This article cover errors and failures during disk management operations in Acronis True Image, including cloning, conversion and volume deletion/creation issues. It provides possible causes for the errors and how to troubleshoot the issues.

Introduction

Before anything else, be aware that these operations can lead to data loss! To avoid any possible disk and volume structure damage or data loss, please take all necessary precautions and follow these simple rules:

1. Back up the disk on which volumes will be created or managed. Having your most important data backed up to another hard disk, network share or removable media will allow you to work on disk volumes being reassured that your data is safe.
2. Test your disk to make sure it is fully functional and does not contain bad sectors or file system errors.
3. Do not perform any disk/volume operations while running other software that has low-level disk access. Close these programs before running Acronis True Image.

With these simple precautions, you will protect yourself against accidental data loss.

Known issues

• Please note that not all Disk management operations are available Windows 8/8.1 and that disk management operations under bootable media may work incorrectly if storage spaces are configured on the machine.
• Most problems with disk management operations stem from limitations related to specific disk and file-system formats. Please make sure you have acquainted yourself with the relevant information on these limitations (specific to the operation you want to run) described in this documentation.

Troubleshooting

Please note that these operations cannot be run directly from inside a live operating system because the disks or volumes are locked. This means that running an operation from a live OS will require a reboot into a special Acronis bootable environment. Configuring this environment can end in failure due to Windows conflicts (for example, registry access problems). The first step in troubleshooting disk management problems is to perform the same operation under the latest version of Bootable Media. If the machine you are using boots via UEFI, the bootable media also has to be booted in UEFI mode.

If the operation fails using our bootable media, depending on the system, collect the following information:

• If the operation hangs, please follow the instructions in this article under the “Linux-based bootable media” section.
• If the bootable media reboots during the operation, this is a crash. Please follow the instructions in this article.
• If the operation fails with an error, please follow the procedure below:
  • Run the operation;
  • After it fails, do not reboot the machine!
  • Go to the Logs view, change to Events display and save all to file;
  • Again, without rebooting, go to the Help -> Collect system information… menu and save the file.
  • Provide a description of the storage sub-system being used on this machine (type of disks, connection to storage etc.)