WD Sentinel DX4000 Bare Metal Restore fails

[joeneu]

I have a  3 month old Dell Precision M6600 laptop that have backup daily to the Sentinel. I had a had drive crash and Dell insatlled a new hard drive. I made a USB Fash drive key from the flash drive of another computer for this computer as per the user guide.

I boot from the fash drive and I get this error message:

RestoreCDInit.exe application error 

Windows cannot continue from this exception (oxc0000025)

occurred in the application oxff1fb477

click ok to terminate program

I have been in contact with level 2 tech support for the sentinel and so far I have not got to first base. I have the WD Guardian Severice. I have tried on another laptop 2005 vintage and I can boot and frind the system backup files. For whatever reason it will not work with the Dell laptop. I have been online to several other forums and have tried several things but still can not boot to the sever. I can see the files by double clicking the client restore wizard file on the USB Flash drive but can not do a restore.

Like one of the comments in one of the foums you can do a daily backup but can not restore.

 I am at lost of what  to do next. I feel I have spent a lot of money on a backup sever that I can not use.

Anybody have suggestions? I am aware of the post for a Sony laptop but there was no solutions.

Joe

[Santron]

If you are booting the laptop from the USB device there may not be enough correct drivers to allow the program to run. You may have to actually restore from the dell restore disk and then install the WD backup program and restore your files.

2nd option get a USB HD enclosure, put the new drive in the enclosure, connect it to the laptop you said it worked on. Restore the drive to the USB hard drive. Take the new hard drive out of the enclosure and put in your dell laptop.

3rd option. remove drive from laptop that the program worked. Insert new hard drive. Boot with USB. restore the drive. Move the drive over to the dell when complete.

[joeneu]

I have done all of that. What I need is bare metal restore which is they system file and all of the programs. I can restore the data file etc. That is not what is needed and only one of the reason that I do a daily backup. The main reason is to do a full restore in case of a hard disk cash which I can not do. I have spent about 3 hours with level 2tech support trying several things. Nothing worked. I was told that they have not come across this problem before. They sent the problem to engineering and will get back to me Monday.

[Gramps]

Sounds like the Dell has a uEFI bios.  You need to boot from the actual Restore CD, though I am not sure if one comes with the unit.

Can you verify it is a uEFI bios for me?

[Gramps]

What Santron hinted at is also an option.  If you can connect your new blank hard drive to a working system booted to windows, you can the run clientrestore.exe (whatever it is) from the usb drive, select your new/broken laptop from the list of computers, and properly select the image and corect drive to restore it to.  Then shut it all down, put the restored drive in your new broken laptop and it should boot.

If you have any questions just holler

[joeneu]

It is a uEFI bios.

When you boot have a choice to boot from HDD, CD/DVD, USB or uEFI. H have tried the usb and uEFI with level 2 tech support and nothing works can only get to point when the message from original post comes up

[Gramps]

Like I said, you need to boot from the retore CD.  I have yet to see anyone get the uEFI to boot from the thumb drive.  If you do not have a restore CD you can try this:

Requirements: USB boot drive created with the wizzard. Ensure that the drive correctly boots on a BIOS system. A copy of bootmgfw.efi. You can obtain this from an install of 64-bit Windows 7 - look in C:\Windows\Boot\EFI. A system with native 64-bit UEFI 2.0 firmware. This is pretty much all Sandy Bridge systems (except for Gigabyte

motherboards) and some new laptops.

Instructions: In the root of your USB drive, there is the \efi\microsoft\boot directory. Copy this directory one level up so the

files also reside under \efi\boot. Copy the bootmgfw.efi file to \efi\boot, and rename it to bootx64.efi. Test the USB drive in a UEFI system. It should automatically boot with the UEFI method, but you may have to specifically choose UEFI boot depending on your system.

Also note, restores only work on a wired connection.

[joeneu]

The restore is in process. The following is the steps that I used.

After reading your reply you stimulated my brain. I look at the files on Dell Laptop restore CD and compared to the boot USB flash key made by the WD Sentinel 4000DX. I decided to copy the language pack the setup execution file and auto run to the boot flash drive. I than rebooted and the first time I selected the USB drive and it failed to load. I than rebooted and selected the uEFI for the boot sequence. It loaded the drivers, Windows loaded, keyboard language loaded and then I was able to go to where I needed to load the network drivers. I than stop the process and rebooted to windows, loaded the dashboard, selected the dell Laptop backup, found the folder System Restore Drivers and copied to another USB Flash Drive. I than exited out of Dashboard and restarted the laptop and booted from the uEFI again and when it ask to load drivers I loaded off of the second USB Flash Drive and was able to select my back and start the restore. It has now been restoring for about 3 hours and I have about another 12 hours to go.

At least we have found a work around and I thank everybody for their suggestions. Once the restore is completed I will recreate the process that I used and make notes and add to or make corrections to this post.

It will be interesting to see what WD level 2 tech and engineering comes up with for a solution. I will let you know.

Thanks again for you help

[Gramps]

Please let me know when you get time to piddle with it.  Our goal is to get the Wizzard thumb drive to boot uEFI.  I have bought 2 diff uEFI motherboards to test with but they just don't seem to behave the same as Dell.  I have a Dell 610 server sitting here in a box but just have not had the enregy to lug that big beast out of the box.

Not sure if you have ever used the Windows 7 USB DVD tool.  But it makes a thumb drive from a Win7 or Server 08 iso.  They do not boot uEFI either on Dell boxes.

I know uEFI is great, but we are not ready for it   You cannot restore a uEFI box backup into a Hyper-V guest either.

And FWIW, on any machine (except the server) you can open the backup for any machine to get the drivers for restore folder.

[Gramps]

Also , does the WD box come with a client restore CD?  uEFI boots the CD fine.  No clue why cause the contents look the same to me as a thumb drive.