Windows 10 Home x64 Raid 0 NVME Backup
Hi
Just purchased Acronis TrueImage 2017 to back up my C drive which is RAID 0 created with 2xSamsung 960 Pro NVME M.2 drives. What Im trying to do is create an image (on an external drive) so that I dont potentially have to re-install everything. How do I go about this? Any help greatly appreciated


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For recovery, in your RAID setup with NVME PCIE drives, you'll need to build WinPE rescue media.
If you haven't already, please downoad and install the Windows 10 ADK (version 1511 for Win 10 ... which can install on Win 7, 8, 8.1 and 10... would be my recommendation - no need for 1607 at this time and 1511 actually has some advantages over 1607 that I won't go into detail on here).
Download it, install it, pick the top 3 items to install - roughly 3.4Gb. Once installed, download and run the MVP winpe builder and it will do the rest with the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) drivers being injected for you. If you have a custom RAID controller (like LSI or something like that, then you can supply your own drivers as well).
Download links for ADK and the MVP WinPE builder are down below.
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Hi Guy
Thanks for your help I have downloaded and installed windows ADK 10.1.14393.0 which is a 6.69GB file will that work? I installed all the options hence the large file size. Thanks in advance
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Yes, that should work - that is the newer 1607 version and Acronis 2017 supports it. That's fine for creating WinPE.
In the future, you only needed to pick the top 3 options during the ADK install which equates to about 3.4Gb of stuff. As you've already downloaded and installed the full package, having the additional ADK features won't cause an issue for creating WinPE - it just eats up another 3Gb of space on your OS drive.
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Peter,
I personally have a system such as you describe, Win 10 Pro x64, M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 X4 Samsung (2xSM951) drives in a RAID 0 array. I have created WinPE using the 1607 ADK and it all works as described by Bobbo.
I created the WinPE on a USB flash drive of 8GB capacity (4GB will also work as will as small as 1GB). Make certain that your flash drive is cleanly full (long ) formatted as FAT32 to avoid possble problems with the flash drive booting.
I would recommend that you create the WinPE media, boot to that media and create a backup of your RAID 0 array, validate that backup and store that backup and a couple of copies of that backup for use as your base initial image. If you need to start fresh at some point this can serve as your starting point. I do this after Windows install, Windows updates installed and necessary drivers for all hadware has been installed. I do it again after I install a number of apps that I always use as well.
You can then create another backup of your array in the Windows TI app using an incremental of differential scheme for periodic updates at given points in time. I store copies of those in a few locations as well.
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