I choose the new drive to restore to I get the message that I cannot restore more than one recovery point file to the same drive per the second JPG screenshot. I simply can not find any way to recover the failing drive to a new drive. I had the same problem when trying a lights out restore using the recovery disk. The program does not seem to be able to do what it is supposed to do. I am contemplating spending more money and using Acronis True Image 2016 to solve my problem since SSR 2013 does not seem to work. I have uploaded the screen shot of the file selictions I have when I select Reecover My Computer.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Just trying to understand what you are looking to achieve here...

Am I right in thinking that you are trying to restore to Disk 3 (930GB) on the same machine where backup was done?

Have you tried this restore process yet? http://www.veritas.com/docs/000006864

Or, have you tried the copy my hard drive option (see Page 310 of http://www.veritas.com/docs/000099950)?

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Reley:

Thanks for the replies. Yes I am trying to recover to disk 3 a spare SATA on the same machine. It seems to me I have tried both ways although I did try recover my drive from within Windows as well as lights out using the recovery disk. Both attempts failed. I will try to follow the dirctions to the letter to be sure. i believe I will have to edit the recovery to select disk 3 and set both partitions to active. I will let you know as soon as I have tried both if necessary.

 

I would note that I don't get emails telling me that there is an update.The check box at the bottom labeled Do not send notifications for this update. I leave the box uncheckecked since that is what makes sense to me.  I can not find control telling the forum to notify me when there are updates.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Based on what you are trying to do, I would think that the copy my hard drive is the best option for you.

Could you also check in Help/About and confirm the exact version you are using.

Regarding email alerts for this thread, you just need to subscribe, although as you started the thread, this should be automatic. That said, I know there have been problems and a new version of these forums is just around the corner ..

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Riley:

I am running SSR 2013 R2 SP4 Version 11.1.5.55405

Actually I believe I need to do a recover from a drive backup. I may need this to work if my drive actually fails in the future. The main point of doing the backups is to recover from a drive failure in which case a copy drive is not an option.

I have printed both of your recovery suggestions so I hope later today to be able to try the recover using the recovery disk. It certainly does not work from within Windows which would be more convienient since I would not loose the use of my computer durring the recovery process.

Thanks for your help.

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Riley:

On reading the instructions for restoring to disk docs/000006864 that you pointed out above they suggest cleaning the disk may be necessary. Is deleting any partitions making the disk unallocated sufficient or is it necessary to do the clean step? Time got away from me so have not had a chance to try a restore per the intructions today but should be able to do it tomorrow.

I would note that System Recovery System requirements for SSR 2013 R2 desktop does not show Windows 10 as supported. See following link. I had been waiting for Windows 10 support before upgrading to Windows 10 so that I would have backup capability immediately. I would have thought that all customers with an active SSR 2013 R2 support agreement in effect would have gotten an email indicating that Win 10 is now supported.

https://www.veritas.com/product/backup-and-recovery/system-recovery/system-requirements Desktop Edition

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Making the disk unallocated is probably enough but we generally recommend diskpart/clean to ensure the disk is blank.

I will request that page is updated to include Windows 10. However, please refer to the SCL for details of what is supported:

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000004208

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Riley:

I just attempetd to do the lights out restore from a backup. Eveerything seemed to be going fine untill the very end. I got an Error: Information mismatch in directory entry.

I had to edit all three partitions to point to the empty disk. Atthought the previous screen indicated that disk 3 was unallocated and the box on the left was checked when I went to the next screen the target drive for all three partitions was disk 1. I edited all three partitions to disk 3 and selected make active and create MBR for the 100 MB and 565 MB partitions. I did ask the program to verify recovery point and check for disk errors or something like that. See the screen shot for the result. Disk 2 is obviously the recover disk target.

 

It did take me a while to figure out that when editing which drive to restore to there were multiple disk entries for the same disk after the first partition was edited to change from disk 1 to disk 3 in my case..

PaulG195
Level 4

I booted back into Windows 10 and tried to do a Recover My Computer which failed.

I did essentially the same steps from withing Windows as I did in the Lights Out attempt after deleting all the volumes on the target disk with Disk Manager. When I got to the window to edit the target drive there was always only one disk to choose when selecting the target drive. There was not a second or third instance of the disk showing both previous partitions and the unallocated rest of the drive as in the lights out recovery environment. I edited the first partition to be G drive and the screenshot shows what my target disk selections were for the second partition.

 

 

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Riley:

I should mention that the backup job may have been created with SSR 2013 and Windows 8 prior to installing SSR 2013 R2 after upgrading to Windows 10. Also the backup says Backup my Computer. As you can see I have a second disk D in my system. I do exclude it from the computer backup job. I wonder if that has some effect. I seldom use the D: drive and can live with it's loss.

I believe a major purpose for having backups is so that if the hard drive or SSD now crashes I can return to the exact same state the system was in before the crash without having to jump through hoops. I may be doing something wrong but it is certainly not working for me.

I have another quesiton. When I try to run the backup job now I get the message that the drive seems to be failing and SSR refuses to do an incremental backup. Is the failure warning a flag  that may have been set in error or is it a test performed at the start of any backup job?

 

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Riley:

To be clear I wonder if because I did not include Drive D: in the Backup My Computer the program thinks I don't want to do a full recover my computer and does not save all required information to duplicate the C: drive. There was the warning about not including the D: drive there might be a problem restoring my computer. As I said above I don't use the D: drive for anything important and certainly not on a regular basis.

I have included a photo of the Partition Table Editor screen after I finished the lights out recovery attempt using the Recovery disk. I have no idea if this is of any use.

 

 

PaulG195
Level 4

Chris Riley:

I decided to take your suggestion and do a Copy Disk. I was able to copy the100 MB first partition succesfully with the selections shown.

I then started copying the C drive using the selections shown and that caused an error almost immediately. The one thing I can see is that I copied the MBR in both of the copy instructions. Not sure if that is a problem.

I would note that the Disk Manager descriptions for the 100 MB partition are different.

 

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

To be clear I wonder if because I did not include Drive D: in the Backup My Computer the program thinks I don't want to do a full recover my computer and does not save all required information to duplicate the C: drive. There was the warning about not including the D: drive there might be a problem restoring my computer. As I said above I don't use the D: drive for anything important and certainly not on a regular basis.

No. If volume D is not 'critical' for a system restore (i.e. it is not needed to recover the operating system to a working state), it does not need to be backed up and restored. It's optional.

You appear to have done a lot of testing and still cannot get it working as it should. I think you have reached a point where opening a support case is probably the next best option.