Can I add bootable rescue media to an external hard drive containing backups
I recently upgraded to ATI 2019. I would prefer neither to ditch my existing backup nor to buy another external hard drive. I read in the User Manual that using a USB stick for bootable media only works with Win 10. I am running Win 7 SP1.
First, thank you for your answer. I had been reading about Survival Kit. For it, I read that a USB flash device can only be used if the PC is running Win 10. Are we talking about 2 different things?
Put another way: is "Survival Kit" just marketing type for what has existed in previous versions of ATI?
Chris, welcome back - not seen your posts for a while!
The Survival Kit is simply the creation of a bootable 2GB FAT32 partition on any external drive where the Acronis Rescue Media is put into that partition. With the latest ATI 2019 Update 14690 this has been expanded to include larger USB sticks which can also be used in the same way.
The key benefit here is that you would be able to boot directly from your external drive into the ATI Rescue environment then either make new Backups, Clone or Recover from existing images store on the same drive.
The option to create a Survival Kit is offered when making a backup to a suitable external drive.
See KB 61639: Acronis True Image 2019: How to create Acronis Survival Kit - for more information.
Note: you can do exactly the same manually if you wish. Create the 2GB FAT32 partition on an external drive, give this a drive letter in Windows, then either use the main Acronis Rescue Media Builder tool or use the MVP Custom ATIPE Builder script and tell it to create the rescue media on the FAT32 drive letter. I have done this with my own drives using the MVP tool and it works great.
Chris,
I believe you are referring to the documentation pasted below:
As a device for an Acronis Survival Kit you can use:
- An external hard disk drive. It should be larger than 32 GB and have an NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT file system. If the drive has another file system, Acronis True Image 2019 suggests formatting the drive.
- A USB flash drive. It should be an MBR flash drive with minimum size of 32 GB. If you use a GPT flash drive, Acronis True Image 2019 suggests formatting the drive to MBR. Note, flash drives are supported only for Windows 10 (build 1703 and later).
In the above I have taken liberty to bold the text I think is in question here. The Note references a USB flash drive often called a pen drive or thumb drive. To create a Survival kit on such a device then Windows 10 1703 or later is required. If you wish to use an external hard drive (HDD) to create a Survival Kit this restriction does not apply. The minimum 32GB size limitation does apply in either case as well as the formatting of such a disk.
Hi Steve, good to be back!
Yes, Enchantech, I was referring to the paragraphs you quote.
At this time, my external HDD has one partition. The HDD has about 600 GB free. If I follow the procedure in Section 2.4 of the manual, will the backups on the HDD still be available to me?
As long as creating the the Survival Kit does not require the disk to be reformatted than yes. If you can copy these backup files to another location, a second external drive perhaps, you could move them there then, create the Survival Kit on the drive holding your backup files now then, copy or move the backup files back onto the external drive (newly created Survival Kit) if need be.
Hope that is not to confusing!
Will ATI tell me if the drive needs reformatting before it reformats it (and I lose my backups) ?
Chris, in the KB document I referenced earlier, it has the following warning point.
If the external HDD is not a GPT one and has a file system different from NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT, Acronis True Image 2019 suggests formatting the disk. Note that formatting will erase all data on the disk.
You should get a warning before any action is taken to format the drive!
Thanks Steve
I see why I am a bit confused.
On page 17 of the User manual "Creating bootable media" I see that a USB flash drive can be used.
But on pages 19-20, " To recover your computer in case of a failure, you need to have two crucial components—a backup of your system disk and a bootable rescue media. Most often these components are separated, for
example, the system backup is stored on an external drive or Acronis Cloud and the bootable media
is a small USB flash drive. An Acronis Survival Kit combines both components so that you could have a
single device that has everything that you need to recover your computer in case of a failure."
" As a device for an Acronis Survival Kit you can use"
...
| "a USB flash drive" |
"It should be an MBR flash drive with minimum size of 32 GB. ... Note, flash drives are supported only for
Windows 10 (build 1703 and later)"
The only place in the User Manual where the requirement for Win 10 is mentioned is on page 20. Everywhere else in the manual that flash drives are mentioned there is no mention of the need for Win 10.
