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Acronis ATI 2017 Newbie Question on backup/restore steps and procedures

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I have a desktop running Windows 10.  It has two identical internal 2T hard drives (C: and D:).  When I built my computer, I purposely installed identical hard drives so that I could use the D: drive strictly as a backup using a brute force "sector-by-sector" method (non RAID).  For several years I've been using an older version of Acronis (version 11) where I would boot from the Acronis 11 DVD and do a "sector by sector" backup from C: to D: (I know, not the most efficient way to backup). The theory being that if my C: drive were to fail, I would just physically remove it and make the D: drive the primary drive (it would become C:). I just purchased ATI 2017 and I'm trying to understand what I need to do in order to have viable backup/restore procedure.  I recently added a Western Digital 4T NAS (WD MyCloud) to my home network.  I have successfully created backups (.tib file - single full backup version/overwrites it everytime) using ATI 2017 for several weeks (Entire PC to my WD MyCloud).  I'm concerned I haven't done everything I need to do in the event I ever actually need to restore from the .tib file I've created.  I always assume I'll be faced with a physical failure of the C: drive (worst case) and would like to have the option for the replacement hard drive to be larger/faster. I understand I need to create a boot DVD (or USB flash drive) using the Rescue Media Builder but I'm overwelmed with the technical details asked during the boot device creation process (I'm afraid I'll select the wrong choice and/or not provide everything Acronis will need to do the restore).  I'm comfortable with being able to successfully create an "Entire PC" to .tib file to my networked hard drive.

1. What is the difference between the "Rescue Media Builder" and  "Acronis Universal Restore" tools? What is the appropriate use for each?

2. In order to be able to restore the .tib file back onto my replacement hard drive, I assume I need to create a boot recovery disk now? How (using which tool)? (I've downloaded and read the sticky titled "atih_2017_disk_restore.pdf" but still unclear)

3. The .tib file is on my NAS. Do I need to do anything extra during the creation of my boot recovery disk so that I'll be able to access the network drive?

Basically I'm looking for a list of tasks I need to do now to be prepared to successfully retore from my .tib in the future.

Sorry for the detailed post and thanks in advance,

Ben

 (attached hard drive partition info)

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Benjamin Puckett wrote:

I have a desktop running Windows 10.  It has two identical internal 2T hard drives (C: and D:).  When I built my computer, I purposely installed identical hard drives so that I could use the D: drive strictly as a backup using a brute force "sector-by-sector" method (non RAID).  For several years I've been using an older version of Acronis (version 11) where I would boot from the Acronis 11 DVD and do a "sector by sector" backup from C: to D: (I know, not the most efficient way to backup). The theory being that if my C: drive were to fail, I would just physically remove it and make the D: drive the primary drive (it would become C:). I just purchased ATI 2017 and I'm trying to understand what I need to do in order to have viable backup/restore procedure.  I recently added a Western Digital 4T NAS (WD MyCloud) to my home network.  I have successfully created backups (.tib file - single full backup version/overwrites it everytime) using ATI 2017 for several weeks (Entire PC to my WD MyCloud).  I'm concerned I haven't done everything I need to do in the event I ever actually need to restore from the .tib file I've created.  I always assume I'll be faced with a physical failure of the C: drive (worst case) and would like to have the option for the replacement hard drive to be larger/faster. I understand I need to create a boot DVD (or USB flash drive) using the Rescue Media Builder but I'm overwelmed with the technical details asked during the boot device creation process (I'm afraid I'll select the wrong choice and/or not provide everything Acronis will need to do the restore).  I'm comfortable with being able to successfully create an "Entire PC" to .tib file to my networked hard drive.

1. What is the difference between the "Rescue Media Builder" and  "Acronis Universal Restore" tools? What is the appropriate use for each?

Rescue Media Builder builds the rescue media to boot to in the event Windows can't boot.  It should be used to initiate ANY DISK/PARTITION RECOVERY or ANY CLONE (don't start those from Windows).  UR is a tool to help migrate a restored image to a new PC - it generalizes the drivers so it will hopefully boot with the default Windows drivers when transfered to the new hardware (assuming the bios is configured correctly, etc). 

