Decided to Secure Erase my Win 7 F60 ssd install, read speeds had dropped below writes in the bench 32 test. Followed a very outdated sticky in the Corsair SSD support forums. I've used Partition Magic before but not Acronis. Used new Acronis trial version - True Image 2013. Created CD boot disk & Win 7 backup image onto spinning data drive (F3). Booted PM & nuked the SSD drive. Foolishly, I decided to hook the SSD up to an XP machine in order to format. Didn't read sticky warning properly (was intended for setting up raid array). Messed up the boot manager in XP somehow. Can get into recovery console. Chkdsk ok but not sure from here. Xp just hangs as it loads, even in safe mode. I've hacked it to run with AHCI previoulsy btw. I Had to boot XP disk in IDE to get recovery console to work. Meanwhile Acronis makes no sense & will not let me recover the Win 7 image (SSD reinstalled in original machine). Booted Parted Magic up & formated SSD partition in NTFS. Loaded Acronis recovery disk but it refers to partion 1-1 & then partition C when trying to reinstall from the backup image on the F3 disk in the same machine. Stuck & confused. Destroyed the Grub2 loader on the XP/Ubuntu 12.04 LTS machine... Pissed about with recovery console & did FIXMBR & some other foolhardy action FIXBOOT I think. Dear oh dear. Managed to repair Grub2 & now retyping this tale of woe. Re XP issue, Bootcfg says that it needs chkdsk to run/find & fix errors. Chkdsk ran several times but Bootcfg /rebuild will not run. Is there any hope? I can recover what I need & reinstall through the dual boot Ubuntu install worst case. Re the Win 7/Acronis cock up, I can provide a more detailed explanation if required but if anyone has any experience with this heap of **** please enlighten me. I can reinstall Win 7 too but I really don't want to. Acronis back up options run like this: Recovery Wizard: - Archive Selection - Browse to Samsung F3 disk & select the backup .tib file Recovery Method - Recover whiole disk & partitions What to recover - Disk 1 NTFS (unlabeled) (C) MBR and Track 0 NTFS (system reserved) Settings of Partition 1-1 - can select either the Corsair SSD (C) or the F3 (D) Settings of Partition C - can select only the F3 (D) if I previoulsy selected the SSD (C). Cannot Select (D) previoulsy & (C) in this option. Better get some sleep.
The easiest option? Reinstall your OSs cleanly and then restore your data from your backups. You'll need to reinstall apps etc but it'll work. There's bound to be a way to get it working though. Assuming that is you have an accurate image of both drives including the partition tables etc... although I suspect maybe you don't. 'Hacked' multi boot solutions coupled with SSD + HD requirements coupled with backup solutions that (generally speaking) have a 'one size fits all' approach to OS backups is a sure recipe for issues such as yours. If someone had of asked me "I'm dual booting Windows 7 & XP on an SSD + HD, and using Acronis for backups. Is this okay?" I've had replied "Oh it'll backup fine, but I doubt you'll be able to successfully restore a bootable OS without a lot of grief". Do you REALLY need to keep XP? Couldn't you get away with it inside of a VM? If you can drop XP as a bootable OS then you'll have a lot less hassles during installs and WAY WAY less hassles during restores.
If the SDD had partitions set up on it, then you have to recreate them for the Acronis image to apply. It doesn't rebuild the partitions for you. Just use Partition Magic to recreate the partitions and then use Acronis to dump the .tib back onto the disk. Should all work lovely after that. I've successfully used Acronis loads (I am also Acronis certified ) The key is to have the same sized partitions on the target disk
Hi Guinevere, Thanks for your input. Fair point my rambblings were a bit garbled . I've got two boxes. XP/Ubuntu 12.04 LTS dual boot on a single 640GB disk. The other box uses Win 7 on an SSD with 1TB disk for storage/data. Let me just explain again please. I was looking to restore SSD peformance although to be fair the read rate drop was negligable at about 10% at most. The backup/secure erase/reload guide I followed mentioned using another Windows installation to rebuild a Raid array after the secure erase. I didn't need to follow this but I did to my detriment. I pulled the freshly erased SSD out of my Win 7 machine & hooked it up to the XP machine before I'd booted it. Thus resulting in an instra bork of the XP bootmgr. I've managed to repair the XP install anyway, I needed to switch back to IDE to boot the install disk, mashed F5 then selected i486 setup or something. Once loaded I then proceeded to install & when the existing install was detected I selected r for repair. I now need to hack it back onto AHCI as thats what I prefer to use on the Ubuntu partition. Major ballache switching in BIOS. Probably need to sort out drivers & all sorts but hey ho. Maintaining this XP build for a Win 8 upgrade but no rush at all. I use the Ubuntu install more for running game servers n'stuff. Hi Chairboy, regarding this other little problem. I created an NTFS partition using PM but still stuck, I read the Acronis True Image 2013 PDF guide in work today but it's still clear as Mud. I don't get this Partition 1-1 business?
Chairboy. I've only just taken the time to actually read what you've said. Thanks a lot mate. Sent from Bittech Android app Edit: Took a few attempts but eventually I got the partitions in the right order with the right flags. Cooking on Gas
