Re: OT but on topic. Acronis restore to new hardware woes

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

Using StorageCraft's ShadowProtect for SBS I performed a number of dissimilar hardware restores without any problem. The product is half the cost of Acronis and there are also a couple of documents with step-by-step instructions.

Best practices for ShadowProtect and SBS can be found here http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/files/folders/supportwhitepapers/entry2204.aspx There is also another document that describes the HIR process but I can't seem to find it right now

--
Costas


"Jim Behning SBS MVP" <jimbehning@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:83kuv3dmh037n88hs3h153pt5fa66nlbru@xxxxxxxxxx
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:26:31 +1000, "Norm Hughes"
<ex-engineerNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Jim Behning SBS MVP" <jimbehning@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:p4gtv39b4cskkqrqmvlnglele2fvlpua6d@xxxxxxxxxx
An account has Acronis True Image Echo Server with Acronis Universal
Restore (full version). I tried to do a restore of the C: partition to
a modern workstation with marginal luck. It did not have a driver for
the nic. Server would start to boot and do a 7b blue screen.
Production server is running an Intel Motherboard with an Intel Raid
controller. Test restore server is actually an Intel workstation. I
had to run Server 2003 repair to get it to boot. Loaded the nic
driver.

I restored the other partitions. I added another nic. I got SQL,
Oracle and ISA 2004 to work. But going to the Internet does not work
because I have some user authentication problem. When I do \\samcsbs I
see about 20 shares. When I click on any of the shares it asks for a
user name and password. Of course this indicates a lot of problems. I
cannot process the AD Group Policies because of the shares
permissions. So I get 1030 and 1058 errors. RSOP.MSC tosses errors
because it cannot get in to the sysvol folder. Security and share
permissions look correct.

I changed the server nic ip using the wizard. I checked the binding
order of the nics. I disabled file and print sharing from the external
nic. Running the Connect to the Internet wizard ran successfully.

Any guesses?

Note that this is a test. Not mission critical but a practice in
disaster recovery. The image restores went pretty fast. A lot faster
than Directory Services restore.
See what SBS support is working on
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/default.aspx
Check your SBS with the SBS Best Practices Analyzer
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/tags/BPA/default.aspx

Jim, by co-incidence I have wasted 2 days this week attempting a similar
exercise. I too loaded Acronis TI Echo with Universal Restore to our office
server running SBS 2003 Sp1. This server is a fairly basic machine which
runs a Promise RAID controller with 120Gb SATA drives partitioned to 20Gb
(C:) and 80Gb (D:) with a dual NIC scenario. The backup went well, created
a *.tib file of the entire drive in about 50 minutes to an external USB 2.0
drive.

Then created a Recovery CD and attempted to restore this backup file to a
test server with totally different hardware. First issue was that the
recovery program once loaded didn't see the RAID array but rather two
distinct discs, so decided to restore to Disk One. Second issue - the new
drives were 250Gb types and I couldn't find any way to stop the recovery
program from defaulting to increasing the size of each partition - the
warning bells were ringing! Third issue was that the restore took 9
hours!!!!

And then the reboot - was all ready to go to AD restore mode but it just
didn't happen - NTLDR missing. Pulled all the tricks from the SBS Disk 1's
Recovery Console (fixboot & etc) - No Joy. Tried to do a repair from the
SBS 2003 Disk One - still no joy ( "A Disk Read Error Occurred.")

Contacted Acronis local support - very helpful tech ran through his
preferred options - again, no joy & so I've given up.

My Verdict: Probably a good backup program for restores to the same
hardware - but to my mind the UR function is still in beta. ShadowProtect,
by comparison, is looking somewhat better - their product worked!

Cheers
Norm Hughes

I am in Seattle/Redmond next week with all my SBS MVP buddies. I will
ask them about my experiment and Storagecraft. Thanks for sharing that
it might not be just me.

I had a single SATA drive. The recovery console let me choose
partition sizes which I left at default. It appears that my recovery
went better than yours except the server is not useable. ;-)
See what SBS support is working on
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/default.aspx
Check your SBS with the SBS Best Practices Analyzer
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/tags/BPA/default.aspx

.

Relevant Pages

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