DriveImage 7 does not restore Pinnacle Studio 9.0

[jameelch]

Hi,

I needed to restore my machine (windows XP SP1) using a backup made
with Drive Image 7. Everything restored just fine EXCEPT Pinnacle
Studio 9. When I click the icon for studio, it complains that "Vital
files are missing, please re-install this software".

Nay ideas why and how this coule be happening? If the image is truly an
exact replice of the disk then no appliction should be 'aware' that it
was restored.

I am guessing that Studio uses some kind of weird licensing file and
expects to find it at a specific location, something that the retored
image probably does not do. If so, is it possible to make an image
exact i.e. restore the drive to the exact sector by sector layout.

I have seen at least one other person complain about this in the forums
on pinnacle support - but no solution has been posted.
Thanks in advance for any insights!

Jester

 

[Irwin]

You are right, at least one other has mentioned a similar problem. I
don't have an answer for your current problem other than the obvious,
reinstall the software, which in the long run will probably take less
time than trying to figure out what happened.

I have had unsatisfactory experiences with all the products that try to
back up an active OS partition, whether Acronis, Drive Image 7, or
Ghost 9. I just removed Ghost 9 from my PC. Drive Image 2002 is just a
wonderful, reliable product. I may reserve Drive Image 7 for its USB
and DVD support, but otherwise it is DI2002, for now and probably
forever. Others swear by Ghost 2003 (came with Ghost 9), and though
this is the first month I am trying it I like its USB support. For my
money, it is better to backup and restore partitions when they are not
in use, either from floppy, CD, or another OS partition. The latter
pretty much works every time, and backing up active partitions often
does not work and is just a pain. I understand that the market is
Windows driven, and booting from a floppy or CD is just too hard or too
complicated for some (new PCs often don't even have a floppy drive ...
huge, huge mistake), but that is a real shame and there is a price to
pay for that.

Irwin

 

[jameelch]

Irwin,

Many thansk for your reply.

I have used drive image (pre version 7) for many years and have never
had any problems. I was somewhat skeptical about backing up an active
partition but needed the USB support - so I did go with Drive Image 7.
Still, I have always been careful and only create backups after
shutting down all applications. Still this does not seem to be enough!

I entirely agree with you observation that backing up an active
partition is a bad idea. I believe that Acronis does at least allow the
ability to backup using it's boot up CD (i.e. without having to run
windows). Since it also supports USB, I might now switch to that as I
no longer have any confidence in Drive Image 7!

I am still wondering though if it truly is Drive Image that messed up
(by not backing up a locked file) or is it possible that Pinnacle
studio has some weird anti-duplication scheme that can somehow detect
an image restore (by looking at the drive signature or writing someting
in the MBR etc).

In the meantime, I will reinstall and look for another backup solution.
Jester.

 

[jameelch]

Irwin,

Many thanks for your reply.

I have used Drive image for many years from a floppy and never had any
problems. I was some what skeptical about backing up an active
partition, but I needed the USB support so did end up using Drive Image
7. I never run any applications while I am creating a backup image. It
seems that this however is not enough either!

I entirely agree with you observations. I think the supposed
convenience of backing up from within wiondows is completely
overshadowed by a lack of confidence in the backed up image.

While, re-installing the Pinnacle software is the obvious choice, I am
now wondering where the fault lies.

Is it, Drive Image 7, that messed up in making the image (i.e. did not
backup some locked file - even though Pinnacle studio was not running
when the backup was done) OR is it Pinnacle Studio that has some weird
anti-duplication scheme that can somehow detect that a drive has been
restored (changed HD signature, writing info in the MBR etc).

I believe that Acronis allows USB backups by booting from it's CD. If
so, perhaps I will switch to that.

Jester.

 

[Peter]

I have moved from DOS+Ghost to WinPE+Ghost32, for the reasons explained
here.
Boot from CD and backup to USB HD or a network share.
No more hunt for DOS drivers.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

I have had unsatisfactory experiences with all the products that try to
back up an active OS partition, whether Acronis, Drive Image 7, or
Ghost 9.

What problem have you had with Acronis True Image?

I restored a friend's PC last week from TI7 backups made directly from
XP, and if it missed something, I haven't found it yet. I haven't
seen any difference yet between restores from CD boot backups or XP
backups. What should I be looking for?

 

[jameelch]

I guess the worrying thing here is lack of control over exactly what is
getting backed up. If I did not have Pinnacle Studio 9 on my system, I
would also not have seen any problems! Drive Image 7 restored
everything else just fine. Whether TI behaves differently or not I
cannot say. The issue is can ANY product absolutely guarantee a full
and complete backup of an active partition.

