Trying to backup an NVMe disk
I've been trying to do a complete backup of an Asus ZenBook 14 UX425 (11th Gen Intel) with the following specifications:
- Intel Core i7-1165G7
- Intel SSDPEKNW512G8 (Intel SSD 660p Series)
- Intel RST VMD Controller 9A0B
- SATA mode in BIOS: Intel RST Premium With Intel Optane System Acceleration
- I haven't found a VMD setting in the BIOS but based on the controller driver I guess it's enabled (?)
I've created a bootable PE and RE USB without any extra drivers and, as expected, the disk is not recognized. When including the chipset driver provided by ASUS (VMD_DCH_Intel_Z_V18.4.0.1000_23144) and the client driver from Intel (client-64bit_driver_only_x64), the disk is recognized and its partitions are listed. However, the main C: partition is marked as "FS: none partition 0x7 (NTFS, HPFS)".
Since this is a new laptop, the disk has been barely used, I can log into win10 without any problems, and a chkdsk does not return any errors, I guess I'm picking the wrong drivers or I'm missing a driver that should be included.
Would you be kind enough to just throw me a bone here?
Hi, Steve! Thanks for the welcome and the detailed reply.
Have you installed ATI 2021 in Windows on the new laptop and if so, have you tried making an initial backup from within Windows using the Acronis application - this should work fine!
No, I haven't. I'm sure that this would have solved my problem right away but: a) I thought I should get a backup of the plain system as installed at first boot and b) I can be rather hardheaded when it comes to issues like this. I'm curious as to what the right drivers might be and have been trying a variety of combinations over the past couple of days. Yea... stupid and time-wasting, I know... but it's turned into a personal challenge now. ;-)
Is the C: OS drive partition encrypted using BitLocker? If so, then the rescue media would need to have BitLocker support included plus the drive be unlocked manually when booting from the media.
I haven't activated any encryption but that's a nice tip. Maybe Asus took the liberty of activating it by default. I'll need to check... Ta!
I have a Dell laptop with a ssd and I had to fiddle with Bios to get usb stick to boot up. That did the trick and boots up ok now (2020 version)
Efthimios,
Intel RST Premium storage controllers typically need the following 2 drivers to work correctly:
iastorav.inf
iaStorAVC.sys
Typically the .inf file will expose the disks but lack files in .sys driver file necessary to provide full support.
Thank you, Ken and Enchantech, for your suggestions.
Ken, there's no problem with booting up the recovery media.The USB stick works just fine.
Enchantech, that's interesting. Do you know whether those files are included in other drivers that could be injected or are they part of the OS not included in recovery media?
Steve, your guess sounded pretty good and it's actually to the point. Yes, indeed... Asus activates BitLocker by default. I would never have guessed. So, I suppose there is no way for ATI 2021 to read the files when running from a USB stick or is there? Actually, I now notice that ATI 2021 offers to copy the partition sector by sector but I'd rather have direct access to the files in the backup file.
Efthimios Mavrogeorgiadis wrote:Steve, your guess sounded pretty good and it's actually to the point. Yes, indeed... Asus activates BitLocker by default. I would never have guessed. So, I suppose there is no way for ATI 2021 to read the files when running from a USB stick or is there? Actually, I now notice that ATI 2021 offers to copy the partition sector by sector but I'd rather have direct access to the files in the backup file.
If you create the 'Simple' version of the ATI 2021 rescue media, and do this on Windows 10 Pro which has BitLocker support, then this is included in the rescue media but there are some steps that are needed in order to access a BitLocker encrypted drive in the rescue environment.
When you boot into the rescue environment, you will see a black Command prompt window along with the main ATI 2021 application window. You need to close the ATI 2021 window in order to have access to the command prompt in the black window.
Now, you can use the BitLocker commands to identify and unlock your encrypted drive before relaunching the ATI 2021 application again using "X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
See the following data captured from my own system booted from the ATI 2021 Simple rescue media with an encrypted drive connected.
