Acronis 2014, I can not restore my backup

Keith, welcome to these public User Forums.

Sorry to read of the issues that you have been encountering here but have only questions rather than answers to offer to you initially!

What type of computer are you working with here for this recovery issue?
Is this a desktop / tower type PC or is it a laptop / notebook PC?

Do you have a working PC, i.e. will the PC still boot successfully into Windows 10 using the original disk drive that you are trying to migrate to a NVMe M.2 SSD?

What BIOS boot mode does this PC use normally to boot into Windows 10?
You can find the answer by running the command: msinfo32 in Windows, then looking at the value for the BIOS mode shown in the right side panel of the report this produces.

Were you able to do a successful restore of your ATI 2014 backup to the original working disk drive (after moving the backup from the NAS), and did the PC boot into Windows successfully after doing so?

You do not say what brand of M.2 drive you have. Some vendors, such as Western Digital have OEM versions of ATI/ACPHO that can be downloaded from their support site. Check out there is one from your vendor. Then you should be able to get a refund - my recollection is that you can ask for a refund within 30 days of purchase - see this knowledge base document. 

Ian

Thank you for the quick response.

The computer is a Win10 desktop Z390 Auros Pro wifi rev1, INTEL i7-9700k, EVGA RTX 2080ti , 32MbRAM, 500gB NVME M.2 HDD with 2 DVD burners and several external Hot-swappable drive bays.

I have installed a fresh copy of Windows10 onto the M.2 drive and it works fine, and there are no critical files on the backup that need recovering so I can start from scratch if I have to, but I don't want to.

The BIOS boot mode is legacy for the fresh win install, I don't know what it was on the backup. But I have tried installing from both a UEFI launched USB as well as a Legacy launched USB and neither one works boots. I also burned an Acronis recovery DVD and tried it from there too, it did not boot either.

While I was able to restore my 2014 backup to the M.2 disk and all of the files looked like they were there but it would not boot. I restored to a regular HDD with the same results. I tried boot recovery and fixes from the console (diskpart, bootrec, bcdboot) and the latest thing I tried was rebuilding the MBR with AOMEI. it still will not boot. I even tried copying all of the restored files on the HDD into a working Win10 install on the M/2 disk with no luck.

Dear Keith Gruman,
We would really like to help with this issue.
Since even the latest build did not help to restore we recommend to contact our support as soon as possible: Customer Service and Support (acronis.com)

The BIOS boot mode is legacy for the fresh win install, I don't know what it was on the backup. But I have tried installing from both a UEFI launched USB as well as a Legacy launched USB and neither one works boots. I also burned an Acronis recovery DVD and tried it from there too, it did not boot either.

Keith, if your PC supports both UEFI and Legacy, then I would recommend going for UEFI as there are a number of benefits!

First, larger size drives are supported by GPT partitions used for UEFI, second is that you have an upgrade path to Windows 11 that is not available for Legacy systems!

The next comment is that most NVMe M.2 drives normally require UEFI to work best so I am a little surprised that you have been choosing a Legacy install.

While I was able to restore my 2014 backup to the M.2 disk and all of the files looked like they were there but it would not boot. I restored to a regular HDD with the same results. I tried boot recovery and fixes from the console (diskpart, bootrec, bcdboot) and the latest thing I tried was rebuilding the MBR with AOMEI. it still will not boot. I even tried copying all of the restored files on the HDD into a working Win10 install on the M/2 disk with no luck.

I would suggest looking carefully at your ATI 2014 backup image, in particular at the partitions contained within that image.  Does it have an EFI System partition to indicate that the PC was using UEFI when the backup was created?  If it does, then it should only be restored using UEFI mode.

Copying Windows system files from a backup to a working installation of Windows 10 will never be successful due to locked files and permissions etc.

If you still have a working PC with the original OS drive, then making a new backup using ACPHO would be the first recommendation, which would give you the option of performing a recovery when booting from Acronis rescue media in UEFI mode and converting the system from MBR to GPT and from Legacy to UEFI.

One further question, looking at the BIOS settings, what is shown for the Boot device?  Is it the NVMe M.2 drive, or is it booting from another drive installed in the PC?  I ask because it is possible that the boot partition (MSR or EFI) is on a different drive in multi-drive systems!

Thanks again for the response, but I think I am done.

I have begun setting up a clean install, it will take a week or two to get everything back how I want it, but at least I can use it while I dig up old programs and passwords.