2. In order to be able to restore the .tib file back onto my replacement hard drive, I assume I need to create a boot recovery disk now? How (using which tool)? (I've downloaded and read the sticky titled "atih_2017_disk_restore.pdf" but still unclear).  

The rescue media builder tools will allow you to create bootable rescue flash drive, .iso, or burn directly to CD/DVD - make sure to test bootability and that it sees your backup drive and the drive you would intend to restore to.

Alterntatively, you can build WinPE rescue media.  You need to install the windows ADK first to use it though.  Once installed (top 3 items - roughly 3.4GB), you can use our MVP winpe builder - links to it and the Microsoft ADK are listed below in my signature.  The advantage of using the MVP tool to create winpe is the ability to inject custom drivers into it.  The default Acronis rescue media is Linux and has no way for us to update drivers - this can be problematic if yoru system uses RAID (even on a single drive for the newer PCIE NVME hard drives).  But, if the default rescue media boots and can see your backup drive and the drive you intend to recvoer too, you're good to go. 

If you have installed Universal Restore already, when you build the default rescue media, UR will be added to it automatically.  If you build WinPE, you'll need to make a recovery media and a UR media (that will soon change with our MVP tool, which will allow both to be added into WinPE very soon so that you also only need one winpe rescue media).

3. The .tib file is on my NAS. Do I need to do anything extra during the creation of my boot recovery disk so that I'll be able to access the network drive?

Typcially no - the default LInux media is pretty good about being able to connect to a NAS.  However, test it.  Boot to the recovery media and start the process of a backup or restore and navigate to the NAS - you may need to know the IP\share name if it is not detected, but you can try to connect a few different ways. 

WinPE is neutered in this department as, by default, you must use a NET USE command to map your share as a drive letter first.  The MVP media (use the advanced builder - it's easy to build), will give you a file explorer and direct access to A43 file explorer which has a GUI to help with this. When our new version is released (hopefully this week), it wiill also have some of our own tools to help with mapping your network share in WinPE.

Basically I'm looking for a list of tasks I need to do now to be prepared to successfully retore from my .tib in the future.

Sorry for the detailed post and thanks in advance,

Ben

 (attached hard drive partition info)

There's really no reason to do sector-by-sector - in fact, it should only be used if you are in forensics or if your disk is going bad (in which case, Acronis will probably default to sector by sector anyway).  just do a full disk backup and it will backup everything on the drive.  If you backup from Windows, it will exclude things by default such as temp directories, recyccle bin, system volume information (restore points), page file and few others.  These are not needed for a restore and only exist when Windows is operational.  If you do a full "offline" backup with your rescue media, they won't exist because Windows only creates them when it is launched anyway.  

For automation, I setup a recurring backup in Windows using a weekly full, followed by differentials every other day for 4 diffs.  I keep 2 version chains so that I always have at least one chain to revert to (just in case).

I also take an occassional full offline backup - usually before I install anything major or somethign I want to test - like before a major Windows update or if I"m about to try some downloaded software.  There's no wrong way to backup, except not backing up, or not doing it often enough for your own needs. 

Do you have an actual RAID in your system (RAID 0, 1, 5 or 10)?  If so, that makes things a bit more complicated, but not really.  As long as you have a good "full disk" backup, you can restore to a single drive or a new RAID set.  

I successfully created a USB boot device using the Rescue Media Builder (default linux) and tested it by using it as my boot device.  It found my NAS and I was able to navigate to my .tib file.  I still don't fully understand when I need to use the Acronis Universal Restore.  It seems I use the Linux based Rescue Media Builder IF I restore the .tib back onto the original hard drive; however, if I had a physical hard drive failure and decided to replace it with a different (faster, larger, etc.) hard drive do I need to have created a boot media (USB, DVD, etc) using Acronis Universal Restore?  Seems like I have more recovery options if I create a boot device using Acronis Universal Restore.  In other words, why would I ever want to use Rescue Media Builder instead of the Acronis Universal Restore?  Sorry for the denseness!

