USB hard drives

David, there are already options which allow for USB bootable rescue media to be created, and as you say, you can have some very large USB devices which once you have created as bootable rescue media you can then store backup images on.

I haven't tested this with an external USB hard drive but can see no good reason why this wouldn't work providing that you are starting with either an empty drive or are willing to reformat an existing one.

I have successfully booted from an external USB hard drive using PenDriveLinux which caused me a few 'moments' when I restarted systems with it attached where the boot order used USB before the internal drive!

External USB hard drives are not supported as they are "fixed" disks in Windows.  Acronis only creates bootable media for "removable" flash drives.  There is a work-a-round though.  Create it on a USB flash drive first and image it with acronis.  Then restore your image to your external USB hard drive and you now have a bootable USB hard drive.

I've actually paritioned a 1TB hard drive with ***edit*** 3 paritions.  On partition one, I have restored a USB flash drive image using the default Linux boot media.  On parition 2 I restored a Windows 10ADK WinPE boot media.  Partition 3 is for my backup .tibs to go on.  I can boot to either of the bootable media using F12 after reboot and selecting the option of my choice.  I can also write the backup images to the same disk on partion 3 - very handy indeed. 

Thank you for your input but after 12 hours of fannying about I have achieved using Acronis 2015:-

1. A bootable USB 2.0 HD with a fat32 boot partition and a NTFS back up partition.

2. Absolutely no progress with my 'big' USB 3.0 HD drive. It is simply not recognised by Acronis.

3. Would getting 2016 work?

Thanks

I'd suggest downloading the trial of 2016 and test it out before you fork over the cash for the upgrade.  Just be aware that upgrading to 2016 will wipe out your 2015 settings so , if you don't like it, or it doesn't work, you'll have to remove 2016 and reinstall 2015 again and setup new backup tasks.  If possible, you could try testing 2016 on another system to avoid this so you can create the bootable media with it.  

2016 does have better driver support though so hopefully it works "out of the box".  I'm not sure why 2015 is not seeing your usb drive though as it should have enough drivers in the default bootable media for USB 3.0 already too.  If using the default bootable media (linux based) is not working, you should try creating a WinPE version instead in 2015.  To do that, basically, you need to download and install the Windows ADK first (I think you'll need ADK 5.0 for Win 7/8/8.1 with ATIH 2015 - I have not tried the newer ADK 6.0 for Windows 10 with ATIH2015).  Once installed, you run the bootable media builder and select WinPE instead.

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2015/#14041.html

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2015/#26974.html

Thanks.

This is all pretty much why I was looking for a one button press solution! Are there any image backup systems on the planet that will set up a bootable USB 3.0 disk. My recent purchase of a 3TB Seagate Backup plus has, so far,  simply demonstrated how important it is to have access to first hand experience before committing. e.g Acronis 2015 recognises USB 3.0 when run from windows but not from 'Bootable Rescue Media Builder' or ' Acronis Startup Recovery Manager' and that is NOT stated in their sales spiel.

If only someone would put up a working USB HD 3.0 disk image (hello Acronis!) life would be far easier!

Cheers,

Unfortunately, the vendors don't want to put out the boot disk/drive images because that would give anyone the ability to download and use them and cut into revenues.  Also, the boot disks for "licensed" versions are proprietary and need to meet the terms of the license agreements.  Looks like they wan you to download the full application to test out the trials as well instead of bypassing for the tools so I don't see a way to get the .iso unless you install first.  You could reach out to their online support to see if there is a way to download just the trial .iso though and see what they say.

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/contact-us.html

David, from what I understand here, you are using ATIH 2015 and want it to automatically recognise a brand new Seagate 3TB USB 3.0 external hard drive plus also be able to make this bootable with Acronis Rescue / Recovery Media.

The latest available version of ATIH 2015 is Latest Build: #6613 (Size: 282.14 MB2015-07-20 00:00:00)  so was released in mid July 2015 long before your Seagate drive was released to market.

