NIC Drivers and Acronis Bootable Media. What is the real answer?
I can download the Acronis Bootable Media from my account. The ONLY time I have ever seen the date (or build) change on that bootable media is when a new build comes out. Today I broke in to chat with Acronis Support and he confirmed that. That the only time any changes are done to the bootable media that I can download from my account is when Acronis comes out with a new build. Now the "eye opener"...
I went a step further with chat. I told the technician I was trying to find bootable media that had updated NIC dricers for the Dell Vostro 260 and Dell Optiplex 390 (Realtek PCIe). I told him that I have always been under the impression that Acronis does intrim updates to NIC drivers between builds and that all I had to do was request that he send me a link to download that intrim build with updated NIC drivers.
His response shocked me. He said the bootable media download in my account would be no different then the link he could send me. That Acronis does not do intrim builds with updates NIC drivers. That the only time Acronis updates bootable media is when a new build comes out.
So the questions....
1) How often does the bootable media in my account get updated? Is it true that it only gets updated when there is a completely new build?
2) Is it true that Acronis does not have "intrim" builds of bootable media (which is nothing more than the current build with updated NIC drivers) that I can request a link to download?
Hi Jim and Terenna
It might be best seeking your answers directly from Acroins as this is a community forum and although Acronis support does monitor posts from time to time it’s not an official support channel.
Using the Online chat, Phone or even E-Mail to contact support would be the best method. From what I know I believe part of what first level support has told you is correct in that the boot CD’s are generally not updated until a new build (if a major bug/issue/lack for major equipment if found Acronis might publish an updated build though)
Having said all that I have seen customers get links to updated boot CD’s that have not been published, you might need to get upto level 2 support for this perhaps? (I’m not 100% sure but contacting support again about this will be your best option).
What I would recommend is to use the Windows PE based boot CD, this was you can include any drivers you like and also updated them to the latest builds form the suppliers as you like. This way you can continue to use Acronis to perform backups/restores with the boot CD and not have to wait for support to build you up special boot CD’s or updates to the latest builds.
You can also find more details on how to create PE-based media in the following section of the product manual, I would also suggest using the PE 3.x environment files as this is based on Microsofts latest kernel and should be allot easier to get drivers for these OS for newer hardware: http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#714.html
Hope you find that useful and that it gets you up and running.
Hello all,
Thank you very much for your comments and thank you very much for your help Datastor Australia.
Jim, I will definitely help you with your question. To answer your questions, we stopped releasing "interim" updates of the bootable media and we update them together when we release regular product updates.
If you have any issues with the media you can contact our Support team with this report or use WinPe bootable media just like Datastor suggested.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Thank you.
Well... I guess that is an answer. So let's pick on BR10. In its two years of existance we are up to U5. That averages out to about one update every five months. So by doing away with interim updates at best the nic drivers only get updated once every 5 months?
Then the real problem.... you discontinued the Echo Series when BR10 came out. It looks like you are probably very close to discontinuing BR10 (or at the very least not focusing on it) not that BR11 is out. SO the best case nic drivers are updated once every five months. Worst cast (like Echo and BR10) you discontinue develompment and there are never updated nic drivers?
WinPE is not a good option. For the price everyone pays for Acronis products no one should have to mess with WinPE to make Acronis products useable. Doesn't sound like a real good business plan...
Has Acronis every though of either adding a F6 install of NIC drivers when the media boots and/or the capability of adding NIC drivers to the Acronis Bootable Media builder?
I agree. We have spent a fortune on Acronis products and these NIC updates (or I should say lack there of) pretty much render the products useless.
Hi Jim and Terenna
I understand your frustrations when a NIC or HDD is not detected... What we always suggest to our customers is when rolling out your disaster recovery plan always ensure your NIC’s and RAID controllers are detected and if not create a WinPE boot CD... I’m not too sure if you have created a WinPE CD recently but it’s a VERY easy process and Acronis has created a wizard to basically do all the work for you... You no longer need to script or run commands manually and definitely worth looking into.
The Acronis boot CD is a Linux based boot CD so you will not be able to add or use the F6 option to add drivers else I’m sure Acronis would have implemented this support already.
Another thing some of our customers do is maintain a driver folder in house of all their customers RAID/NIC drivers and they can create a WinPE boot CD very quickly for any of their customers as needed.
Another upside of Acronis is for instance a server dies and a customer purchases a brand new server (just released onto the market), what you can find is if a new hardware design/chipset is being used it’s very possible no Boot CD (of any product on the market) will detect some of the hardware. This is when the WinPE option becomes so powerful and will allow you to get out of these sticky situations.
In summary, I would highly suggest having a look into the WinPE boot CD process, I have a feeling if you’ve tried it before it might have been some time ago when it was allot harder and more complex by the sounds of things? Give it another try I think you will be pleasantly surprised!
Tip: If your customer’s are running ABR10 and you find the NIC driver is not being detected with the latest ABR10 boot CD and you can also try to download the latest ABR11 boot CD and recovery the ABR10 backup using the latest boot CD as it’s possible to read previous generation image files.
All the best with it and hope all works out well for you both!
P.S. However as Anton as mentioned above the best way would be to collect the hardware information then contact support with the details so they can start working on and testing drivers for the next update release.
Thanks for the input Datastor. I have done both UBCD4WIN and BartPE many times. In looking around the forum there does not appear to be a clear cut, simple method of creating a WinPE boot disk and adding drivers to it. If you can point me in the right direction I might give it a try but....
I think stopping the intrim updates on the boot cd with new nic drivers is yet another miss-step in the long line of Acronis miss-steps. Every release and every thing they do and have done in the last couple of years has made their product less and less useable. It has gotten to the point where finding "work-arounds" is by far the norm and should not be. This nic issue is simply another "work-around". It doesn't say much for the quality of their software.
Terenna you might be interested in my "work around". I went down to Office Deport and picked up a Intel Pro 1000 CT network adapter. BR10 recognizes it. It is a pain having to take the case apart and installing/un-installing this card just to get the boot media to work but it looks like it might be the lesser of all evils.
Morning Jim
No problems, In regards to the method to create the WinPE boot CD it’s very easy now (which is great!) Basically what you need to do is start the Boot CD creation wizard (same as you would when creating the Linux based boot CD) but instead change the drop down to “Windows PE” based media this will change the wizard to build up a WinPE boot CD for you ... It will also allow you to load an entire folder/subfolders of device drivers that it will automatically run scripts to have these drivers included in the boot CD!
Here is a link to some more step by step instructions if required:
http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#2869.html
Hope that helps out and gets you up and running :-)
Case in point. Acronis just release BR11 build 17311 yesterday. Still no NIC drivers for the Dell Vostro 260 or Optiplex 390 series. Those computers came out a couple of months ago. So .... now I have to sit here and wait another six months for the next build?
I also got a call from Acronis sales yesterday. They told me one of my maintenance conrtacts on one of my Server licenses had expired and tried to push me in to renewing. I told her no thanks. I have been paying maintenance all these years and for what? Bug filled release and boot media that if you are lucky gets updated once ever six months at best? I passed for obvious reasons.....