My reading (and what I understand from earlier posts) is that someone who is running Win 7 could make a flash drive bootable using Rescue Media Builder and then backup to that flash drive. One would end up with the equivalent of Survival Kit.
Am I missing something?
--------
I think what I am going to do is:
- Buy another external HDD
- Run Rescue Media Builder to make it bootable
- Copy my existing backups to it from my old external HDD
- Do a differential backup to the new external HDD
- Boot from the new EHDD
- See if restoring files is possible.
Chris, there are a couple of different points at work here.
Microsoft did not normally allow USB flash drives greater than 32GB in size to work as bootable media, but this now looks to have changed since Windows 10 #1703 and later.
See KB 58108: Acronis products: using USB sticks with more than 32GB capacity
A bootable USB HDD (or SSD) drive created either as a Survival Kit, or manually using the Rescue Media Builder or MVP tool (for a 2GB FAT32 partition on the drive) should work with any computer that supports booting from an external USB drive, providing it also supports the same CPU architecture, i.e. a 64-bit rescue drive will only work on the same type of system, but a 32-bit drive would work with both 32-bit & 64-bit machines.
Survival Kit:
Can be created on a flash drive with a size of 32GB or larger (supported only for Win 10 1702 and later.
The Survival Kit tool creates a small 2GB partition on the flash drive in FAT32 format and the boot media files are written there and the partition is made bootable.
The rest of the drive (on a UEFI/GPT system) will be formatted NTFS and hosts any backup files written to it. if your system is a (BIOS (Legacy) MBR system) the remaining portion of the drive beyond 2GB will be formatted as FAT32. In this case backups of total file sizes greater than 2GB will be split into equal chunks each under 2GB in size.
Roll your own:
If you custom make your own you can create the first partition formatted as FAT32 and then create the bootable media portion there. If your system is UEFI then this partition will boot as UEFI. If your system is Legacy BIOS this partition will boot as Legacy/MBR. The remaining partition can be formatted as NTFS as long as you are running an OS that can work with NTFS (all Windows since the NT family).
With the second partition formatted as NTFS file splitting does not occur as NTFS does not have the 2GB file size limitation of FAT32.
Acronis 2019 also supports read/write to partitions using exFAT, which I assume also works when creating Survival Kit. (As always, the boot and survival partition will be formatted using FAT32). With exFAT file size is limited but larger than when using FAT32.
I read on page 20 of the User Manual:
" To create an Acronis Survival Kit:
1. Click Back up now or Create Acronis Survival Kit."
I had inserted a 32 GB USB stick, but did not see Create Acronis Survival Kit.
Under what conditions, and where, does this show?
Chris, the option only shows when you are doing a backup, hence you have the choice to either go ahead and backup now, or else to create the survival kit from that backup panel.
I am not completely sure, but experimenting seems to show me that Create Survival Kit is a dialog that only shows after choosing a backup and clicking Backup Now when the plugged in device is 32GB (on Win 7) and there is not already a backup on the device.
So is the Manual inaccurate?
I do get easily confused in ATI.
BTW Enchantech's post couples UEFI and GPT. I have a UEFI computer but the internal disk and external drive use MBR. So it seems that, at least for Win 7, UEFI does not imply GPT.
I am also not sure about the first paragraph on page 20:
" It should be an MBR flash drive with minimum size of 32 GB. If you use a GPT flash drive, Acronis
True Image 2019 suggests formatting the drive to MBR. Note, flash drives are supported only for
Windows 10 (build 1703 and later)."
I went part-way with a backup to an unused 32 GB flash drive. I had forgotten to unplug the external HD My usual backup scheme was selected. I clicked Backup Now. ATI offered to create a Kit.
Perhaps the Manual should say something like:
For Windows versions earlier than 10 (1703), it should be a 32 GB MBR flash drive. For later versions of Windows, it can have a larger capacity. Acronis True Image 2019 suggests formatting the drive to MBR.
Thoughts?
Chris, KB 61639: Acronis True Image 2019: How to create Acronis Survival Kit - looks to be more up to date than perhaps the User Manual is on this topic.
