Trouble Making Image Backup with Acronia True Image 2016 -- apparent misread of space

So sounds like every update puts it somewhere else.

Comment: You had mentioned shift + restart previously. I tested that this morning, computer ignored it, just booted as normal. I tried a second time, same thing.

Don't know, but maybe this is another Gateway thing, like what f button to hold down when you want to go to bios?

The thing I might like to do is switch out the Win 8 on the working volume for a 10 image.

I can check in on this again in the morning, or afternoon, or if we get busy, Sunday, whenever. Might try to do an Acronis backup image starting in the morning, will probably take five hours and not fit. Will see.

I now am going to see if I can run repair on those two volumes.

EDIT: Nope. When I right click on the partitions in Disk Management, everything in the menu is grayed out except Delete. Can't get into Properties to see about running repair.

Hmm. Maybe I can assign a letter to each, the R again, and then use the chkdsk command but with R instead of C. Tomorrow. Hmm, or should  I. If I'm being blocked from running a repair on those partitions, is there a good reason for that?

(1) I found this site...

http://gateway-us.custhelp.com/app/answers/list/

Gateway Support -- Top Answers

I entered "NE56R" into the "Select a product..." requestor (it's a button), & it pared down to 32 pages. Maybe try entering your serial number or SNID for even a greater pare down. But read through those articles for basic information, sounds like normal information. Then I typed "push button reset" into the search box, & it pared down to 7 pages.

I certainly haven't read all the articles, but I still don't know what button it's referring to. Maybe look deeper than I did -- but certainly don't ever press that button! But read through the articles for sure.

At the "Support, Drivers & downloads" page, I see at best Win 8.1 drivers. But many of the articles do mention Win 10.

(2) "So sounds like every update puts it somewhere else."

It looks odd, all right. But it seems to have settled on putting them into partition 6 now.

(3) "Comment: You had mentioned shift + restart previously. I tested that this morning, computer ignored it, just booted as normal."

Normally, that happens when there is no Recovery partition that holds a WinRE.wim file &/or ReagentC doesn't point to it. An alternative to get there is...

"START, Settings, Update & Security, Recovery, Restart Now (under Advanced Startup)"

But I guess that won't work, either. But how have you been getting there? That's the "Choose an Option" screen, BTW.

(4) "The thing I might like to do is switch out the Win 8 on the working volume for a 10 image."

Well, there is a way to put a clean install of Windows capability into that partition. It might be easy or hard to do, I'd have to find & read it again. But why? You have your 2004 Windows Installation USB drive to do clean install's with. Wouldn't it be better to put current system images into there instead?

(5) "Might try to do an Acronis backup image starting in the morning"

I don't know what's going on with your Acronis. I have Seagate's DiscWizard (which is an older version of Acronis True Image) -- & it makes images twice or more as quick as Windows system image backup & restore does. And the latter does it in under 20/so minutes.

(6) "Hmm. Maybe I can assign a letter to each, the R again, and then use the chkdsk command"

Yep, but if you do it in Windows, likely you won't be able to repair partition 6 because Windows considers it in use maybe. Anyway, it won't repair mine. But /Scan is fine...

DiskPart

Select  Disk  0

Select  Part  2

Assign  Letter=X            <<< Put letter X on the Win 8 Recovery partition

Select  Part  5

Assign  Letter=Y            <<< Put Y on partition 5

Select  Part  6

Assign  Letter=Z            <<< Put Z on partition 6

Exit

CHKDSK  X:  /R            <<< Does a repair

CHKDSK  Y:  /R            <<< Does a repair

CHKDSK  Z:  /Scan        <<< Does a scan only & reports errors

DiskPart

Select  Disk  0

Select  Part  2

Remove  Letter=X            <<< Remove the letter X

Select  Part  5

Remove  Letter=Y            <<< Remove the letter Y

Select  Part  6

Remove  Letter=Z            <<< Remove the letter Z

Exit

Wow. Good research. In narrowing through search, I never have much luck, I don’t know what other people do to have luck with that stuff. That is a wealth of info you found.

Re Gateway, and it showing through up to win. 8.1 only. You might or might not know, Gateway was taken over by Acer. I’m not sure when. It still puts out both brands, I’m pretty sure — an Acer even looks just like a Gateway, and probably is the same under different name and Acer model number. But maybe at the time of Win 8.1 is when it took over. For anything newer, I believe you need to go to Acer.

About shift + restart. I have long wanted to know how to boot up to Recovery/Advance Startup — via some keyboard combination. I recall Slance and I even talking about that those years back (right when Win 10 had just come out, or maybe it was 6 months after it came out). That’s why I jumped on testing shift + restart. I do already know how to do it via going to Settings/Update & Security/Recovery/Restart Now. But that isn’t any help if you can’t boot! :) And when you can’t boot, it doesn’t always go to Recovery, you need a way to specifically boot to Recovery — hmm, maybe that is because of some of the stuff we’re talking about here.

Re 4, switching out that win 8.0 for a win 10 image, you had spoken of that through our discussion. Yes, I have the Win 10 install DVD I made (I prefer DVDs, they work just as well but are a LOT cheaper than a USB flash drive). If I’m home, I can just grab that. Only circumstance I can think of where I would need it on the Recovery partition is if, maybe, I were on the road, and needed it and didn’t have the DVD with me (I should always take that on the road with me). Just seems if that is what that partition is for, why have an out of date 8.0 on it instead of the win 10. If nothing else, its more convenient to not have to go get the DVD and then boot from it, just boot to Recovery. In fact, I lose some of the things in Recovery if they are 8.0 rather than 10, I dare not use them from Recovery, and have to remember that Reset or whatever is going to get me 8.0.