To get ATIH 2015 to recognise such a new drive you will need to build WinPE Rescue Media and ensure that you include any specific device drivers needed for both USB 3.0 and the Seagate drive.  Without creating WinPE media you are running on a standard Linux based rescue media that dates back before July 2015 and probably cannot recognise your USB 3.0 Seagate drive for that reason alone.  There is no method of updating the Linux rescue media to include additional device drivers unless Acronis release an updated build for this purpose - this is unlikely given that ATIH 2016 is now the flagship product being promoted and ATIH 2015 is now not being developed further.

As to Acronis putting up a working USB HD 3.0 disk image - how much are you willing to pay them to do this, because essentially this is where this leads to if you consider your request.  What should they do about all the other new hardware products being released by other manufacturers too?
This is why you have the option provided in ATIH to create WinPE Rescue Media - doing so on your own computer will automatically try to pick and include all the required device drivers for your installed hardware.  Some of these will be included in the Windows ADK WinPE sofware but others may need to be provided by yourself.

The biggest obstacle with using a 3TB or larger USB HDD as bootable media is that they require GPT initialization to access capacities beyond 2TB.  BIOS systems cannot boot from a GPT disk.  I place my rescue media on a partition of all of my USB HDDs.  The 3TB USB 3.0 HDDs will only boot on my UEFI systems while the 2TB and smaller MBR disk will boot on all of my systems.

As far as the rescue media not seeing your disk, are you using the final build 6613 of 2015 released in July of last year.  Starting with build 6055 (released 9 months prior) the linux kernel used in the default rescue media did not contain the drivers to access large capacity Seagate USB 3.0 HDDs.  Something to do with the firmware these disks use.  The final build resolved the issue for most users.

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/76154#comment-256280

I wouldn't recommend purchasing 2016 at this point in its release.  Acronis usually releases a new product sometime between the end of July to the first of September every year.

I'm giving up as not only is this whole thing obscure to my 75 year old mind but MS seems to have taken all links to it's ADK's offline. I shall now peruse the internet for an alternative backup solution but don't hold out much hope.

Very many thanks for all your input which was much appreciated. I'm afraid I'm now of an age where I need a 1. Do this 2. Do that etc approach!

All the best,

David

PS Just wandered around our computers and used Windows built in Image back to my ext. USB 3.0 Seagate on all three of them. Backup was swift and suited my purposes perfectly. Cannot speak for Recover as It hasn't been required yet!? One tends to overlook the simple solution!

David, sorry to hear that you are giving up on this quest but do understand why that is.

With regard to the Microsoft ADK's - look at Bobbo's signature in post 6 above and you will see direct links there to each of the various different versions of the ADK's that are available.  http://forum.acronis.com/forum/115466#comment-343242

With regard to using the Windows Backup tool to create System Images of your computers to your external USB 3.0 Seagate drive, that is always a good thing to have as it would allow you to use that system image in a recovery scenario.  The key gotcha with all recovery scenarios is whether you can access the storage drive where your backups are held?  That really is the key point that you need to check is possible as otherwise the backups will not help you should you get into such a situation that needs them.  Please consider how you would boot a failed computer to a point where it can see your backup images on the USB 3.0 Seagate drive?  Have you created the Windows system repair disk for each of your computer systems?

See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/create-a-system-repair-disc for an example of doing this for Windows 7.

Hi guys,

Like all long term computer nerds I did, of course, persevere and success was achieved by the following :-

1. Used Acronis Bootable rescue media (WinPE) to produce a bootable USB flash drive

2. Checked the drive worked

3. Used Paragon partition manager to reduce the bootable sector to the minimum size (around 500mb)  and changed format from FAT32 > NTFS

4. Did a full Acronis 2015 image backup

5. Used Acronis Startup (F11) to burn the image onto my Seagate (partitioned to 1TB) and

6 LO, I had a bootable USB 3.0 HD.

However,

It took an age to boot though the backup was pretty fast (about what you'd expect from USB 3.0 - 120 GB in around 15 mins).

