Second failed SSR2013R2 restore in a week - stuck at 50% this time. last time couldn't find drive

[BJB]

I have been trying to make an image and replace a secondary drive with a bigger drive and restore the image to the new drive.  Something that with Ghost or SSR2013 pre R2 was usually a no-brainer.  I upgraded to SSR2013R2 a few weeks ago after mostly happily using SSR2013 prior to R2.

A week ago I tried to restore an image made with R2 desktop with a R2 boot disc from a USB3 3TB ext. drive and it would not show up when booting up from the boot disc consistently. So I guess 3TB drives are still not an option although 4k clusters are supposed to work with R2.

So....I made another backup to my NAS this weekend. I validated the image when I made it and it was just fine.  Nice big green checkmark after that backup. (I know I could have just copied the image from the external drive to the NAS but SSR copies VERY slow and if you use another copy utility, then SSR loses its mind over where the backups are).

Anyway I tried my R2 boot disc again, it found the NAS, and I started the restore to the new drive.  No problem I assume!  Well....at 50% it just stayed at 50%. Not frozen, the cute little data images were flying into the drive, but it said 50% with 3 hours left.....50% with 4 hourse left....50% with 5 hours left....it just sat there for 4 hours like that at 50%.  It had stopped copying data even though it said "copying volume data over existing volume".

But no error messages at all. It "looked" like it was working.  Never saw anything like that with SSR in the past.  I had it set to not expand the drive size as that has not worked for me in the past either, but it never even got to that point.  I also did not check "Verify image" on the restore since I had just verified it a few hours earlier.

Now this is a secondary drive that is not my main boot or main data drive I am replacing but what if it was?

Anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated. If I made the image with SSR2013 R2 via desktop program can I restore with a pre-R2 boot disc?  At least that worked every time I used it?

Don't know what else to try.  Pretty frustrating after renewing support for more than one license and not having a lot of faith right now.

I know I can call support.....and I will if I have to.  However this is not something they can screen-share and see happen which is their preference.  It is during a cold boot restore. 

Thanks,

BJB
 

[criley]

A week ago I tried to restore an image made with R2 desktop with a R2 boot disc from a USB3 3TB ext. drive and it would not show up when booting up from the boot disc consistently. So I guess 3TB drives are still not an option although 4k clusters are supposed to work with R2.

This should work. When you see the issue, is the drive listed when you use the DISKPART command? More details: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415?wa=wsignin1.0

If diskpart does not list the drive, this really has nothing to do with SSR itself. The issue is either with the WinPE environment or, more likely, a physical connection issue. I know this does not help, just trying to explain where the issue may be.

Anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated. If I made the image with SSR2013 R2 via desktop program can I restore with a pre-R2 boot disc?  At least that worked every time I used it?

This may work but I would not personally recommend it. If you can get your 3TB drive working with the R2 recovery disk, can you try a restore to see if this works? If it does, that suggests a problem potentially with the network connection to the NAS. May be a performance issue. Support would probably need to take a look at the debug logs once the issue has been reproduced in order to understand what is going on here.

[BJB]

 A week ago I tried to restore an image made with R2 desktop with a R2 boot disc from a USB3 3TB ext. drive and it would not show up when booting up from the boot disc consistently. So I guess 3TB drives are still not an option although 4k clusters are supposed to work with R2.

This should work. When you see the issue, is the drive listed when you use the DISKPART command? More details: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415?wa=wsignin1.0

If diskpart does not list the drive, this really has nothing to do with SSR itself. The issue is either with the WinPE environment or, more likely, a physical connection issue. I know this does not help, just trying to explain where the issue may be.

Chris, thanks for getting back to me...

The external drive shows up sometimes at bootup with the R2 disk (for example before I did the backup and tested it first)....however when push came to shove, after the backup, it would not show up no matter how many times I booted up.  Regardless of the reason, if it is not reliable I can't use that as a reliable backup drive.  Is there a "refresh" hidden command or something in the PE environment that might force a recognition?  I am well aware of the 4K issues with a 3TB drive, but again, I know the environment CAN show that drive because I have seen it! 

Anyway, any suggestions would be appreciated. If I made the image with SSR2013 R2 via desktop program can I restore with a pre-R2 boot disc?  At least that worked every time I used it?

This may work but I would not personally recommend it. If you can get your 3TB drive working with the R2 recovery disk, can you try a restore to see if this works? If it does, that suggests a problem potentially with the network connection to the NAS. May be a performance issue. Support would probably need to take a look at the debug logs once the issue has been reproduced in order to understand what is going on here.

As far as the NAS go, I have never had an issue backing up to it (nor did I this time), or restoring from it with either the preR2 windows or bootup disk. Never.  100% reliable.

The only changed variable here is the R2 boot disk and PE environment.  I will probably try the restore one more time with the NAS an see what happens. What does the "stop at 50% mean?"   I would assume if it lost connection I would get a message that says "can't access drive" or something?  And if it was a connectivity issue, why did the backup work to it flawlessly?

