System Image Recovery

mjf said:

It looks to me that the disk is definitely on its last legs. Both Windows and Acronis are baulking I doubt anything like Macrium will perform any magic.

At this stage your first priority should be to get all her personal data off the disk onto some storage media. Ideally an external HDD.
(1) Can you do this?

(2) You say every time you you boot (presumably the failing disk) you get boot manager missing - what do you do then?

(3) Do you have the OS disks and apps to rebuild the system? Is the OS retail or OEM?

(4) You attempted to reimage to a 400GB HDD - Yes? How big was the partition the images came from?

Thanks for the replay. :)

1) Yes, since I can still boot into Windows and everything but backing up seems to be working, I think I can copy her data.

2) I only get the Missing boot mgr message after the failed back-up attempts. In that situation, restarts (CTL+ALT+DEL) don't work. I completely shut it down, wait a minute, and then start up again. It will generally start up then. (Though I had to run Windows Start-up repair a couple times.) Once the system is running normally, I can shut down and restart without issue.....it's only after back-up attempts that it's messed up.

3) It's an OEM OS, and yes, I have the discs to rebuild it.

4) Yes, I used a 400Gb drive as the destination. The failing 1Tb Seagate only has the System Reserved (100 Mb) and C: volumes. The failed Windows Backup images ranged between 25 and 45Gb.

Ok get the data off ASAP.

Still some confusion you have:
1 TB failing - with 100MB sys reserved + ONE extra C: partition

Is the 400GB the only other HDD and is it now internal.
You need source disk --> image to 2nd disk ----> replacement disk
1TB Seagate .....................400G?............................? 400G??

Do you have an external USB HDD??? If so use it to extract her data.

Also You cannot restore a Windows image made on a larger partition straight to a smaller partition.

I would recommend saving the data and clean install OS & apps. If the apps are activated attempt to deactivate them before proceeding along this path.

Got it now!
so get the personal data onto the 400G.

You could try to scan & sector repair and attempt another image with both Acronis and Windows. Downloading and installing Macrium would appear to me to be just wasting time. I don't know a faster way to do a scan and repair than with windows and this will take hours on a 1TB HDD.

It's your call OP.
I can only hang on for a little longer. Please ask any questions now.

Where's scan & sector repair...in Disc Management? I wasn't aware that Windows had anything but chkdsk.

I'll go copy data, etc., and then do that (scan & repair, re-try the back-ups). Just need to know exactly which utility we're talking about.

Thanks again.....very much appreciated. :)

First try the following:
Type cmd in the bottom left "Search programs & file"
Right click on cmd.exe and run as Administrator
type>sfc/scannow
if you get errors run a number of times to see if it can fix errors.
then try your imaging again
If this fails do below:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Chkdsk basically same thing.
If you are comfortable with chkdsk from the command line ok.

From windows > goto Computer. Your drive c: will be shown>right click, select properties>Tools>Check now> click 2 boxes >start
The computer should restart and take ages to finish the job.
Try the imaging again

Got it!! Will follow those steps....I'm comfortable working from the command line Will post back tomorrow on whether it was successful.

Thanks again.

Just to clarify what mjf recommended:

There is a space between sfc and /scannow. :)

marsmimar said:

Just to clarify what mjf recommended:

There is a space between sfc and /scannow. :)

Now that one I knew!

I've run all these scans, and they found.....NOTHING. I can't believe it. I even ran chkdsk /f from the recovery command prompt, to be sure the drive was not in use (and therefore able to defer any tests)......I ran it on the System Reserved volume as well as the primary system volume. Nothing. No bad sectors, no repairs. "Windows has checked the file system and found no problem."

These scans didn't take all that long, either. Isn't /f the correct parameter when you want it to check for physical errors? Did I miss something?

I'm reluctant to attempt another image when it appears that nothing has changed.

marsmimar said:

Just to clarify what mjf recommended:

There is a space between sfc and /scannow. :)

yes strictly the syntax has a space but it's not needed.