Any ideas on a faster boot would be appreciated. I have a 3.5gz AMD pHenom x6 so brawn isn't the problem.

Cheers and beers,

David

The boot time has to load into memory first - essentially a ramdisk, so it takes some time to copy from the drive into memory.  The Acronis bootable media can be pretty large, depending on what's in it.

Also, flash drive performance can vary a lot - especially when using smaller files (like OS directories in WinPE). For instance, I have a USB 3.0 drive that claims 95Mb\s writes.  When transferring a large file like an .ISO, it's pretty close (with some fluctuation).  However, if I robocopy my 3GB portable apps directory to the same drive (with lots of free space on it), transfer speeds can be in the Kb/s (not even Mb/s).  Reads of portable apps are pretty abysmal too as I can run them from an SSD and they are instantly up, but from a flash drive, it can be several seconds (or more) before the apps launch from the flash drive.

The only thing I can suggest testing is whether or not you are booting the USB flash drive in legacy/bios/csm mode or UEFI mode.  In the linux boot media, if If you're getting the colorful GUI, that's legacy mode.  If getting a black screen with white text menu, that's UEFI.

WinPE is a bit different as it just boots into the WinPE environment so it's not as easy to tell.  Best way to be sure is to use your boot override/one time boot menu after rebooting your system and make sure to launch the UEFI USB device as UEFI is a little faster than legacy USB loading. Maybe not by much, but perhaps some. Otherwise, it's really a matter of looking for a higer perofrmance USB flash drive.

Er..? I just described how I got my USB HD to work yet you're talking flash drive? Are you saying that as I used a copy of my WinPE flash drive's boot that my HD is being treated as a flash drive?

David

Sorry David.  I misread - thought you had made a USB Flash drive WinPE installer - now I realize you makde a USB hard drive WinPE installer. So it's either just needs time to load into memory still, or you have a slow USB hard drive - if you have an SSD to try with (not sure which type of hard drive), it may help, unless it's simply a limitation of the memory for the RAMDISK that that the WinPE gets loaded into as it is extracted from the boot.wim file in the WinPE.

Well, the smile was wiped of my face when I tried the USB 3.0 HD on another computer (Lenovo g770) which simply failed to recognise it as a boot device though it works fine on the computer it was built on! This is definately the last straw - I suspect MS paranoia at work with PE.

Worse, it seems that with no meddling from me the damn thing won't boot on any of my comps now including the one that worked yesterday! I did backup the working image though I'll have to copy 250 GB of backups to an internal HD before the restore...Woe and thrice woe!

David, have you tried booting any of your systems using the bootable USB flash drive you created at first to see if that works even though you are not able to boot from the USB 3.0 HD?

Unfortunately each computer has different bios boot options as well.  More specifcially, newer systems often come with secureboot enabled which will prevent the booting of external USB devices.  You will need to check the bios settings for such as setting, but because all systems have different BIOS features, you'll probably have to refer to the manufacturer for the support documents on where to locate this feature if you can't find it on your own.

Acronis USB drives are capable of booting in UEFI mode and/or CSM/legacy/bios/MBR mode so that helps make it usable on "most" systems.  However, in some cases, you still need to use the computers boot override key/one time boot menu (Dells are usually F12, HP and others are typically ESC or DEL) after rebooting to pick either the UEFI USB or the legacy USB mode.  If the system is UEFI capable and configured to use UEFI mode, select the UEFI mode of course.  

One other note, if creating a bootable USB drive using WinPE instead of the default Linux version, the Acronis WinPE is 64-bit only.  So, if you have a tablet with a 64-bit processor, but has a 32-bit only bios, Acronis PE won't work on it (ASUS T100, Acer Aspire, - pretty much any laptop or tablet that comes with 2GB of memory or less and has no upgrade capability of the memory).  In those cases, you'll have to use the Linux bootable media and hope it has all of the necessary drivers for the hard drive, NIC, etc. 