Universal restore is only used when you change the main board of the computer (has different drivers) or want to restore to a completely new system. Some sotware may not be able to be transferred to a new computer in this way is the licence it tied to the old PC. This is the case with Windows 10 and, I think, Windows 8/8.1. Most Acronis users have never needed to use Universal Restore. In almost 10 years I have never needed to restore to new hardware. I have frequently restored to new HDD/SSD which usually takes place without problems arising. (Note that the Acronis (Linux) recovery media will not find HDD/SSDs that use RAID setting as Linux does not support that is 'run' buy the chipset. In such cases you need to use the MVP Tool - CUSTOM ATI WINPE BUILDER to create the recovery media.)

Hope this helps

Ian

These are my two scenarios I want to cover using my .tib backup file that is stored on my NAS:

Scenario 1.  Existing computer/component(s) (hard drive, motherboard) physically fails/dies or is stolen/destroyed and has to be replaced.

Do I use Rescue Media Builder or Acronis Universal Restore?

Scenario 2.  I upgrade to a completely new computer/OS and want to restore to the new system.

Do I use Rescue Media Builder or Acronis Universal Restore?

Maybe I need to create an additional backup with select individual files/folders (ie, non-image/.tib format) in addition to the .tib file.

I'm concerned that although I'm good about making up-to-date backups of my drive (.tib), I won't be able to use it when I need it because I didn't create the proper boot media using the appropriate tool and/or I misunderstood the limitations of the choice I made.  Thanks

 

Benjamin, the answer to both of your scenarios is that you will need both type of Rescue Media.

You will always need the main Acronis bootable Rescue Media regardless of the scenario as this is required in order to Restore your backup .TIB file to either the same disk drive, a different disk drive or a disk drive installed in a different computer system.

The Acronis Universal Restore Media is only needed when there is a significant change in terms of computer key components, i.e. new computer, new motherboard, different CPU.  The prime task of the Universal Restore media is to prepare the restored OS to enable it to work with those new components where either some new device drivers may be needed, or drivers need to be changed to generic types so that Windows will detect that it is now using new hardware and will automatically try to find and use the best device drivers that are needed, such as from Windows Update.

What is equally important in terms of both of these types of Rescue Media is to test the media a long time before you may need to use it in an emergency scenario.  

Test that you can boot from the Acronis Rescue Media and access the main Acronis application GUI then can see your internal and any connected external drives (USB, NAS etc).  If the standard, Linux based, Rescue Media does not work correctly, then you would need to create the Windows PE version of the media and test this instead.

Test that you can boot from the Acronis Universal Restore media and this gets to the main Universal Restore menu - again, if this can't be done, then you will need to create the Windows PE version of this media too, and test that media.

My bootable USB disk created with RMB booted with no trouble and I was able to see my NAS and was able to navigate down to the actual .tib file.  That's as far as I went.

I started to play around with Acronis UR and it seems extremely similar to RMB.

Do I need a physical separate USB drive/DVD for each (Acronis UR and RMB)?

Thanks, Ben 

If you use the default Acronis rescue media builder and have UR already installed on the machine, it will add UR and Acronis rescue media to the same USB drive or ISO.

If you want to build a WinPE vesion instead and have both Acronis and UR installed on the machine, you will need to use the advanced MVP WinPE builder (linked below) and it will automatically add both to your created rescue media.

Just be advised, that although they will both be on the rescue media in either instance, if you use the default Linux media, you can only boot into one or the other so have to use 2 steps.  If you go the WinPE method, you can open and close Acronis without issue, but the moment you close UR, it automatically restarts the machine (it's built into UR and we can't change that behavior).

________________

As for adding multiple tools onto one USB drive... this can be done using 3rd party tools like EASY BCD and/or Bootice. I use Bootice to modify the UEFI bootloader menu's and point it to multiple .wim files on the same bootable winPE rescue media.  I use EASY BCD to do the same thing for the legacy bootloader on the thumb drive.

