Why doesn't TIH2011 support external RAID?

IS it the bootCD that has the problem or while you are booted up in windows?

If you are using the boot CD, I can understand that the Linux on the Rescue CD doesn't have the RocketRaid driver and therefore can't see the disk. The only way I know around this at the moment is to do what I did when the Rescue CD didn't work.... Build a WinPE 3.0 based boot disk with the necessary hardware drivers and then use the Plus Pack to create a burnable ISO with the ATIH 2011 Plug in. This guarantees compatibility with your hardware and uses an all-Windows environment for standalone backup and recovery.

It's the boot CD that is the problem (Which I also had downloaded the most recent Bootable Media for.)
Doesn't Acronis add drivers when they get complaints?
And that was 9 or 10 months ago, too!

Is there a written procedure somewhere for how to create a WinPE 3.0 based boot disk with the necessary drivers?
And with ATIH on it?

I already bought the Plus Pack with the upgrade deal since I know someday I will have to restore to different hardware and that feature of Plus Pack may work by then.
But I haven't had any time to research the Plus Pack yet; I've been spending all of my time just trying to get a reliable set of full backups first.

At this point, I also hope the instructions for WinPE were written by someone who actually followed them, unlike some software providers we know.

I think they do add drivers, but remember the Rescue CD is a Linux implementation and its always possible that good tested kernel drivers may not be available, or Acronis doesn't have the hardware to verify they work before including them in the ISO.

There are a number of writeups on this forum for building a WinPE bootable CD/DVD... some a little old. Here's one: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/16710 But here's how I did it at a high level.

First downloaded and installed the Microsoft AIK for WinPE 3.0 (Google for Links).

I generated a vanilla bootable WinPE iso file (following the AIK readme's and help and not including any Acronis code) that I then burned to a CD to see what devices were missing. I booted it to see if I could access all my hard disks, USB disks, and lastly the network. Since I could not access the network from the booted WinPE, I assumed I was missing a device driver for my NIC.

There are some writeups I found (googling of course) on how to dynamically load device drivers using command line in the booted WinPE. So I downloaded NIC drivers from the device mfr's website and put them on a disk that was visible to the booted WinPE. Loaded them manually from within the running WinPE to make sure they were the right ones and I could then see the device. Success... I could access the network.

With the correct set of device drivers, I then went back to the AIK utilities to insert the device drivers into the WinPE configuration, following the AIK readme's and a couple of links I found on the internet for adding device drivers into the baseline WinPE files.

Finally I copied the WinPE build files to a directory on my Win7 system where I could get to it running the Acronis WinPE builder.... which inserts the ATIH plug-in into the WinPE environment and then builds the final rescue disk ISO file.

Lastly, I burned the ISO to a DVD, booted it and tested it with ATIH to make sure I could back up, restore, and verify.

Sounds complicated, but actually it wasn't too bad.... I had never touched the Windows AIK before and I think it took me a total of a few hours to learn the process, install the tools, and get the DVD built. My base WinPE was only missing one device driver I needed - the Gigabit Network interface I use.

I think from now on, I will always build my own WinPE Rescue Disk. I have suggested that the WinPE builder be made part of the base Acronis backup product since so many people are having problems with the Linux based rescue iso's they provide. The ability to create a working rescue disk shoud be a part of the base product, and obviously the one they have built into ATIH doesn't cover enough hardware to be "good enough".

IF you contact Tech and send them info on your system that they will ask for, they can probably send you an iso to make a bootCD that will work for you. It might take more than one attempt/iso.

Scott Hieber wrote:

IF you contact Tech and send them info on your system that they will ask for, they can probably send you an iso to make a bootCD that will work for you. It might take more than one attempt/iso.

Yeah.. I thought about this, but figured it would take too long. Now that I know how to create a WinPE disk I'm more self sufficient. Besides it was kinda fun to learn all about the WinPE environment... Something I didn't really know about at all beforehand. And since it's free.... why not. :-)

Hello all,

Thank you very much for posting and your generous assistance.

Ken, I will do my best to assist you with this issue.

In addition to James' valuable suggestion, I can recommend this KB article with instructions.

I understand your frustration and I am very sorry for the inconvenience, there were some issues with adding RocketRaid drivers to the bootable media but we are slowly getting this issue addressed. I will forward your feedback to our Management team and you can also submit your feedback from this link.