X:\windows\system32>wpeinit
X:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
Terminate batch job (Y/N)? nX:\windows\system32>manage-bde -status
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.19041
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.Disk volumes that can be protected with
BitLocker Drive Encryption:
Volume C: [Windows]
[Data Volume]Size: 200.83 GB
BitLocker Version: None
Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
Encryption Method: None
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: None
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors: None FoundVolume D: [SSD-Data]
[Data Volume]Size: 263.29 GB
BitLocker Version: None
Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
Encryption Method: None
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: None
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors: None FoundVolume L: [Label Unknown]
[Data Volume]
Size: Unknown GB
BitLocker Version: 2.0
Conversion Status: Unknown
Percentage Encrypted: Unknown%
Encryption Method: AES 128
Protection Status: Unknown
Lock Status: Locked
Identification Field: Unknown
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors:
Password
Numerical PasswordVolume H: [Data]
[Data Volume]Size: 114.10 GB
BitLocker Version: None
Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
Encryption Method: None
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: None
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors: None FoundX:\windows\system32>manage-bde -unlock L: -password
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.19041
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.Enter the password to unlock this volume:
The password successfully unlocked volume L:.X:\windows\system32>dir L:
Volume in drive L is Seagate250gb
Volume Serial Number is 1052-D550Directory of L:\
07/11/2020 00:08 46,379,683,840 MyBackup(1).tibx
05/11/2020 00:51 45,030,981,632 MyBackup.tibx
2 File(s) 91,410,665,472 bytes
0 Dir(s) 158,538,076,160 bytes freeX:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
X:\windows\system32>
Efthimios,
The driver files referenced can be extracted from driver packages commonly downloaded from OEM support sites which are usually packaged as .exe files. Use a utility like 7zip to extract the .exe contents to get at the files you need.
I recommend using our in house MVP ATIPEBuilder tool to create boot media in which you can add these drivers and get some other goodies in the build as well. You can find the builder tool in the Community Tools page link in Steve's signature above. If you need to add other drivers this is possible as well using the tool.
Thanks for the tip about MVP ATIPEBuilder, Enchantech. I'll certainly give it a try. For the time being, I wanted my USB stick environment to be as basic as possible so as to focus on the task at hand.
Steve's instinct, however, pointed me in the right direction and he offered the basic tool I needed to resolve this issue (manage-bde).
To sum up for those with a configuration that is similar to my Asus laptop.
- The drivers mentioned in my original post are the right ones and they offer full access to the disk. Here are the links to the files I used:
- Well, it seems I am not allowed to include links. So, I had to remove them. You can locate them on Asus' and Intel's websites.
- You need to unzip the .exe file found at Asus' site (I used 7-zip) and then unzip \.rsrc\ZIP\103 where you'll find the drivers needed. The other file is easier to handle since it's a plain zip file.
- When building your rescue media, opt for the Windows Recovery Environment as it's the one that includes the tools you'll need to unlock your encrypted disk. I guess Steve's suggestion to use the Simple creation method on Windows 10 Pro would also work but I haven't tested it.
- Once you've booted into the Recovery Environment follow the directions provided by Steve above to unlock your encrypted partition. In my case I had to modify them a bit as the BitLocker protectors did not allow me to use my login password to unlock the drive (or I don't know what the password used by Asus to lock the drive is) and I didn't want to mess with the way my drive was encrypted (total noobie as far as BitLocker is concerned). What I did was the following:
- I signed into my Microsoft account (search for recoverykey) and retrieved my BitLocker recovery key (other methods are described at the following Microsoft page: Finding your BitLocker recovery key in Windows).
- Then, I used the following command in the RE instead of the one provided by Steve:
manage-bde –unlock C: -rp ***BITLOCKER RECOVERY KEY*** - The drive was unlocked and ATI 2021 recognized the partition and was able to fully back up the drive.
- Returning to my desktop computer, I validated the backup and checked that I had access to the filesystem of the C: partition.
Nevertheless, there are still some minor issues that had to be bypassed.
- Even though the touch pad is recognized by the BIOS and works fine when selecting the device to boot from, it fails to respond in RE. I had to use a regular mouse as Asus provides the necessary driver in another .exe file but I couldn't find the files needed there.