Of course you see my quandry...can't use my 3TB external drive and now my NAS restore is not working.

Thanks again,
BJB

[criley]

Is there a "refresh" hidden command or something in the PE environment that might force a recognition?

You could try running DISKPART, then running the RESCAN command - that may help.

[BJB]

Chris,

The saga continues this weekend.   So after failing to get my external drive to appear, and having my NAS restore stick at 50%....I tried this.  I ran diskpart outside the SSR environment, deleting any existing partitions and made it one big unused partition.  I did not format.  I thought perhaps SSR was having issues setting it up and selecting a partition or something.

Anyway, tried a restore again, EXACT same thing, stuck at 50%.  And what I still don't get is any error message! And the SSR program is live while it sits at 50%. I can hit cancel, the warning pops right up, it cancels and goes to the main menu.  And obviously it is not my NAS losing connection exactly at 50% completion every single time. Anything magical about the 50% point of a 931GB restore?

THEN, (although I know it was not recommended) I took my trusty SSR2013 SP2 boot disk and tried a restore with that (again after deleting partitions with Diskpart).  Same thing, stopped restoring at 50%. 

I then went to SSR windows and just tried to browse the restore point.  No problem, all the folders list there and everything.

I am considering just buying another new drive and trying it.  I know I can run tests on the old drive, zero it out and all that nonsense but losing patience.  I'll just get rid of that whole variable.  Just as a reminder, the original image was the intire partition of a 1TB drive, the new drive is a 2TB drive. Should not make a difference, but FYI.

This really is a scary situation where I have a verified restore point (I verified it after the backup, not during every restore) that I can't bring back.  Only other thing left would be to try a windows restore but quite frankly, if I can't trust SSR to do a bare metal bookup restore, it is not worth much to me.

And of course I can try to make yet another backup.  But again, you don't have that luxury when you are trying to recover from a drive failure.  In this case I just pop my old drive back in and I am good to go.  Might not be so lucky next time.

I don't see a way to run a "re-verification" of an image anywhere. Guess you can only do it as part of a backup or restore?

Once again, I know I can and eventually might have to setup a support case, but as I said, quite frankly with all of this taking hours running in the background every weekend, not sure what value they can add until I at least narrow down the issue.  Are there logs when you do a bootup restore that are written somewhere and might shed some light? Like I said, I am not certain why I am not getting any error messages from the program itself. 

BJB

[criley]

I don't see a way to run a "re-verification" of an image anywhere. Guess you can only do it as part of a backup or restore?

Yes, it can be done outside of a backup/restore. Just open up the image in windows (double click). This opens it into the recovyer point browser - in here, there is a 'verify' option.

I hear what you are saying about a support case. However, there are some encrypted debug logs that may tell us more about what is going on when the restore gets stuck at 50%. These logs can only be looked at by Symantec staff (because they are encrypted). I would recommend this as a next step.

[BJB]

Chris,

Thanks.  I will try the "re-verify", and if that passes, try a restore to a new hard drive.  If that fails, I will setup a support case.  Glad to hear there are logs even for a cold-boot restore.

Thanks again for your help.

BJB

[BJB]

Well, still no joy.  I did in fact get a new hard drive to try. I also used the restore point browser to browse the restore file with no issue, AND ran a verify which completed with a check mark.  So second good verify on that image file. 

So I tried a restore to the new drive with the R2 bootup disk and got the exact same issue. Stuck at 50%.

As you suggested I will be creating a support case.  I am hopeful after spending hours on this that I don't have to start with "ground zero" tech support and can get second level support to resolve this quickly. I took screen shots (pictures) of all my settings for the restore.

Thanks for your suggestions and help here.  I'll post the outcome.

FWIW I almost forgot that pre-R2, I imaged and upgraded one of my other drives to a 2TB drive with absolutely no problem.  Same process, similar file sizes, etc.  Only variables are the image itself of course and that I am now using R2.

Thanks,

BJB

[Andreas_Horlach]

I had a case similar to a short time while ago. A few suggestions to try to narrow the possibilities:

> When you launch diskpart from the recovery disk (R2 or non-R2), select the 3Tb disk, and type DETAIL DISK, does the size shown match the physical disk size? 

> Go the motherboard or computer manufaturer's website. Download and install the latest system BIOS and any other motherboard\chipset\firmware updates, including RAID firware updates.  Outdated firmware and drivers can only handle drives as large as they were tested on. 

> In the BIOS, there a setting to change the SATA mode (choices might be RAID, AHCI, ATA, etc). what is it set to? 

[BJB]

I know there is a lot going on.....my initial try was with a 3TB external drive.  The SSR boot environment would not recognize that so I moved on to putting the image on my NAS and trying the restore off of that.

