Restore takes forever

[steenkh]

I had decided to restore my C-drive from a backup after having had some configuration problems after a defragmentation, but although the original backup took about 15 minutes, the restore has until now taken more than 18 hours, and it is still running. Is this normal?

It is possible that I have made the error of restoring more than just the C-drive, but the other partitions on the disk also took only 2-3 hours to backup, so the 18+ hours to restore them still seems a bit odd to me.

What is also odd is that there is no progress bar or running time given on the restore screen. All other processes, such as backup, defragmentation, moving etc. have progress bars, running time, and estimated time to completion. The restore screen have these fields blanked out.

It seems from the list of processed files that the restore is actually doing something worthwhile all the time, so I am not going to stop it .. yet.

[steenkh]

Well, after 19 hours the restore ended - with an unbootable hard disk as the result.

I have grave misgivings against Hard Disk Manager on the disk, because if parts of the disk were corrupted because of a botched defragmentation, Hard Disk Manager could have been affected as well, although I would have expected more dramatic results than a program that just restores slowly in incorrectly.

My next step has been to fire up Hard Disk Manager from a CD. With this program I have started a new Restore of the entire disk, and it seemed to run much better than the proper Windows XP version. First of all, it actually showed progress bars and times, and the estimated times seemed much more reasonable.

However, this restore operation hangs at the end of the first "suboperation". I mean really hangs: no reaction to keyboard or mouse, and the I cannot hear the hard disk working. I waited for more than one hour before I gave up and booted the machine.

Then I tried to restore an older backup, but with the same result: the restore hangs at the end of the first suboperation.

As the next step I tried to restore the single partitions, but the disk is now just one big NTFS partition, and the program refuses to restore single partitions into this one because they "do not fit".

This is a major crisis: I have no working desktop machine, and my backup program cannot restore its backups. Any advice will be appreciated.

I will probably try to repartition the disk to its former state and try to restore the partitions one at a time, if it is possible, but I must admit that my confidence in the program is waning as my options are running out.

[steenkh]

I have tried to recreate the same partitions and chose ALT-R "Restore partition from image", but I get the error message "Archive is not fit - This image can't be restored on the current selection". I guess this means that it is a disk backup, and that it is impossible to restore single partitions from it :mad:

I notice when I run through the "Simple Restore Wizard" that I am only asked about the size of the first partition, which leads me to think that the program was designed to handle backups with only one partition, or that it only sets up the first partition, and hangs when it when it starts restoring the subsequent partitions which have not been setup on the disk.

Well, I have run out of options. Either some here can help me, or I have lost three weeks of work because I trusted in a backup program that failed me.

[ams]

Hi, is your backup taken of entire HDD or single C: partition?
Also one more question, do you have a Linux based Recovery CD for HDM8.5? If both answers yes then there is a chance to help you. I would also contact support team of Paragon directly, guess that they met such situation several times and have the proper answer for sure.

[steenkh]

Unfortunately, I do not have the Recovery CD - a grave omission. However, I do have the CD version of HDM 8.5 and it works very well.

The backup was a full backup taken of the entire disk. I imagined, from my experiences with Ghost, that I could restore single partitions from a disk backup. It seems that I was wrong here. In the future I will need to make lots of smaller backups (there are 5 partitions on the disk).

[steenkh]

By the way, what is a "Recovery CD" actually? Is it just a bootable CDROM able to run HDM, or is it something that holds information to retore the the disk partitioning?

I have the former (and have used it), and I sort of assumed that it was the latter that was a "Recovery CD".

[ams]

Recovery CD is a boot media based on both Linux and DOS and sure give you full functionality of Hard Disk Manager. There you can choose what HDD or partition to restore without using Simple Restore Wizard.
For example you can press right click on empty space of HDD and choose Restore partition from and then look for your backup archive. When backup archive is found then you will be given a message - "Archive is not fit" or something like that, but here is a trick. You can change the file type to all and see your partition backups as subdirectory of HDD backup. And choose first one to restore, check if it system partition or data, depends on what you want to restore and perform the restore. ;)

[steenkh]

That sounds great! It also means that I can make a Recovery CD on another machine and use it on the sick machine.

I can hardly wait to try it out.

You just earned a reputation point!

[steenkh]

Hm, it was a nice try, but the Recovery disc is just what I had been using all the time, and there is only the Simple Restore Wizard available :(

I'll fill out a support request now.

[steenkh]

The Paragon support Team directed me also to make a Recovery CD - which I had not realised was not identical to the Recovery Media that I had made through HDM proper. But with this obstacle cleared, I used the Recovery CD to simply restore the backup, and it worked like a charm!

I am happy again, and I have lost no data. My faith in HDM is of course rattled, I will hesitate to perform a defragmentation with HDM again, and I will certainly not use the Recovery Media again (I think Paragon should change HDM to always generate a Recovery CD instead of the Recovery Media (except on floppies).

However, I am very satisfied that I got my data back, and I am again confident enough to continue using HDM for backups.

[ams]

heh, that what I like in Paragon - make its customers confident in its products. By they way, I was told that creating full Recovery CD from interface of product is planned already. :rolleyes: