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Does not see C: drive

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I am using Acronis True Image 2017 on my PC which has two physical harddrives installed and an external USB drive. When I boot to the CD -- I can see the second harddrive and the USB drive, it is not seeing the C (Operating System) drive. What could be the problem ?

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Chris, welcome to these public User Forums.

What type of drive is your C: drive?  That is most likely the key to why the boot CD does not see it.

It’s a SSD hatddrive. 

When I start the computer - I press F12 and choose the cd Rom to boot to - I then choose option 1 (Acronis True Image (64 bit)

i see the second internal hard drive and the external usb drive   But I do not see the OS drive 

Chris, sorry to repeat the same question but what type of SSD drive?  If this is an NVMe M.2 SSD drive connected via PCIe then it may simply be a case that your ATI 2017 boot CD is too old to recognise this type of drive and does not have any device driver to support it.

One option here would be to try creating the alternative WinPE version of the rescue media using the MVP Custom ATI PE tool (link in my signature) where this can allow to inject extra device drivers.  If you are using Windows 10 the tool can take the PE files from your Recovery Environment otherwise you will need to install the Windows 10 ADK for PE support.

I removed the other two drives and had only the C: drive attached to the computer. When I boot to the CD rom -- it tells me no harddrive is detected. I took a screen shot of the disk drives that are installed. The harddrive you mentioned is what looks like is installed.

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Chris, see forum topic: Acronis 2019 does not see my C drive - where another user had a very similar issue and this was discussed in great detail.

Create rescue media using the Acronis MVP builder.  Select the option to "yes" include custom drivers when prompted as we already have them available for you and they will be added with this option.  It will add the PCIE nvme drivers needed into the rescue media.  You have to build Windows PE rescue media with this hard drive, since the default Linux media does not have these drivers available.  That should be the simplest way of getting it to getect your 

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2018-forum/mvp-tool-…

I took a look at the thread from another user in this forum. I do not follow what I need to do. I do understand that I need to load the drivers so it can see the SSD drive when booting to the Acronis CD -- I do not follow how to do that.

 

Just download the mvp builder and extract it to the root of any drive. Launch it and build custom winpe x64 following the menus. When prompted if you want to add custom drivers, pick yes and it will add the drivers you need automatically. It's really easy to use and I think you'll like the extra features this one incorporates too.

 

Is this the tool you are referring to:

(01). MVP WinPE Builder

???

If it is, I think I will need to download it and install it to see how it works. I think I am thinking outside the box which is why I don't follow.

What does this tool do?

Chris, see the forum topic: MVP Tool - Custom ATI WINPE Builder here in the ATI 2019 forum which has a long description of what this tool does and a link to the latest version of the tool.

This is my own primary rescue media builder tool that I use in preference to using the default builder tool provided within ATI 2019.

To use the tool, download the zip file, extract the inner MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186 folder to the root folder of one of your drives, open the extracted folder and use Run as administrator to launch the main MVP_ATIPEBuilder.exe application - no install is needed as this is a standalone program.

When the tool application panel opens, select from the various menu options being shown, but in particular, take the option to install drivers from your computer so that you include those needed for your NVMe drive.

The tool creates a text log file for each time it is run, the log is kept in the Logs folder as expected.

I download the tool and it was extracted to: c:\MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186_signed

I ran MVP_ATIPEBuilder.exe on my computer

I am not sure what to select.

The problem I am having where the Acronis software does not see the C: drive is my parent's computer.

Would I see something different is I ran the MVP_ATIPEBuilder.exe on my parent's computer?

 

Chris, you would need to create the rescue media on the computer where you are having the problem with seeing the C: NVMe drive, this is so that you can pick up the device drivers needed to allow the drive to be seen.

In terms of what to select the options shown should be fairly obvious but should follow along the following lines:

:: [2.] Build from WinRE (No ADK needed. Less Options.         ::

:: [2.] Build Customized 64-bit Acronis WinPE Rescue Media     ::

:: [2.] No  (for the map network share question)

:: [1.] Yes - Build WinPE using my system language             ::

::=============================================================::
::  Would you like to inject drivers from THIS Windows system  ::
::                  into your Acronis WinPE?                   ::
::                                                             ::
::   You should select "Yes" if you plan to specify a screen   ::
::     resolution later in this script and have a dedicated    ::
::                 NVIDIA or AMD graphics card.                ::
::                                                             ::
::  You should select "Yes" if you were previously presented   ::
:: with the option to include WiFi support and chose to do so. ::
::                                                             ::
:: This process may take some time the first run since it must ::
::   initially scan the system and extract the local drivers.  ::
:: After that, if building custom Acronis WinPE from the same  ::
::     PC, the extracted drivers will already be saved and     ::
::             available for the injection process.            ::
::                                                             ::
::=============================================================::
::                                                             ::
:: [1.] Yes                                                    ::

The above option is the important one for your situation as this is where you want to pull the drivers for the NVMe drive.

::=============================================================::
::           Would you like to inject CUSTOM drivers           ::
::                  into your Acronis WinPE?                   ::
::                                                             ::
::         If "Yes" is selected, IRST for RAID and NVME        ::
::              will also be included automatically.           ::
::=============================================================::
::                                                             ::
:: [1.] Yes                                                    ::
:: [2.] No                                                     ::
::                                                             ::
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I would recommend taking Yes to the above option in case your C: NVMe drive is also using RAID

      *****************************************************
      ** Please ensure that you have added custom 64-bit **
      **    drivers to the "Drivers_Custom\x64" folder   **
      ** in the PEBuilder application before proceeding. **
      **                                                 **
      **        IRST drivers are already available.      **
      **    It is recommended to include other custom    **
      **        RAID controller and/or NIC drivers.      **
      *****************************************************

Press any key to continue...

