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Acronis WIN PE cannot see SSD drives

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Both Acronis True Image 2019 and 2020 WIN PE Rescue Media cannot see SSD hard drives. If True Image is directly installed then the PC can be backed up. Western Digital SN730 SSD drives are those trying to be imaged.

 

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Derek, welcome to these public User Forums.

Are your ATI 2019 and 2020 versions both the full paid product versions or were these supplied by an OEM vendor as free software with the purchase of a disk drive?

How was the WinPE rescue media created here?  Did you use the Acronis Rescue Media Builder and if so, which options were used?  Simple or Advanced?

Western Digital SN730 SSD drives show up in Google as being NVMe M.2 drives so when you are booting from the ATI WinPE rescue media, are you choosing to boot using the UEFI boot option (which is required for NVMe drives)?

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

2019 is a paid version, but it was having this issue and I tried the 2020 trial version to confirm that it works before purchasing another version.

Both WinPE were created using the Rescue Media Builder in the 2019 and 2020 versions. Tried both simple and advanced.

Boot is set to UEFI

Derek, are these NVMe SSD's installed within the PC's or in an external adapter?

Have the SSD's been initialised to GPT?

All are internal SSD's that came with the units when ordered.

Disk Management shows Dell used GPT.

01) What WinPE (windows ADK is installed in your control panel programs?) or WinRE (this is the default Windows recovery environment installed along side your OS) is being used to create the rescue media?

The WinPE/WinRE is the backbone of the temporary recovery OS and is based off of the tool provided by Microsoft.  Windows 10 WinPE/winRE has native support for PCIe NVME drives going back to at least Windows 10 1803.

Windows 7 does not support PCIE NVME by default so if using WinRE from a Win7 system, it won't have the correct drivers, or if using an older version of Windows 10, it may not have them by default either.  If you need/want to inject the proper drivers into your rescue media see #2...

 

02) You should  be building rescue media with Windows 10 WinPE (ADK) or Windows 10 WinRE (at least 1803 or newer) for native PCIE NVME support.

Additionally, if still having any issues (which you really shouldn't since it's natively supported in Windows 10 ADK 1803 and newer), then you should download the Intel IRST drivers, extract them and when creating the Acronis True Image rescue media, select the option to include extra drivers and inject them into the build.  This is the direct link to the latest Intel IRST drivers that you can use to inject into 64-bit Windows 10 WinPE or WinRE.  Extract the .zip to a folder and select the main folder in the rescue media builder to inject additional drivers.  

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28992/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-User-Interface-and-Driver?product=55005

f6flpy-x64.zip

Windows 10, 64-bit*
Windows Server 2016*

Language: English

Size: 3.67 MB

MD5: cb07bf2724d050c0f15851fa1efb327d

Download

 

03) What is your OS install type (is it UEFI or Legacy?).  If UEFI, make sure you are booting the rescue media in the same mode too.  On Dells, F12 after a reboot will take you to the onetime boot menu.  Make sure you are picking the UEFI mode of your rescue media (CD/DVD/USB drive) if you have a UEFI installed OS

 

Acronis 2019 is on Windows 10 version 1709

Acronis 2020 is on Windows 10 version 1909

Windows ADK and PE was downloaded on the Acronis 2020 PC yesterday when trial version was installed.

Are you able to capture any screen images of what the WinPE media shows for available drives if you click on the Backup option when booted from it?

Note: the MVP Custom PE Builder tool creates enhanced WinPE media that includes tools such as a file manager and image capture.  (Link in my signature)

Pic 1: Boot settings

Pic 2: Boot from USB and I choose 1. Acronis True Image (64-bit)

Pic 3: Message flash after choosing 1.

Pic 4: Only USB drive is visible.

Added the Intel RST drivers to the Acronis 2020 WinPE, but still only shows the USB drive thumb drive with the ISO. No SSD hard drives are visible.

Thanks Derek, next questions:

Is your NVMe SSD being used as your boot drive or is there another drive doing this?

In the rescue media, Tools option, what does the Add new disk option show for disk drives?
Note: do not use this option to prepare the SSD if it already contains your Windows OS!

The image below comes from my own HP Omen laptop when I upgraded by NVMe SSD to a larger size and the SSD came as uninitialised, so had to be added in GPT format.
Image captured using the MVP Custom PE rescue media and ATI 2020

These units came direct from Dell with only one drive in the PC. Here are the drive in Disk Management:

Derek, sorry but am running out of ideas at present as the drive should be shown by the rescue media.

Please can you try creating rescue media using the MVP Custom PE builder script, select to build using your Windows RE files, and use the options shown in the attached text file to create a new USB rescue media stick.  This will add the Intel RST drivers needed to the media.

Attachment Size
546497-188343.txt 12.9 KB

Thanks Steve and Bobbo.

Steve I will give that a whirl on a different USB stick. Both I used were SanDisk 8GB.

Okay I was able to get an image of the PC with the WinPE. Dell has RAID turned on in the BIOS under System Configuration\SATA Operation. It has disabled\AHCI\RAID On. RAID On was selected. Changed it to AHCI. (Gave a warning that this may make it unbootable and may need to reinstall OS) I then booted off the USB with the WinPE ISO and this time I was able to see the SSD drive and did a backup image. Once completed I attempted a boot with AHCI still enabled, but it could not find a device. I then went back into the BIOS and enabled RAID On. It was then able to boot normally. A somewhat convoluted method and the reinstall warnings do not give you warm fuzzies to continue, but it did work.

I found your tutorial on creating a MVP Tool -Custom ATI WINPE Builder at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScMZ3IxuW9o

and was able to create a bootable USB media that allows it see the drives without changing the System Config in the BIOS. Works on three Dell Optiplex's just fine now. 

Thanks again guys.

Derek, glad the MVP PE media has solved this for you - that is what I have been using for the past several years since it was first introduced.