In the specific case of Drive Image 7, this appears not to have worked
(though I recognize that Pinnacle may be doing something to thwart
replication - in which case TI would exhibit the same problem if
Pinnacle is installed).

Jester.

 

[David Chien]

Is it, Drive Image 7, that messed up in making the image (i.e. did not

backup some locked file - even though Pinnacle studio was not running

My personal feeling is that it is impossible to make a perfect 100%
exact copy of a live system period under Windows. Just way too many
things going on that can change from 1 sec. to another, and just what do
you back up? The file that was on the disk last second, or this second,
or to be saved once more the next second - all different?!?

Very, very ugly and I wouldn't recommend it for serious backups at
all (even though people have successfully done it using Acronis, DI,
V2I, etc.).

Here, either a RAID 1 subsystem or an offline backup is the very best
and only way to ensure 100% identical copies.

---

If the backups to USB/CDs/etc. isn't convenient, install two 5.25"
hard drive holders for two identical 3.5" HDs that are ejectable.
Anytime you want a backup, slot in the 2nd drive, boot up to an offline
backup program (eg. Ghost 2003 - exact sector copy mode), backup in
minutes quickly to the second drive, power down, and off you go.

Makes for fast backups, offline storage of backups, and lets you boot
another identical PC immediately at any time w/o spending time to
restore. Costs <$20 for the ejectable bays, works, and so reliable,
you'll kick yourself otherwise fiddling with other backup means, esp. if
you've got huge >100GB HDs (which take forever to backup even to 16x
DVDs;52x CD-Rs).

With HDs <$150 nowadays for 250GB drives, it's easy to keep two or
three as rotating spares as well.

 

[Jester]

My personal feeling is that it is impossible to make a perfect 100%

exact copy of a live system period under Windows. Just way too many
things going on that can change from 1 sec. to another, and just what do
you back up? The file that was on the disk last second, or this second,
or to be saved once more the next second - all different?!?

The funny thing is that I would expect that there will be intermittent
variation between one image and another. I have images going back
several months. I have tried to restore at least two other images and
they all restore exactly EXCEPT Pinnacle Studio!

It is this fact alone that is confusing me. I would understand it a lot
better if the restore works from some images and not from others.

Oh, well. I guess this one is destined to be one of the many unresolved
mysteries of the windows world!

I am now planning to use partition magic and setup a second minimal xp
partition on disk1. I will use this xp installation to just run drive
image to backup the second 'my real' xp partition. This way the working
partition will always be inactive when it is backed up.
Thanks all for your inputs!

Jester.

 

[David Chien]

several months. I have tried to restore at least two other images and

they all restore exactly EXCEPT Pinnacle Studio!

Here, it maybe several things.

1. you didn't use a backup program that
a. doesn't backup offline
b. isn't a good one (here, use ghost 2003)
c. wasn't in exact sector (byte-for-byte) copy mode
d. wasn't in copy all sectors regardless mode

2. HD was corrupted already, so the backup contained corrupted info

3. backup deteriorated/wasn't verifed after write so the backup data
is corrupted.

4. PC you're backing up has problems hardware wise, so the data
you're writing/reading is not error free.

---

Here, I can tell you from years of using Ghost that you can easily
backup any PC in minutes offline, make a 100% reliable backup to disc,
and restore that later. The trick is to know that every step must be
error free. (eg. backup to CD, but did you verify after write? did you
do another pass to check the entire contents of the image files?)

 

[Neil Maxwell]

I guess the worrying thing here is lack of control over exactly what is
getting backed up. If I did not have Pinnacle Studio 9 on my system, I
would also not have seen any problems! Drive Image 7 restored
everything else just fine. Whether TI behaves differently or not I
cannot say.

I don't have recent versions of Pinnacle Studio, or I'd give it a try.
I wonder if the demo version would show the same thing, or if it's
only the registered version that's protected? I may dl it and give it
a try on one of my spare boxes. If you wanted to test it on your
system, Acronis has a demo version of TI available.

The issue is can ANY product absolutely guarantee a full
and complete backup of an active partition.

Ghost (the older version, at least) reportedly has a forensic mode,
which backs up every sector on the HD, as I understand it. I've never
used it, but it sounds like a useful reason to keep a copy on hand.

 

[Jester]

I have now had a chance to explore this issue further.

Here is my setup:

Master Disk (160GB Western Digital) - Single partition. Has Windows XP
SP2.
Slave Disk (160 GB Western Digital) - Single partition (for Data only).
External USB drive (80 GB - Iogear ION) - for image backups only.
Machine Dell Dimension 8300 - Bios version A03.