I finally discovered the whole process takes about 5 minutes and is simplicity itself.

1. Go to http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php and simply install Grub on the disc  and then scroll down to "Section 3 - Setup Booting of an Acronis ISO File.

2.Then simply copy everything to the disk making certain you have renamed the Acronis Iso to the same as you have in menu.lst and followed the instruction to load . NO Caps or spaces and don't forget grldr.

3. then boot it though here is where a problem persists.It seems very few motherboard's bios support boot from USB 3.0 so you have to use a USB 2.0 slot but all is not lost as Acronis can see a USB 3.0 drive in a USB 3.0 slot.

So my problem was solved but proved useless as my bios don't support USB 3.0 boot.

David, it can be worth checking on your computer manufacturer web site to see if there any BIOS upgrades for your system, check in BIOS first to note what version you have installed, or use a tool like Belarc Advisor to see this information.

Thanks Steve, I flashed the bios with the supposed latest on the Gigabyte website and no joy. I read somewhere that there was no room left for USB 3.0 boot in the bios.

What model gigabyte mobo do you have?  I previously had a ud3h-z77 (3rd gen intel processors) which booted with USB 3.0 without issue. I now have the UZ170X gaming 3 and no issues booting from USB 3.0 either.  It may be a bios setting preventing the boot, or it may be you have an even older board that does not support it, but I'd be curious to check the specks if provided. 

Hello maybe this question has been answered already but please bare with me.

I am trying to create a clone of my 2tb hard drive to an external USB 2 or 4 tb hard drive.

I want to be able to restore to a replacement internal drive should my current internal drive fail .

I am fairly sure it can be done but without the step by step instruction I am a bit nervous.

I am using Acronis True image 2017 and a 64 bit windows system.

I have made a clone a few times to another internal drive and have been able to successfully boot from it once the clone is complete. I have then disconnected that second drive in the computer in case I ever needed it.

As I said I am trying to do essentially the same thing with an external USB drive. 

I would appreciate help.

Thanks

If I understand correctly you want to back up your PC's hard drive so if it fails you can restore it to a new HD?

This is what I would do. Forget cloning :-

1. Simply back up your HD  to your external USB drive using Acronis. Personally. I would boot the recovery disk for this.

2. Make sure you have generated an Acronis recovery disc.

3. In the event of HD failure. Plug in new drive :-

   a) plug in ext USB drive with backup

    b) boot from Acronis recovery disc and

   c) restore to the new disk.

Michael, welcome to these user forums.

Please see post: 128231: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!! for advice when using cloning.

I would second the advice from David to use Backup (& Recovery) in preference to using cloning, especially if you will want to keep your backup of the source drive regularly updated.

Clones should always be made using the Acronis Rescue Media, especially where the Windows OS drive is the source data for the clone operation.  Doing a Backup of the same data can be done from within Windows or by using the Rescue Media (offline from Windows), but the key difference is that you can store many backups on your 2TB or 4TB backup drive versus doing only a 1:1 clone to that same drive.

Note: you should not attempt to boot into Windows with both the original source drive and a cloned copy of the same drive both connected - this can cause either of these drives to be corrupted and can result in neither being able to boot into Windows afterwards!

Hi,

Ever since a few years ago when I lost all my email backing up from within windows I have used the recovery disc or startup recovery manager for critical backups and always perform a validation.

Maybe this no longer can happen but once bitten twice shy.

PS I may be a beginner to Acronis forums but I have 35 years of computer experience and have learned that one cannot be too careful with the protection of digital data.

David, I can understand your reasons / concerns of how you perform your backups - I have never lost any data by using the Windows option of backing up with Acronis but I do take additional measures to protect such as email data etc, using a combination of Acronis backups and also storing data using cloud functions on my NAS and in other cloud services.