I would also like to send you a custom version of Acronis True Image 2011 Home bootable media that can potentially fix this problem.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Thanks Anton. Those are good links and pretty easy to follow. The trick was in customizing your WinPE with additional device drivers prior to adding the Acronis Plug-in and generating the final ISO. Luckily (and to my amazement) getting my network drivers into the WinPE and working proved to be easy and worked the first try. I hope others are as lucky. :-)

Jim

Anton, As I said. I've been there, done that.

James' solution is much more likely to succeed.

Thanks for the suggestion about scheduling backups.
But I don't see how that is going to help if I have to boot my machine every time with a specially constructed WinPE disk in order to do any backups.

I can't imagine ever using TIH while Windows is running.
I only do full backups and want them to be a true backup without any dynamics of Windows running while the backup is running.

(Added later.....please Nevermind my blathering about scheduling backups.....I swear that Anton's KB link originally took me to an explanation of how to use the Windows Scheduler to schedule backups)

ken handzik wrote:

James' solution is much more likely to succeed.

The thing I like about the WinPE approach is that if you already have solid certified RAID hardware drivers in your system's win-7 environment, the same drivers can be installed into the WinPE boot CD/DVD - so you are pretty certain of a reliable standalone backup/recovery environment from that perspective.

While the Linux-based rescue CD has generally worked fine for me in past TIH versions, you never really know whats in that kernel and how robust it is.  I may be a bit paranoid now ( can't you tell?)

Doing backups from within windows is not a big deal. You're only reading files from the system disk, not writing to them, so Win doesn't get it's tights in a bunch. It will seriously consume resources, though, so even in background, it can slow up other ops. Lots of us have our machines scheduled to do backups in off hours -- we've been using ATI to do this for years without probs.

For restores, especially to system disk, I recommend using the BootCD.

For 5 or 6 years and 4 versions of ATI I have always recommended using the BootCD, too.

That's exactly the point I was starting from when I opened this thread.

Since the BootCD can't see my drives, it doesn't matter whether the backup was made inside or outside Windows.

I have one more question related to the how-to for WinPE.

I am trying to create a WinPE 3.0 boot CD for a Windows 7 machine, so I downloaded the WinPE AIK for Windows 7.

But can I install the AIK on an XP Pro machine to do the assembly/configuration and then insert the Windows 7 drivers into the WinPE setup?
Or must the configuration be done on the Windows 7 machine which has the drivers already in use?
Will the Windows 7 WinPE AIK function correctly under XP Pro?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

As I recall, I downloaded the latest Win AIK iso, burned it to CD, and then installed it on a Windows 2003 server (but XP would have probably been fine too). It builds a vanilla Windows (7) WinPE boot CD iso with a whole host of drivers... but maybe not everything you need for your target machine. You can boot the "vanilla" WinPE CD on your target machine, nose around to see if you have network connectivity and can see all your disks... If not, you can download the missing drivers for Win7 and use the AIK utilities to add those drivers into the vanilla WinPE environment... Then burn another boot CD and see if your previously missing devices are now seen.

There is a way to boot the vanilla WinPE cd thats missing drivers and with a command line command, dynamically load drivers (.inf) from an accessible disk or USB stick to see if the drivers load and work. If they do, then go back and use the utilities to insert the drivers into the WinPE boot environment. Thats what I did and it worked like a champ.

That's what I am hoping to do.

Use my XP Pro laptop as a WinPE configuration station.

But since the machine I am trying to get WinPE to boot on is a Windows 7 machine, I just wanted to know if the Windows 7 version of WinPE AIK should function correctly back on the XP laptop.

XP isn't explicitly listed for the AIK install, but I'll let everyone know if it works ok.

I suspect Microsoft may have started leaving XP off of compatibility lists because they want everyone to 'upgrade'.

I suspect the AIK will run OK on XP. Although I don't profess to be an expert at this, all of the Windows 7 bootable code and hardware drivers Microsoft includes in the WinPE environment are already on the AIK and the utilities you run under the AIK just insert additional needed Windows 7 drivers and create the complete set of WinPE files in a directory structure of your choosing that can be taken over to the Windows 7 system where you just run the Acronis Plus Pack WinPE iso builder. The Acronis utility then reads the directory full of WinPE files created by the AIK, inserts the Acronis Backup/Restore executable, and creates a command file that launces it when the WinPE environment boots. The output of course is a WinPE iso file you can then burn to a CD/DVD to use as your recovery CD.

I didn't have a spare Windows XP environment to try this on, so I just installed the Win AIK on an old Windows 2003 server I seldom use any more.