Beginner Question
This should be a basic task I want to complete: I want to take an image of a bare bones windows 10 enterprise laptop, and restore that image onto an identical laptop (identical hard drive).
I have never used Acronis software so I downloaded the 2017 trial version.
Using the back up tool I created an .tib file, and then created a bootable USB using the rescue media builder tool.
I then booted into this USB on the identical laptop and I can see the steps I need to do to restore my image.
The problem is that Acronis did not detect my laptops hard drive.
My first question is, is this possible and am I using the right steps to backup an image and restore it on another laptop?
I have tried using the universal restore tool but it was too complicated for me to create a bootable USB from the tool, it kept giving me an error. (I didn't know what windows drivers to add to the USB).
Any advice would be helpful, otherwise I will just have to manually reinstall windows and set up each laptop.
Thanks


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Thank you very much for the helpful advice.
The laptop's hard drives are M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives.
Unfortunately, my company is very small (5 laptops) and I have spent a fair amount of time already and I don't like having to find out which windows drivers I need in order to create that WinPE USB. If we buy the license for the software, do you know if the process will become easier?
If you don't mind my asking as well, are there any alternatives where I would have a faster time backing up/restoring my windows image?
Again, thank you for your time.
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Chris, if your computers are as identical as you have stated, then you should not need any additional device drivers for the WinPE USB stick, though if you want an easy way to create this and include extra drivers, then click on the link in my signature for the MVP Tool - Custom ATI WINPE Builder which will allow you to inject the Intel RST drivers that are needed if your NVMe drive is using RAID by default..
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The WinPE really only needs basic drivers for hard drives and Nics. Hard drives are easy, Nics are easy. RAID is what gets you as these laptops probably are using RAID as the SATA mode.
The generic IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) drivers should work on most RAID, unless the systems are using custom LSI controllers, but probably aren't.
With your trial version. Use our MVP winpe builder tool (linked in Steve's post and this one) and build the winpe with it (you will need to download and install the Windows 10 ADK 1511 or 1607 on the system you will be building the winpe with first - also linked in this post below. select the 1st 3 items - 3.4Gb) and after that, just run our tool and it will do the rest for you - just follow the prompts to build 64-bit winpe).
Then boot it up and act like you're going to back up. It should let you pick a hard drive (even though it won't let you backup in trial). If you can see the drives, you're good to go. It should work fine on 99% of any laptops you purchase as well after that.
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