MS Outlook seems to have featured in these forums when users have come with problems with email data, where some of that is down to how Outlook doesn't commit data to disk immediately, i.e. not until you save the data or close the program, but I am not an Outlook user and have never had any similar problems when using Mozilla Thunderbird as my primary email program.  It also helps when using IMAP and keeping email data on the ISP mail servers rather than using POP3 and having email data downloaded locally then deleted from the mail servers (depending on settings).

Hi Steve,

It was Thunderbird pop email & contacts I lost 5-6 years ago and I never got to the bottom of the problem. I have never had a repeat of the issue and am totally happy with Acronis these days.

As for Clouds, I simply cannot bring myself to commit a full backup or anything else to a remote computer whose security has yet to be tested so I alternate between an internal SSD and an external USB 3.0 drive with Bitdefender security.

David, one of the good things I like about Thunderbird is the ability to move the default mail storage location instead of using the default set for the mail profile when you install / configure a mail account.  I have always moved my mail store to a separate partition by changing the profile location and this also contains my contacts as well as the mail folders.

See the following webpages: Moving your mail storage location - Thunderbird   Moving your profile folder   Profile Manager

Thanks very much.

Mike

Steve thanks very much - I appreciate the help.

I assume doing the backup of the whole c drive using the Acronis rescue media allows me to restore from that USB backup to a replaced drive and it should funiction the same as a cloned drive would?

I suppose if you need an exact copy you could use Image backup which uses vastly more backup space. e.g. Photoshop once parked it's registration data on a disk address that (not being a file) Acronis didn't back up so you had to re-register after a non-image restore but I have not had this problem for years so maybe something has changed.

So yes your USB backup will do the same job as clone. A cloned drive is one where the disk image of A is directly copied to B resulting in B being a mirror image of A. Useful if you want a bootable USB drive but, be warned, booting from USB 3.0 may not work (unless you have EFI bios) giving the false impression that the clone is corrupted.

As David Valentine had mentioned his older mind set, I too find Acronis extreemly difficult to understand and use. I don't understand why there has to be so many options to set backups, like the incremental, etc. My husband made a Clone of my 250GB SSD onto a USB WD My passport Ultra after we had gotten all the Windows OS 10 free upgrade into my Asus ROG G75VW table. Seemed like a good way to protect me from a system crash.

A Windows update seems to have caused everything in my Printer Devices list to go inactive.  I did a Windows system restore that worked to get the printers back working, altho it said the restore wasn't sucessful. Then later after using it to fix my printers, it did fail to get the Printer Devices back working. 
We did a Window reset, expecting we could use the clone of the C: drive to put all the programs back in. All Documents, Desktop, Download, Music Pictures, files, etc saved onto a USB thumb drive.
HOWEVER, trying to figure out how to get Acronis to do that has become a nightmare to acomplish. GOOGLE search showing how to indicated we should have a USB option in the TOOL/ Rescue Media Builder/ under the choose media destination with iso file, iso image and what should also show USB, which is missing.
Anyone know why the USB option wasn't there? and how to get there to use?
ACRONIS Software is so unuser friendly that by the time you find and figure out how to use something it should do for you, you could have reformatted your hard drive, loaded back in Windows 10 OS and all your software programs.  I'm here as a last resort to learn how to use Acronis before abandoning it altogether.  Just to complicated to use it!  Earlier versions were so much more intuitive to use.

If you could put what you are attempting to achieve into some logical order e.g. 1,2,3, then I could possibly help. In the meantime I would suggest booting from the rescue CD with the drives installed (not USB 3.0. I am confused why you want the bootablre USB option when you could use a cd or dvd.

Patricia wrote:

My husband made a Clone of my 250GB SSD onto a USB WD My passport Ultra after we had gotten all the Windows OS 10 free upgrade into my Asus ROG G75VW table. Seemed like a good way to protect me from a system crash.

Patricia, a clone is a 1:1 identical copy of one drive to another, so I suspect that your husband did a Backup of your SSD not a Clone where the backup is stored in an Acronis .TIB image file.  

