Acronis Survival Kit converts USB drive to MBR and leaves huge unallocated space partition
I want to use my entire 4TB external usb drive for my backups. However, Acronis Survival Kit changes my drive partition type from GPT to MBR, which is limited to 2TB. A huge 1.7TB unallocated (totally unusable) partition is left on my drive. Why can't the drive partition type be left GPT, rather than MBR, so I can use my entire drive?
(Windows 10, Acronis True Image 2019, 4TB WD Elements Portable external usb drive)
Disk Management will not let me create another MBR partition from the unallocated space. I can only display its properties. Neither will it allow me to extend the good MBR partition into the unallocated space. It appears that Acronis Survival Kit cannot make full use of external hard drives larger than 2TB if the original (source) drive has an MBR partition type.
Harry, download a copy of the MiniTool Partition Wizard, and see if this will allow you to create the second MBR partition.
The alternative here is if you have a UEFI/GPT computer with ATI 2019 installed that you could use to create the Survival Kit.
One final option is to reformat the whole 4TB WD drive as GPT, then create a new 2GB FAT32 partition at the start, and give this a drive letter via Disk Management. You should then be able to use the normal Acronis Rescue media builder tool to create the bootable media in that 2GB FAT32 partition.
I like that 3rd option best if it works. I'll try creating the FAT32 partition with bootable media.
(I don't want to have to use 2 separate MBR partitions.)
Acronis should probably warn people that if they use Survival Kit and their original drive is 2TB or less, they probably will not be able to make full use of a larger external drive ... unless they implement your third option work-around.
BTW, I sure do appreciate your help!
It worked. I was able to boot my computer into Acronis Recovery from a 2GB FAT32 partition on my usb drive. My differential backup onto the remaining 3.7TB NTFS partition is underway!
Do you think I can safely remove the drive letter from the FAT32 partition? I had to add it in order to load the bootable media.
Thank you again. Your assistance really made my day.
Harry
Harry, glad to have been able to help - I have been using the third option myself for much longer than just with ATI 2019, and I use it with the MVP Custom ATIPE Builder tool to create an enhanced version of the Rescue media which has a web browser, file manager, PDF viewer, capture tool etc.
Acronis should probably warn people that if they use Survival Kit and their original drive is 2TB or less, they probably will not be able to make full use of a larger external drive ... unless they implement your third option work-around.
If you create the Survival Kit on a UEFI/GPT system then this will use whatever size of drive you have with no issue - it is only Legacy/MBR systems that have the 2TB drive size restriction.
Do you think I can safely remove the drive letter from the FAT32 partition? I had to add it in order to load the bootable media.
Entirely up to you - personally my own FAT32 boot media partition keeps the same drive letter as I have created a Capture folder on it and use it when I want to grab images from the Rescue Media ATI application.
I just purchased Acronis True Image 2019, which I intended to use to backup to my 8 Tb Seagate Expansion drive. When I ran the Survival Kit, it also reformatted my drive to 2 Tb as above, leaving about 6 Tb unallocated. I found the instructions above, deleted the volumes on my drive, changed the drive from MBR to GPT, created a 2 Gb partition formatted as FAT32, the remainder as a single partition formatted as NTFS, and ran the Rescue Media Builder to write a Linux recovery system to the 2 Gb drive. I now plan to backup everything to the Expansion drive. So far, so good.
My question to you is, will the rescue partition behave exactly as if I had created it via the Survival Kit? What differences, if any, will there be?
Thanks very much!
Vic, there should be no difference in how the rescue partition on your external HDD works as compared to having it created via the Survival Kit process - it is the same Rescue Media that goes into the 2GB partition, so if the Linux version of this works for you - all should be good to go, but as with all things, I would recommend giving it a trial run to see that everything works as expected!
Steve Smith wrote:Harry, download a copy of the MiniTool Partition Wizard, and see if this will allow you to create the second MBR partition.
The alternative here is if you have a UEFI/GPT computer with ATI 2019 installed that you could use to create the Survival Kit.
One final option is to reformat the whole 4TB WD drive as GPT, then create a new 2GB FAT32 partition at the start, and give this a drive letter via Disk Management. You should then be able to use the normal Acronis Rescue media builder tool to create the bootable media in that 2GB FAT32 partition
There is a simple solution built into Windows 10 that you can do at an administrator command prompt. The long answer is below, the short answer is (assuming C is your boot drive, and that it is MBR) and that it is disk 0. If not, change the variables below.
Open a command prompt in administrator mode
Type mbr2gpt /convert /disk:0 /allowFullOS and hit enter. That will convert your boot drive to GPT from MBR, and allow Acronis to use a full 8TB drive (which I did).
