About recovery of dynamic/GPT disks and volumes

1) Acronis True Image Home 2011 supports recovery of dynamic volumes to the following locations on the local hard drives:

  • to the original location (to the same dynamic volume)
  • to another dynamic disk or volume
  • to unallocated space of the dynamic group
  • to a basic disk

If a dynamic volume is recovered to an unallocated space of the dynamic group, the recovered volume type will be the same as it was in the backup.

Manual resizing of dynamic volumes during recovery to dynamic disks is not supported. If you need to resize a dynamic volume during recovery, it should be recovered to a basic disk.

When performing a so called “bare-metal recovery” of dynamic volume(s) to a new unformatted disk, the recovered volumes become basic. If you want the recovered volumes to remain dynamic, the target disk(s) should be prepared as dynamic (partitioned and formatted). This can be done using third-party tools, for example, Windows Disk Management snap-in.

2) The target disk’s partition style after recovery:

  • if a GPT disk image is recovered over a GPT disk; the target disk remains a GPT disk
  • if a GPT disk image is recovered over an MBR disk; the target disk remains an MBR disk
  • if an MBR disk image is recovered over an MBR disk; the target disk remains an MBR disk
  • if an MBR disk image is recovered over a GPT disk; the target disk becomes an MBR disk

Recovery to unallocated space of a GPT disk is not supported.

3) The target volume type does not change when recovering over an existing volume. Examples:

  • When recovering a dynamic volume over a basic volume the target volume remains basic
  • When recovering a dynamic striped volume over a dynamic spanned volume the target volume remains spanned

4) Recovering a basic volume or disk to the dynamic group:

  • When recovering a basic volume to an unallocated space of the dynamic group, the recovered volume becomes dynamic
  • When recovering a basic disk to an unallocated space of a disk in the dynamic group, the disk becomes basic
  • When recovering a basic disk to a dynamic disk of a dynamic group consisting of two disks, the recovered disk remains basic and the second disk of a spanned/striped dynamic volume becomes “missing”

About recovery of dynamic/GPT disks and volumes