So, all of my restores are via the SSR boot disk reading the restore image off of the NAS.  The original drive is a 1TB SATA internal drive, the drive I am trying to restore to is a 2TB new, clean SATA drive.  In fact I have tried TWO 2TB drives to restore to, just to remove the new drive as a possible issue or variable.  Although I certainly am up to date on motherboard on firmware updates, it is probably not relevant as I am booting into the SSR environment and I don't think it is using my windows drivers that are being used in my windows 7 pro environment.

The SATA mode is set to AHCI in the bios.....and I check it every time I put in a new drive or change a drive to make sure it does not change, I boot to the bios and verify it is set to AHCI before I go into the SSR boot environment.. 

I am currently working with support and sending log files etc.

When you say you had a similar case, can you share some more info?  Was it within the boot disc environment?  Did it stop at a certain percent and then pretend to continue to restore (ie the graphics kept going, the GUI was responsive) but yet the percentage complete stays the same and the "hours to complete" keeps getting added to until it is obvious nothing is happening....and then you can cancel and it goes to the main screen.

Thanks,

BJB

[Andreas_Horlach]

it is probably not relevant as I am booting into the SSR environment and I don't think it is using my windows drivers that are being used in my windows 7 pro environment.

The SRD environment first boots into WinPE before SSR. With the 2013 SRD, WinPE is based on Windows 8\2012. With the disk you created with R2, WinPE is based on the operating system you created it from. Hence, drivers that match the WinPE version load during boot (as they do inside of Windows) to interact with the controlle hardware. It is imperative for the latest drivers to be up to date to ensure clean data transfer. The tech you're working with may work with you to ensure the latest drivers are being used. These drivers can also be loaded manually once in the SRD using the 'Load Drivers' option. 

As a test, try setting the SATA mode to RAID and doing the restore. RAID mode often uses a different chipset than SATA(AHCI), so even though the system will not boot if it completes to 100%, but if it gets past 50%, we need to focus on the SATA controller.

I'll also review the logs you send to the technician (Arjun) tomorrow.  

By the way, with the NAS, it is a network connected NAS? Also, if your BIOS supports DATA EXECUTION PREVENTION, disable that and see if that makes a difference. 

(With the case I had, we ran some debugging tools and the indication was that the chipset was chocking at a certain point. The customer had an older motherboard that would not handle the SATA 6 throughput. He contact the manufacturer and they recommended he purchase a drive that matched the tested specs of his motherboard. Windows is far more forgiving that WinPE\SRD, simply because the SRD cannot cut corners when laying down sectors during a restore.)

[BJB]

Thanks for the info.   First, my OS is Windows 7 Pro, not windows 8 although I understand you are talking about the PE boot environment, but I assume it is pulling generic SATA driver info from my OS based on what you said.  And I must state again, my motherboard, drives, BIOS, OS, everything....have worked fine with SSR 2013 until now. I am very familiar with motherboard and driver issues.  So although I understand it is common to  assume it is the users hardware, my motherboard/bios settings, hardware and software has worked fine with SSR for years....

Another Interesting fact.  Prior to upgarding to R2 and trying this backup/restore, I made an image of one of my other 1TB Barracuda drives and restored it to a new 2TB Barracuda drive...same process EXACTLY!  Same drivers, used windows pre-R2 (SP2) SSR windows to make the image, and SP2 boot disc to do the restore.  Restored to 100% percent with no issue (other than having to expand the partition manually), but it completed to 100%.  . So....if it was a driver, bios, etc. issue, would I not have had an issue with this restore?

FWIW I am using an ASUS  P6T Deluxe V2 with 24GB of memory and Windows 7 Pro.

I am nervous about changing my SATA bios settings from AHCI. My options are IDE, AHCI and RAI.  AHCI have worked fine with windows and SSR for quite a long time. And sometimes when you change you create issues within windows.

I am hopeful that the logs identify a specific issue as to what is causing the restore to stop writing at 50%.  I say stop writing because it does not freeze.  It "pretends" to keep trying to read/write, but it does not, and I get no errors. It just goes from saying 2Hours left to restore, to 3, to 4, etc....up to whatever until you cancel.  And it will cancel and bring me back to the main menu. It is not frozen or non-responsive.

Looking forward to the results of the log analysis.

Thanks,

BJB
 

[Andreas_Horlach]

BJB - I'll review the logs.

What I gather from this post is the image created with non-R2 restores to 100% with the non-R2 disk. Can you test a restore with that same image using the R2 SRD? 

[BJB]

I created an SP2 image with the windows program and restored with boot disc SP2 and it worked fine.

I created an image with R2 windows.  Actually 2 or 3 since the 3TB drive external drive would not be recognizes by the boot disc. 

So I tried a restore of that R2 image with an R2 boot disc with no joy.  I also tried  a restore of this same image with an SP2 boot disc with no joy.

Hopefully that helps.

BJB