Yes, some sections of the user guide are out of date, and not always as detailed as one may hope; throughout one section it refers to 2017 rather than 2019 (and that is version updated from the latest release of ATI 2019).
The Survival Kit creation to a flash drive only works if the flash drive is a minimum 32GB size (can be larger),, and Windows 10 version 1703 or later is the installed OS on the machine creating the Survival Kit.
The Survival Kit creation to a USB attached hard drive must have a drive size minimum of 32GB (can be larger).
A Survival Kit drive can be created on any Windows system that supports one of the following filesystems:
- NTFS
- FAT32
- exFAT
- The creation tool will offer to format the drive if a different filesystem than those listed is detected.
If your Windows OS is other than Windows 10 1703 or later then you cannot create a Survival Kit on a flash drive. You can however create a Survival Kit on a USB attached external hard drive.
For all Windows installs supporting NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, (the NT family of OS's) the Survival Kit creation tool works as follows:
For UEFI/GPT systems (this means your computer uses GPT disks and boots via UEFI) the Survival Kit tool will create a 2GB hidden partition formatted FAT32 for the Acronis Recovery Media application and boot files. The remaining space on the drive will be formatted NTFS and backup files created on the Survival Kit drive will be written to this remaining space.
For Legacy BIOS/MBR systems (this means your computer uses MBR disks and boots via Legacy BIOS regardless of installed Windows version) the Survival Kit creation tool will create a hidden 2GB partition formatted FAT32 for the Acronis Recovery Media application and boot files. The remaining space on the drive will be formatted FAT32 and backup files created on the Survival Kit drive will be written to this remaining space. Backup files greater than 2GB in size will be split into evenly sized chunks sized just under 2GB in this remaining space due to the limitation that exists with the FAT32 filesystem.
The reasoning behind the difference in the above two paragraph scenarios is that the Survival Kit is aimed at created a drive that can be booted on the computer that created the Survival Kit and restore a backup image stored on that same Survival Kit drive to same computer and achieve a successful result. If you boot a UEFI/GPT Survival Kit drive on a Legacy BIOS/MBR computer and restore a backup image on the Survival Kit drive to such computer the result will be failure to boot. Vice versa is also true.
Bob, thanks for the detailed explanation. It will be a lot of help users in understanding the process involved. Also important to understand the difference between Survival Kit and recovery drive.
Ian
Thank you Ian
:)
For those who have not read the earlier posts in detail,My objective was to make my external HD bootable without losing the backups that are already on it.
For the benefit of others, here is what I have done so far:
- I bought another Seagate Slim 2TB drive
- I copied all backups on the old drive to the new, partly for assurance that I would not lose my backups. It took 4 hours for 1.4 TB
- I did Tools > Rescue Media Builder (RMB)
- I chose Simple
- At Choose media destination. One of the choices was the drive on my external HD. I chose it
- I left Format the selected media and permanently delete all data unchecked.
- The Proceed button was disabled.
- I tried checking the check box. This enabled the Proceed button.
- Not wishing to clobber my backups, I backed out.
- I then thought: the one drive on the external HD is occupying the whole drive; may be ATI needs me to shrink this drive. So I shrank it by 1 GB.
- I tried again, with the same result.
- The time had come for Tech Support.
- They successfully made the external HD bootable without clobbering my backups.using Survival Kit.
- Booting from the external HD worked. I was able to recover files to a new location.
Windows' Disk manager shows that Survival Kit moved and shrank the existing partition to the right and put a 2 GB Linux partition at the left of the existing one. The backups partition is 1.8GB NTFS.
Survival Kit took about 20 minutes, but I didn't time it. It did show progress messages.
In case computer specs are relevant: Asus UEFI BIOS, MBR partitioning, Win 7 SP1.
BTW Tech Support said that the reason that RMB failed is that RMB does not support external HDs. I would ask why it offered the external HD as a media destination. Even if all USB devices look the same to Windows, ATI could see the capacity of the device: there may be 2 TB flash drives in the future, but not now.
[Edited last bullet]