Oh, yes, in reading further, I see you instead referring to “current system image.” Yes, that’s what I mean, what Im talking about, that smaller image thing that Recovery uses. Have the Win 10 version of that (not a full backup version of the C: partition).

But, it might be safer not to if you are not well experienced with doing that in order to guide me. Oh, we’re dealing with me, and while yes, I can have a lot of luck with things, the problem is, it’s always bad luck. And we would be mixed up in trying to fix things for another month.

I wish I could just look at everything on those two partitions, like I can at the C partition. Its always the unknown that makes one/me hesitate. If I saw it was nothing that would be of any use (even 8.0 could be of use in a dire emergency), I would be a lot more willing to just delete those two partitions. Hmm, but with no win image on one, how would that interfere with booting to advanced Startup/Recovery?

6. Acronis won’t do a full disk image if it find any bad sectors. If it find them, it will do only a sector by sector backup, and that takes a lot longer and ends up as a bigger file. And, it has identified my part 5 and 6 as having bad sectors. I want to include all a partitions if Im going to do a backup. I had made a backup via Widows a couple weeks ago, it would not even allow me to choose to do all the partition, would do only 2-3 of them. Yes, it went faster. This time, Acronis is not simply defaulting tot he sector-by-sector backup quietly, it is throwing up a message telling me about it, and I was able to identify the part 5 and 6 as the sectors it has a problem with.

Re that, I’m hoping it is bad files instead of hardware. I think this morning I might add a letter to I think Part 5, and then run chkdsk on it (chkdsk R: /f /r) and see if it will repair things. Then see what Acronis says. I hope chkdsk is OK with checking what is on that partition.

Not sure why when you wrote about it, you included Part 2 as well as Part 5 and 6. Acronis is fine with Part 2. But I see how you are doing multiple letters at once. I think I will try one at a time, and then see if Aconis is fine with that one, before doing something that might mess up Part 6 even more. And then run my chkdsk command, which I think might go even deeper and it makes repairs. They are relatively small partitions, as compared to my C; partiiton, so it should go fairly quickly.

So here is what I have done this moring, and I now am running a backup, which I expect will take out most of the day, because of bad sectors.

I assigned a letter to Part 5, and then I ran my chkdisk command on it (chkdsk Y: /f /r). It took only a matter of seconds. It found no problems, and I think that even included bad sectors. (I was going to include the read out, but that is on the Windows laptop which now is booted to Acronis and running the backup, so I can't get at it now. Dang, I forgot to bring it over to this computer. I will post that later today, or end of day.)

I then booted to Acronis and checked. It gave the same message about bad sectors on those two partitions, so chkdisk did not solve that. Since it did not, no point in runing it on Part 6. I just proceeded to run the backup, and it will be a time consuming sector-by-sector backup - and in the end probably will be too big to fit on the external drive. I have to test to be certain, bit this run is pretty much where we started this thread.

One other thing I noticed that might be worth mentioning: The external drive has only four partitions on it, and that does include what are Part 5 and Part 6 on my internal drive:

NTFS: 280.4 GB capacity, 115.9 GB used.

EFI: 300 MB capacity

Recovery: 886 MB capacity, 325.0 MB used

Recovery: 15.8 GB capacity, and same 15.8 GB used

That is an IDE hard drive, of 320 GB size. I first used it when making my first backup of this laptop when I first was dealing with Slance -- and I have used it only for backup since, once or twice every six months. So, it is little used.

I am surprised to realize it has the same 15.8 GB partition as the internal drive (Acronis does not label even the internal one as "Push Button"). Even the other Recovery partition has just about the same as the internal drive. As far as I know, the internal drive got those partitions when first formated long before I ever used this external drive. This external does have the EFI partition, I'm pretty sure Slance and I discussed that when I started to use it, I insisted on making it that because Win 10 is that. Is it something about an EFI that ends up producing a Push Button partition from this Gateway?

Hi,

The Push Button Reset partition was created by Gateway.. It is a feature of the machine...

You may have a hot key to hit at the Gateway screen when you boot, and maybe not..

There may also be a method to launch it from within Bios..

It may also be accessible from within Windows by some type of application.. If it works, and I have serious doubts about that, it would do no more than return your machine to it's original Factory setup..

That is why one of the .WIM files is "Bloated" as PCR describes it.. It is not just Windows 8, but probably also full of Gateways other pre-installed stuff.. I wouldn't know why you would ever want to factory reset to Windows 8 anyway, even if it were possible..

As I mentioned before.. You could most likely delete the 800mb Recovery and Push Button Reset on your current HDD and then recover them from one of your other images to your current HDD..

It is possible that the partitions are not as they should be anyway, as a resut of all the manipulation using Partition Wizard.. Some of the stuff you mentioned concerning "Merging" could have done some "Copying of files" in the process.. It seems to have resulted in the desired end result as far as everything else, but could have made a mess of those two.. "Merging" means to "Combine".. What you really wanted to do was to "Move" or "Relocate" the partitions... But I haven't checked the available options in partition Wizard for quite some time..

I think you are wasting your time forcing Acronis to image two bad partitions.. If they are corrupt, they are most likely useless, but maybe not..