Patricia wrote:

We did a Window reset, expecting we could use the clone of the C: drive to put all the programs back in. All Documents, Desktop, Download, Music Pictures, files, etc saved onto a USB thumb drive.

If you have a working Windows OS with Acronis True Image installed, then you can simply double-click on the .TIB image file in Windows Explorer then use Copy & Paste to recover user data such as Documents, Music, Pictures but you should not attempt to do this with any Programs or System files etc.

If you do not have a working Windows OS, then you would use the Acronis Rescue Media (on CD or USB stick) to boot into a Recovery environment then restore everything back from the Acronis backup .TIB image file.

Patricia wrote:

Anyone know why the USB option wasn't there? and how to get there to use?

The USB option will only be shown in the Rescue Media Builder when you have got a USB memory stick connected to it to offer to you to use.  If you do not have any USB devices connected (removable sticks, not disk drives) then the option is not shown.

I use Acronis 2018 to make nightly images of my drives on external usb hard drives, but I also want to use an external hard drive caddy (I have both usb 3.0 and esata caddies) to make a weekly clone of the hard drives.  The reason is simple - I don't always have several hours to wait for my hard drive to be restored from an image if something happens to my operating drive..  I'd prefer to just pop in the cloned drive, then instantly be up and running again.  I can always restore from the latest image that evening when I don't have time constraints.  But it seems that cloning an internal hard drive with the windows 10 pro operating system to a hard drive in a usb or esata caddy will not create a drive that can be used as the operating drive.  I get the same result whether i try the clone from inside Acronis under windows or using a bootable usb key.  The cloning process seems to work, but the cloned drive will not boot.  Cloning another internal sata drive works fine, but that isn't practical.

Gary, welcome to these User Forums.  Please note that there is a separate forum for ATI 2018 questions etc. See the Acronis True Image 2018 Forum

How are you trying to boot your cloned drive in the scenario that you have described?

It sounds as if you are trying to boot the cloned drive while it is still in your USB or eSata caddy which is not supported due to Microsoft limitations for Windows boot devices.

Hello Forum:

I have downloaded the trial version of Acronis True Image 2018 and I am using it prior to shifting from XP to Win7 on an older notebook, which does NOT have a DVD/CD reader built in. So, I am trying to create a bootable, removable USB flash drive.

I can get to the point where I choose the removable USB stick as an option, and then I am presented with a window which has been truncated at the bottom.....where, I suspect, there is a button to start the process of creating the bootable USB stick. Try as I might, including adjusting screen settings and using an secondary screen connected to the notepad by cable, I cannot 1) adjust the settings to show all the dialog window and 2) I cannot grab and move the window so that I can access the bottom of it, where the command button probably is....

Any suggestions? I seem to be stuck without being able to create a usable bootable disc in case I badly screw up the transition to Win 7 Pro (which, by the way, is my OS of choice as my other devices are all on Win 7 Pro and it is a stable configuration for me).

M

Michael, welcome to these User Forums.

Some questions for you here:

What are you intending to do with regards to "shifting from XP to Win7 on an older notebook"?

The ATI 2018 product cannot be used for such a migration if you are considering trying to move your installed programs between different Windows OS versions.  

You can use ATI 2018 to create a backup of your XP system with all its programs & data, so that you could revert back to that status should the Win 7 not prove to be viable.

The Trial version of ATI 2018 does not provide access to the Acronis Universal Restore feature to allow migrating to new hardware.

What is the screen resolution for the computer where you are trying to create the Rescue Media on your USB stick?  

See the ATI 2018 User Guide: Minimum system requirements which states a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768 is required by the product, including the Rescue Media Builder tool.

If you cannot meet this minimum screen resolution, then you may find it difficult to use other functions of ATI 2018 including making Backups or doing a Recovery.

