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System Recovery 6.52 Restore failure

Brian_Milnes
Level 3
Partner Accredited

Apparently after 22 years in IT, I'm not an advanced user, and therefore not allowed to understand whether to use "Restore MBR" (which I think I shouldn't, as I'm trying to restore to a different size hard disk on a different PC) or "Original Disk Signature" (which I think I shouldn't 'cos I'm using XP Pro SP2). (Pretty poor manuals, not updated over many versions...)

To confirm, I'm trying to perform a Bare Metal Restore to a new machine with a 250Gb drive from the original image of a 40Gb drive on substantially different hardware. I have tried several different options but either get a system hang at boot, or "a disk read error occurred" press CTRL-ALT-DEL (and the system hangs).

The system will rebuild with Windows, so the disk is fine. I’ve tried deleting the existing partitions and starting over, but to no avail.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated – I really don’t want to go through installing software all over...

Brian

3 REPLIES 3

Bill_Felt
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified
Hello,
 
I would certainly suggest that you use the Restore MBR and Restore Original Disk Signature options when restoring the image.  If the only thing that has changed is the hard drive, then those options should be sufficient.
 
Also make sure to select the option to Set Drive Active and to restore the image as a primary partition.
 
Is it possible any additional partitions existed on the original drive (such as a small utility partition) that might be involved in this problem?
 
Thanks.

Brian_Milnes
Level 3
Partner Accredited
Hi Bill, thanks for your repy.
 
It was a Bare Metal Restore - to a different machine. Therefore restoring the MBR wouldn't work. Original Disk signature (according I believe to your documentation) refers to Win2K W2K3 installs.
 
Late last night, I did delete all partitions, set drive to active, (primary, boot) and BE System Recovery 6.5.2 worked where Ghost 9.0 didn't, so I finally (after 3 days) got the system up and running.
 
It is possible that an original "recovery" partition was in part exacerbating the problem, but it wasn't the only one. It went very early, but Ghost/PQ/BESR doesn't seem to want to work on anything but a completely blank drive...
 
As a positive suggestion, your product managers really need to get this worked on in the manual. The function of those critical options need describing. When a successful restore relies on choosing the right option, it really isn't appropriate to say "advanced users only" (and then give no reference anywhere else to that information).
 
This is the 2nd time in the last three weeks that I've been relying on Symantec products to do what they say on the tin, and left wanting...
 
Regards
 
Brian

Bill_Felt
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified
Hello,
 
If the image is being restored to a different box, then it would also be necessary to use the restore anyware option, but I presume you were likely using that option already.
 
I'm glad it did at least finally work. 
 
Thanks.