Skip to main content

How to restore to new PC when the Acronis drive has failed?

Thread solved

My PC suddenly wont boot, and it looks like the SSD drive has died. I have a weekly backup of my entire PC on an external USB drive, so I thought I would be easily able to restore everything as it was onto a second PC. It seems like this is exactly the kind of situation that you would use Acronis for, yet every support article I've looked at trying to find help on restoring from a backup starts by saying "Start Acronis True Image"! How can I run Acronis if it is on the hard drive that died??!! In other words, how do I access my backups if the PC with Acronis is not working?

0 Users found this helpful

Walter, welcome to these public User Forums.

Any recovery of the type you are looking at here requires that you boot the PC using Acronis rescue media not attempt to run the Windows version of the Acronis application.

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

KB 69472: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: how to create bootable media

KB 69427: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

If you don't have / haven't created any rescue media, then you can try downloading an ISO image (CD image) from your registered Acronis Account in the downloads section for the version you are using.  The ISO image will need to be burnt to an optical disc to be used.

Note: the ISO image uses a small Linux based distribution that allows Acronis to share this media but may not be compatible with some modern systems or devices.  The KB document above shows the recommended method for creating Windows PE rescue media which has to be done on a Windows PC with Acronis installed which gives the best compatibility.