MBR2GPT /validate|convert [/disk:<diskNumber>] [/logs:<logDirectory>] [/map:<source>=<destination>] [/allowFullOS]
Options
Option Description /validate Instructs MBR2GPT.exe to perform only the disk validation steps and report whether the disk is eligible for conversion. /convert Instructs MBR2GPT.exe to perform the disk validation and to proceed with the conversion if all validation tests pass. /disk:<diskNumber> Specifies the disk number of the disk to be converted to GPT. If not specified, the system disk is used. The mechanism used is the same as that used by the diskpart.exe tool SELECT DISK SYSTEM command. /logs:<logDirectory> Specifies the directory where MBR2GPT.exe logs should be written. If not specified, %windir% is used. If specified, the directory must already exist, it will not be automatically created or overwritten. /map:<source>=<destination> Specifies additional partition type mappings between MBR and GPT. The MBR partition number is specified in decimal notation, not hexidecimal. The GPT GUID can contain brackets, for example: /map:42={af9b60a0-1431-4f62-bc68-3311714a69ad}. Multiple /map options can be specified if multiple mappings are required. /allowFullOS By default, MBR2GPT.exe is blocked unless it is run from Windows PE. This option overrides this block and enables disk conversion while running in the full Windows environment.
Note: Since the existing MBR system partition is in use while running the full Windows environment, it cannot be reused. In this case, a new ESP is created by shrinking the OS partition..
Hi Steve, Will you describe the steps that you did to create an enhanced version of the Rescue Media using MVP Custom ATIPE Builder tool? Thanks
Ray, welcome to these User Forums.
Will you describe the steps that you did to create an enhanced version of the Rescue Media using MVP Custom ATIPE Builder tool?
The steps are pretty straight forward provided you are confident in following them.
First, you will need an external USB disk drive with sufficient space to be used for this purpose.
Next, you will need a partition manager program such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard, which will be used to create a new 2GB FAT32 partition on your external disk drive.
Install the partition manager program and use this to either resize any existing NTFS partition on the external USB drive to free up 2GB space at the start of the drive, or else if using a new drive, to create a 2GB FAT32 partition at the start of the drive, and then create a NTFS partition that uses the remainder of the space on the drive. If your external drive already contains data you want to keep, then the resize option should be taken.
Once you have created the 2GB FAT32 partition, then you need to allocate a drive letter to this partition. This can be done either using the partition manager program, or else via Windows Disk Management.
If you can now see the 2GB FAT32 partition in Windows Explorer using the allocated drive letter, you are ready to use the MVP Custom ATIPE Builder script.
The MVP script can either use your Windows Recovery Environment for the WinPE files needed, or else you can download and install the Windows 10 ADK for the WinPE files.
Note: with the latest version of the Windows 10 ADK, Microsoft have decided to split this into 2 components, with the WinPE part being separate. You will still need both components as the MVP script uses the DISM tool which is now in the smaller ADK component, as well as the WinPE larger component!
Run the MVP tool as Administrator, then follow all the prompts for the options you want to use in the Survival Kit, which will then create .ISO and .WIM files in the MVP folder before asking if you want to create a USB stick version of the Rescue Media. Say YES to this question and give the drive letter that is allocated to the 2GB FAT32 partition on your external USB disk drive.
That is it! Updating the Survival Kit just requires the final step of using the MVP tool and pointing it at the drive letter for the 2GB partition.
Thanks Steve. I was slow but I got finally the whole thing to make sense to me and I am using it my external hardrive that contains images as well. Very handy when restoring. Thanks a lot again.
I wonder if i can use similar concept where I would boot from my external hard drive and house house into one all my other usb disks that contain bootable softwares like windows 7 installer, windows 10 installer, utilities, etc.
Ray Tangunan wrote:I wonder if i can use similar concept where I would boot from my external hard drive and house house into one all my other usb disks that contain bootable softwares like windows 7 installer, windows 10 installer, utilities, etc.
Ray, I am sure that there are ways to create multiboot drives with options to boot from various different products or installers, but I have not done this myself so not able to guide you for this.
Harry Nicholson wrote:I like that 3rd option best if it works. I'll try creating the FAT32 partition with bootable media.
(I don't want to have to use 2 separate MBR partitions.)
Acronis should probably warn people that if they use Survival Kit and their original drive is 2TB or less, they probably will not be able to make full use of a larger external drive ... unless they implement your third option work-around.
BTW, I sure do appreciate your help!
I absolutely agree about the warning. I feel like I probably should have known this, but was caught off-guard. It would be really unfortunate for someone not used to digging into the guts of a system. The info page, https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/true-image-features/survival-kit/, as of this writing, should include a message that one might want to use a 2TB drive.
Hello Nancy,
a respective warning is already shown, please refer to https://kb.acronis.com/content/61738
Ray,
I put this together for another thread just a couple days ago as well. Sounds like you already got the jest of it, but the video breaks it down pretty easy.
As for making a muliboot tool. Yes, you can do it. I start with a base USB drive made from the Windows 10 media creation tool. that gives you a default and current windows installer USB that supports 32-bit and 64-bit UEFI booting (if you use the media tool to create an installer with both).
After that, I make a folder for various boot.wim files (renamed as I see fit) and .iso's. You can then modify the legacy boot menu for the USB with easybcd and then I use bootice by pauly to add UEFI boot entries for the same files. When I boot the USB I can then pick the entry I want to boot to, in legacy or UEFI mode (use the bios for that part first) and then boot the desired tool
Ray, I can atest to the method suggested by Rob (Bobbo) for a multi-boot 'survival' drive as I have followed very similar steps (with Rob's help).
One thing I did find is that modifying / adding UEFI BCD entries using EasyBCD did not work correctly for me even though I have never had any issues with Legacy BCD entries using the same tool.
Creating those entries using BootIce worked fine for both UEFI and Legacy BCD entries.