Hi, Steve:

Just using the 2018 version for "worst-case-scenario" backup, in case the Win 7 migration is a disaster. I have virtually no data on this notebook right now, so I am not worried about backing up "data" and transferring that to the notebook once it is under the new O/S.

My screen resolution is (to me...) an oddball at 10xx by 6xx (the xx represent digits that I cannot recall perfectly, and I don't have the notebook handy to check---most likely 1024 x 640, which is "wide SVGA"). So the resolution is probably the problem. And it would seem that that is controlled by the video driver (?) so connecting an external screen doesn't help. I just checked, there might be an Intel graphics driver update, which might help this...but if not, then is there no other solution?

I might add, I am using Acronis 2014 on another platform (and it is only a single-use copy). Does it have the ability to run at lower resolution settings?

Michael, your low screen resolution is the issue here - I have seen the same myself with an older Samsung NC10 Netbook which also used the same resolution but I was able to find a display driver that allowed me to switch to using 1024 x 768 which worked for me.

As far as I am aware 1024 x 768 is the minimum requirement for all recent versions of ATI including ATI 2014 (I checked this via the 2014 User Guide).

If you connect an external display, then you should be able to set a different / higher resolution for that display separately to the built-in one.

Hmmm. Not good! I will check for driver update to increase resolution at the end of the day. In the meantime, my experience with the external screen is that it was limited by the DRIVER output, not by the screen resolution---it is auto-detecting the input and setting itself accordingly. So unless I am off the mark, I don't think the external screen is going to get me anywhere unless the driver is upgraded to 1024 x 768.

M

Take a look at webpage: How to get better resolution on your standard 10 inch netbook which may be helpful.

Ah, but there is a catch: the higher resolution only works when using a Win 7 (or subsequent) O/S.  and so a chicken-and-egg conundrum of not being able to use Acronis 2018 to safeguard my upgrade from XP to Win 7 until after I get Win 7...

One option, if available, would be to remove the HDD from the notebook and connect to another computer running at a higher resolution via either a docking station or a USB to SATA adapter.

Another option, would be to see if you are able to download the ATI 2018 Rescue Media .ISO file from your Acronis account where your Trial version is registered, then use a utility such as Rufus or ISOtoUSB to write the ISO to a USB stick.

Ah, so perhaps this is a misunderstanding on my part. Isn't the "Rescue USB" specific to the platform it was created on? If not then what you suggest is do-able.

Also, can you trigger the production of the USB rebootable media within Acronis 2018 by the use of a Hot Key (Ctrl+P, for example)? If that is possible and as long as I know what the trigger Hot Key is, then I can produce the USB bootable media even though I cannot see the radio button (which isn't shown, off screen etc).

The Rescue Media has multiple different variations depending on how it is created.

See KB 60091: Acronis True Image 2018: how Simple bootable media creation mode works for lots of information on this topic.

The Rescue Media ISO is based on a Linux OS boot environment and should work on most computers, so is perhaps the most 'multipurpose' version.

The ATI 2018 'Simple' Rescue Media defaults to using Windows PE extracted from the Windows Recovery Environment for the computer where it is built, but this in turn requires Windows 8 or 10 for this WinRE to exist.  If this was being built on Windows 7 then you would need to have the Windows ADK installed to create the WinPE version, otherwise you would create the Linux version, as would also be the case with Windows XP.

If you are going to try to build the media on XP or 7 (without the ADK installed), then choose the Advanced mode, then the Linux media, then the USB option (with the USB drive connected) - this will show the screen below where the default option is Proceed which just pressing the Enter key should effect.

OK, so I think that is my solution:

When trying to create the bootable USB directly on the notebook, it defaulted to the Linux OS (which I thought strange), and nothing seemed to happen when (not seeing the dialog buttons...) I tried to use the Enter key to start the process. Perhaps I did not wait long enough for that. I will try once again and, if I cannot get it to work on the notepad I will create the Linux bootable USB from my desktop, instead.

thank you for all your help.

Mike