Legacy boot menu options on a USB drive are done via (change g: to whatever your usb drive is)

G:\Boot\bcd

UEFI boot menu options on a USB drive are done via 

G:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD

I used this tutorial to make my own custom USB flash drive will all of my bootablie winpe.wim files (both 32 and 64 bit):  http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/127-make-dual-32-64bit-pe

 

I have used Acronis for a long time and presently have ATI 2017 on my Dell 8920 which uses a pci SSD [NVMe PC300 NVMe SK hy is what is says in device manager] for operating/boot [C: drive] and a separate drive [SATA, D:] for storage.

ATI makes a tib for the C drive just fine but i cannot restore to that drive.  The restore process hangs up and  eventually shuts down leaving the existing C drive unchanged

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

 

Tom

 

Tom, welcome to these User Forums.

How are you attempting to do the restore of your backup image? 

This should be performed using the ATI 2017 bootable Rescue Media (that can be created on CD/DVD or USB stick), and may need to be the Windows PE version of the media with additional device drivers injected if it does not recognise your PCI NVMe SSD drive.

Thank you for your reply.

 

The boot drive [C:] is found in the disk tree when i try to recover either disks or partitions so it appears the drive is recognized.  The drive is occupied by the operating system partition, three recovery partitions and an "EFI system partition".

I have the F11 trigger to boot from the stored ATI rescue media embedded in the drive [one of the separate partitions presumably] and have tried that as well as a full computer restore  and the system still hangs. I have not tried restoring only the operating system partition since it would presumably wipe the other partitions.

Does this help?  Any suggestions appreciated.

 

Thank you

 

Tom

 

Tom, when you say the "boot drive [C:] is found in the disk tree when i try to recover either disks or partitions" - how exactly are you looking at the disk tree in this scenario, i.e. are you booted from Rescue Media, or are you still in an active Windows and using the ATI 2017 GUI application?

If you are looking via the Windows ATI GUI then this is using the device drivers installed within Windows for your boot drive.

I personally stopped using the ASRM (Startup Recovery Manager) that gives the F11 key on boot some while back - this may work OK for you but will never help if you ever have a bare-metal recovery situation as will be lost along with the drive it is stored on.

When you say that the "system still hangs" when trying the F11 ASRM option, how far do you get in launching the Acronis True Image application for that environment?  Do you get to an ATI GUI panel or does it hang before that point?

ASRM uses a Linux Kernel OS environment which may not have the required device drivers for your NVMe PCI SSD drive, hence the initial recommendation to use the Windows PE version of the Rescue Media where additional drivers can be added if needed.

Thank you again.  Off and on I have messed with this  and while i can boot using the any of the 3 methods [ F11, the rescue disk and the advanced PE rescue disk] it is the destination of the OS drive that seems to befuddle ACRONIS. NO matter what i try it will only allow restoration to an SATA drive, not my my PCI NVMe SSD drive....it is simply not recognized by the system as a location to restore the image to. While i consider myself generally savvy, i do not know how to add drivers, or which drivers to add and where to add them such that the PCI NVMe SSD drive is recognized.  Is there a way to find out what the drivers are and how to add them?

 

Thank you again

I have not had this issue with NVMe drives, but I have only recovered using ATI 2018 and then I was not using the Linux recovery media. The alternative recovery media has a generic NVMe driver written by Microsoft. So, you will need to use the Windows based recovery media; with ATI 2017 the best way to do this is to use the MVP Tool - CUSTOM ATI WINPE BUILDER. You should not need to inject any drivers.

This effort has been disheartening. I can back the drive and now the suggested procedure does allow me to specify the correct drive to restore to but following about a 3-5 minute period during which the program says only "preparing" the restore times out and the system reboots with the machine un affected.

Thanks for the help but it looks like i will have to use Win 7 backup and their cross-your-fingers restore function

 

Tom