Using Rescue Media backup
After changing to Acronis 2021 I wanted to test my Rescue Media backup works OK. The ISO file has been burned to DVD and I have seen that my DVD drive is the first drive listed in the Boot Men. However during the boot process it still looks like my PC goes straight into Windows 10 i.e. not using the rescue media. With previous recoveries e.g. Acronis True Image 2018, I seem to recal it presented 'Acronis loading' and then a totally differant screen which enabled me to recover my system from my second internal drive which I use solely for backup.
Am I right in assuming the recovery media on DVD disk is therefore being ignored or does Acronis 2021 load up looking like the normal Windows 10 screen (e.g. when my W10 system is fully operational)?
Christopher, the ISO version of the rescue media uses a Linux kernel OS and would not look anything like the normal Windows 10 loading screens.
KB 65508: Acronis True Image 2021: how to create bootable media
Hi Steve,
I have 2 questions:
- Is there a way to run the Rescue Media or AUR program in "test" mode, that is, without actually writing to my drive? I'm a bit paranoid (after seeing someone's system that got hit with ransomware).
- Also, I am going to have ATI add the bootable code for either AUR or Media Builder to my current backup devices (I have 3 for staged backups). When I run a restore, will it ask me which folder(s) on that drive to restore from?
DocDJ, for Q 1. it depends on what you mean by 'test mode'?
I use the VMware Workstation 15 Player free application to do some testing of rescue media as I can configure a VM to boot from an .ISO image created by the rescue media builder or by the MVP Custom PE builder script.
I also have several Windows 10 and 7 virtual machines where I can test backup & recovery by having configured a second virtual disk in addition to the main OS virtual disk.
AUR is only needed in scenarios where you are migrating your current Windows OS backup to a different computer which then has different hardware components. Even this is not always needed if migrating Windows 10 to a different machine.
I would recommend looking at the MVP Custom PE builder script for creating an enhanced version of the rescue media. This tool will include all installed Acronis products in the rescue media, i.e. ATI, AUR, Disk Director, Revive (and Snap Deploy). It brings up a Windows PE desktop environment with a task bar buttons and menus to allow chosing between the various applications, plus you can add other extras when needed. It has a file manager, web browser, PDF reader, screen capture included.
The image below was taken a while back as it shows ATI 2018 but the overall look remains the same
Hi Steve,
I also have a question:
Do you know any solution for the problem, that ATI 2021 (Linux based Rescue Media) does not perform validation, although backup validation was enabled in the options before? You can only start the validation manually once the backup is complete. This takes a lot of time to wait until the backup is ready and then start the validation separately. The problem also occurs with the new Build number 32010 and it does not matter, if you boot from DVD boot media or USB stick.
Thanks in advance
Thomy, I have to confess that I never do any automatic validations and never have done so!
Personally, when using rescue media to create backup images, if I were to want to validate the image, then I would do so when back booted into Windows and do it when it doesn't interrupt any other activities I want to do, instead of it needing a dedicated PC via the rescue media.
Validation can only confirm that the data written to the image file remains the same in terms of what was written, which it does by calculating checksums for each block of data within the image file and comparing those checksums with the values stored within the image file. This does not guarantee that the backup image is actually usable to create a bootable drive when recovered!
An old computer term is: 'Garbage in = Garbage out' - if the data written to the backup image is corrupt in any way, that is what is written to the image file and would be validated successfully!
The only true way to prove a backup image will produce a successful bootable drive is to actually restore it to another drive then install that drive to test it. The next option is to attempt to mount the backup image (if contains disk partitions) and explore it to ensure the contents can be navigated and random files could be copied to another location.
Steve, thank you very much for your quick and detailed answer. I use the boot media on older laptops and desktops where I don't want to install ATI because they get too slow otherwise.
But I don’t understand how to validate when back booted into Windows. I try this a few month ago, but each Validation of an image file, I created with the Rescue Media, failed and a colleague at work said, that windows change some files after each reboot, why this would not work.
Thomy, assuming that you have the backup image files stored on a removable external drive, then take these to a PC where you do have ATI installed, then open Explorer to the external drive location with the .tib (or .tibx) files, then right-click on a file and then click on Acronis True Image, then on the Validate option.
There should be no issue with validating in this way providing all the associated backup files are present if you are validating an incremental or differential backup chain. Windows should never make any changes to any Acronis backup files
Steve, thanks again for this information. My mistake was, that I always thought, the validation would compare the backed up data with the backup image. Therefore I always did this on the same machine, where I did the backup.
Nevertheless it is a pity, that Acronis has not been able to fix this error (validation with no function although enabled) in the Rescue Media for 2 years. Until ATI 2019 the problem with the validation was not present.
Thomy, validation can be done on a PC with no hard drive when booted from rescue media and is offered as a choice when chosing a backup image in the Recovery option, so has no relationship to the original source data used for the backup.
I haven't tested whether the ATI 2021 rescue media can do a backup and validation in the same operation. Something to add to my 'to-do' list perhaps!