                --------------------------------
               [Injecting CUSTOM 64-bit drivers.]
                   [Check the log for details.]
                    --------------------------

=================================================================

After the above, you should probably decline the offer of adding MsiScsi and BitLocker support, then decide if you want to keep the prompt on boot for optical media, set the screen resolution before getting to the next important option.

::=============================================================::
::    Would you like to create a bootable USB flash drive?     ::
::=============================================================::
::                                                             ::
:: [1.] Yes                                                    ::
:: [2.] No                                                     ::
::                                                             ::
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
1

                   -------------------------
                  [Creating USB flash drive.]
                   -------------------------

Enter USB flash drive letter with colon (like F:):N:

WARNING, ALL DATA ON DISK DRIVE N: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format [Y,N]?Y
Formatting N:...
Setting the boot code on N:...

Copying files to N:...

Success

You should ensure that you give the correct USB flash drive letter as you do not want to format a different drive in the above step!

Chris, did you select the option to install custom drivers or not? If you did, it should work on either pc now. If not, the is a key step you need to do from either machine.

Otherwise, is your parents computer using an Intel CPU or an AMD CPU? If it's AMD we will need more info on the CPU and the computer make and model would be really helpful too (regardless of the processor type).

I created the USB bootable media and I booted into the Acronis MVP forum. I checked to see what was avaliable, but I did not see anything that I needed to do. I included a screen shot of what I boot into

The computer is a Dell XPS 8920

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Chris - we need your log file, or confirmation that you did or did not select "yes" when given the opportunity to install custom drivers.  

Select yes to add custom drivers is the key and that will work with 99.99% of the intel based systems out there.

If you have a custom RAID controller in the Dell (A PERC controller, rocketraid, or something else), then you would need to manually add those drivers in the custom folder and then build the rescue media.

Chris, the log file is showing that there is NO installation of Acronis True Image home on the machine it was built on.  Did you build it on the system where Acronis 2017 is installed - that is a requirement as it needs the installed license to create and license the recovery media.

With what you currently have, does it at least see your hard drive though? 

If so, then you just need to rebuild the recovery media where Acronis is already installed and licensed (your computer instead of your parents) and be sure to select Yes (again - you did this it looks like) to install the custom drivers when prompted.  

I do see all the drives when I boot to the USB device. I do not follow how I am supposed to access the Acronis backup application from here

Chris, you need to create the USB media on a computer which has Acronis True Image installed, then this will be included on the USB media and can be launched from the same.  As Rob has already mentioned, your log shows that this is not the case for the computer where you created the USB media using the MVP tool.

The image below is how my USB media looks when ATI is installed.

I created the USB tool using the MVP tool on the computer which is having the problem.

I must not have loaded the Acronis utility onto the USB drive. Which option will load this to the USB drive when creating it?

Chris, which version of Acronis is installed on the computer which is having the problem?  The MVP tool will automatically add any supported Acronis programs that it can find without any need for user choice.

My own log for the MVP tool from the last build I did shows:

*************************************************
26-01-2019_12.01.26
 
MVP Tool - Acronis WinPE Rescue Media Builder
v.18.6
 
*************************************************
 
------------------
SYSTEM INFORMATION:
------------------
PC NAME:                 DELLSTUDIO
BIOS UUID:               4C4C4544-....
 
---------------
OS INFORMATION:
---------------
NAME:                    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
VERSION:                 10.0.17763
BUILD:                   17763
ARCH:                    64-bit
DIRECTORY:               C:\WINDOWS
LANGUAGE:                en-GB
OS UUID:                 42d52543-....
 
-------------------
ACRONIS INFORMATION:
-------------------
WINDOWS SNAPMAN VERSION: 4.7.0.2599
 
ATIH VERSION:            2019
ATIH BUILD:              23.4.1.14690
 
SD BUILD:                NotFound
 
UR VERSION:              11.5.0.40067
 
DD VERSION:              12
DD BUILD:                12.0.0.3297
 
Acronis Revive VERSION:  NotFound
Acronis Revive BUILD:    NotFound
 

The key information is the Acronis data shown above with version information that wasn't present in the log you uploaded to this topic.

Chris, is Acronis True Image 2017 installed on the computer where you are using the MVP Tool to create the USB stick media?  That is the key requirement here.  The MVP Tool will work with the final version of ATI 2016 and with 2017, 2018 and 2019 versions.

Chris, you must build rescue media on the PC that Acronis is already installed and licensed on. The log shows this was not done on the right computer. 

Until you do that, we can't help you. But once you do this, you will be fine.

Yes, they have Acronis True Image 2017. They may not have installed this software package on their computer. I will check and do so the next time I am there.

Thanks!

Chris

 

Awesome!  You should be able to run the MVP builder after it's installed (AND licensed) and then it will be included into the rescue media the next time you create it.

I recreated the bootable USB drive after I installed the Acronis software I was able to see all of the hardrives and back them up to the external USB drive. Thank you for your help and Support!!

 

Chris

 

Chris, always good to read of success - thanks for giving the feedback.

Woot! Glad to hear it. 

Excellent news; it took quite a while but it is now solved!

Ian