- When I tried the linux based rescue media, it listed my NAS in my local network. I wasn't so lucky with the windows-based rescue environment. I had to follow the instructions provided by Acronis (57992: Acronis True Image: NAS Is Not Detected) to resolve the issue (tl;dr... just type in the IP of your NAS in the destination file prompt).
Steve, Enchantech, and Ken, thanks for taking the time to respond to my query, help resolve my issue, and provide all these useful tips.
Glad to read of your success for this project - thanks for sharing your variations on the actions needed!
Hi Steve,
I have pretty much the same system as the OP. However I have no Bitlocker.
I have an older Acronis 2016, and created the bootable media, using the WINPE option.
When prompted to install the needed files for WINPE, it just immedietly downloads adksetup.exe, so I installed it
and then created the bootable usb, the media boots fine but the C: drive does not show up after the it boots because I'm sure I don't have the driver files added.
So this brings me to the question...
I was wondering how to create Rescue builder media, and add the needed drive files...
there is no option to add these files when I select WINPE-BASED MEDIA option..
I went on your link to try and download MVP ATI PE Builder, but it won't give me access... I requested access several times, but no one answers.
just as a side note, I do have Acronis 2020 on another business computer, but haven't tried anything with it.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Frank
Frank, try downloading the older MVP tool from http://www.mechrest.com/plugins/MVP_ATIPEBuilder/Advanced/MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v190.zip - the link is working for me.
Thanks Steve, I was in fact able to download it...
I did some reading on the instructions, and it looks like I have my work cut out for me...
I will only get at this later this evening and will let you know how it goes.
I am guessing once I get the proper drivers in to the "Drivers_Custom\x_86" folder and run MVP_ATIPEBuilder.exe with Administrative privileges, that it just opens like a regular app and you follow instructions?
Or is this a script that runs within a CMD window?
I should ask also, this will build a USB bootable device? not cdrom
Frank, one of the key options for the MVP builder tool is to be able to use the files from the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) which may avoid the need to load individual drivers assuming that your drive doesn't need any special ones such as Intel VMD RST.. The tool runs a script offering multiple choice options in a command prompt type window. It can build various different types of rescue media including both USB and CD/DVD.
ok, I understand... thats great its a GUI,
but in fact this drive does use the Intel VMD RST drivers...
I checked the device manager, and unfortunately I seen the VMD driver installed.
So I will have to locate it, and add it somehow.
thanks again,
Frank
Frank take a read of forum topic here https://forum.acronis.com/comment/601546#comment-601546 for a discussion on that driver.
Frank,
The Intel VMD Storage drivers are a package of drivers installed dependent on what features of the driver package you are using on your system.
The driver that is needed for NVME drive recognition is iastorVD.inf and can be found in path C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\iastorvd.inf_------text string-------.
This path can be used to add this driver to a Recovery Media build using either the MVP Assistant w/ Rescue Media builder feature or the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media Builder found in the Acronis product under the Tools tab.
If you wish to use the WinRE version of the recovery environment for your media selecting the Advanced option will allow you to add the driver when prompted during the media creation process.
Once this driver is added you will have no problem seeing your Intel VMD controller and any drives using that controller driver.
So with all you people's help, I was able to finally create the usb boot loader... it took a few attempts and the funny thing is, I had to uninstall ADK for it to work.
I tried wirth ADK, and the drive would not show... So I uninstalled ADK, rebooted, then
I just created a WinPE using the drivers by following the directions of this link below on how to retrieve them.
www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/power-user-insights-advanced-winpere-d…
This is really strange, but I guess it doesn't need it... there is no AIK installed either... this is a clean install of windows.
In fact, Before I installed Acronis, I just tried to build a boot usb just using the MVP builder tool, that Steve let me know about, and the vmd drivers, to see if this would recognize the drives. And it did.. by the way, nifty little interface, nice Job Steve.
So anyways, that's when I installed acronis and ADK in Windows 10 to create the boot disk, which worked but failed to see the drive. I thought... WEARD!
And then I uninstalled ADK, and created the WinPE instead, and it worked fine.
So thank-you people for all your help !!