Using Drive Image 7 to backup Master Disk to USB drive from within
windows XP.

Application software installed: Pinnacle Studio 9 (patched to 9.3.5).

Observed Behavior:

1. Restore a backup from PQRE (power Quest Recovery Environment) that
was made when the system was fully operational. Restore is perfect -
EXCEPT Pinnacle Studio complains ("Vital Files are missing - Please
reinstall the software").

2. Reinstall Pinnacle Studio. Establish that everthing is working! Make
a backup image.
Restore backed up image (choose option to restore MBR and original disk
signature). Everything is restored perfectly - EXCEPT Pinnacle Studio -
same error message.

3. Checked on Powerquest support forum (Message board for install
problems.) There are a number of threads that talk about this observed
behavior i.e. ("Vital Files are missing - Please reinstall the
software") message, even when using things like Norton GoBack and some
other tools. No solutions are posted other than to reinstall! At least
one post talks about Studio using some kind of 'copy protection' scheme
that inhibits restores of any kind.

So, I am mad as hell if Pinnacle has deliberately done this. As a
registered user of the product I expect to be able to restore it to the
exact same hardware configuration from where it was backed up.

I am now keenly interested in figuring out what mechanism Pinncale is
using to detect that the hard disk was restored. Something like a
changed disk signature, other than what Drive Image restores - or some
thing in the MBR - or what?

I realize that this is now getting deep into HD frosensics. But I am
pissed off enough to try and figure out - else I am junking Pinnacle!

Thanks in advance for any insights that you folks may have, or anything
I can try out.

Jester

 

[Jester]

Type in my previous post.

I said "Checked on Powerquest support forum .... "

This should have been "Checked on Pinnacle Studio support forum
........"

Thanks,

 

[Neil Maxwell]

1. Restore a backup from PQRE (power Quest Recovery Environment) that
was made when the system was fully operational. Restore is perfect -
EXCEPT Pinnacle Studio complains ("Vital Files are missing - Please
reinstall the software").

Sounds like the early days of copy protection - Lotus and such. One
technique was to put a signature on a cluster/sector, then mark it bad
so that it couldn't/wouldn't be copied, moved, or written over. Given
the more dynamic aspect of cluster management in today's HDs, I don't
know if that would work, but it sounds like the same kind of thing.

Sounds like Pinnacle's not being very helpful. Here's a pattern
someone came up with (you may have seen this already):
http://webboard.pinnaclesys.com/rea...176142&ThreadStart=0&Pos=3&cntThread=50&lng=1

 

[Jester]

Sounds like the early days of copy protection - Lotus and such. One
technique was to put a signature on a cluster/sector, then mark it bad
so that it couldn't/wouldn't be copied, moved, or written over. Given
the more dynamic aspect of cluster management in today's HDs, I don't
know if that would work, but it sounds like the same kind of thing.

Neil,

Thanks for the link. I had seen this earlier when I was browsing the
Pinnacle support forums. From what I can make out, Pinnacle Studio ties
itself to something in the MBR/Partition table such that it can detect
that some on the hard disk is different. I tried to zero out the drive
using a western digital utility just to make sure that Pinnacle is not
leaving a signature somewhere on the drive - but that did not help.

I will now go through the restore process methodically, trying
different restore options (e.g. with without restore mbr/restore
signature etc. Wonder if there is a utility that will let me edit the
first sector directly (don't want to have to buy Norton diskdoctor).
Regards,

Jester.

 

[Jester]

OK!!! Some weird success!

I tried to do a restore to a spare 80GB harddrive. So, back up from my
160 GB drive using Drive Image 7. Remove this drive and restore to a 80
GB drive. Zero out the 80 GB drive before restoring. Did not choose
restore MBR or restore original disk signature.

And Voila, Pinnacle restored no problem! Tried to restore the same
image back to the 160 GB drive (i.e. the same drive from where the
image was initially made) - no go. Pinnacle does not work. (everthing
else works just fine).

Next, back up the working image from the 80GB drive and restore to
itself - Pinnacle does not work! Now restore to 160 GB drive and now it
does work!!!!

So, summary, if image is restored to a physically different drive,
Pinnacle studio works. If it is restored to the same drive from which
the image was made then Pinnacle Studio does not work - Error message
says "Vital Files are missing ... Please reinstall this software".

This makes no sense at all. I just thought that I will report the
behavior in case any one has an idea - my guess is that the Pinnacle
"copy" protection is really stopping the system being re-installed on a
disk that already had it. However, by moving to a physically separate
disk, some thing changes enough to where the "copy protection" scheme
loses it's marker.

Jester.