Cannot use external HD to deploy an image with SD5 stand alone utility

In case anyone else is having this problem, this is a known bug with using external USB hard drives as the source drive for your master image. I just had an online chat, which was totally useless. Can't even speak with anyone. This is such a basic issue that should have been tested before version 5 was released. How the heck did this get past QA?

I also need this fixed. I am prepared to purchase over 100 licenses for the company I work for. Snap deploy 4 does not have this issue therefore it should be an easy fix.

Please address this issue soon Acronis or I will have to move on to another product.

Having the same issue. I was trialing this for deployment of 60 laptops but the support sucks so bad, I'd never consider Acronis. This standalone utility is supposed to be designed for off network imaging and yet you can't even restore an image off of a USB drive. Really? Where the heck are you supposed to save the image to ?????

I tried several times with support on CHAT and they have no clue. How about making version 4 available while you guys fix this train wreck.

Stan,

I feel your pain. I used to love Acronis' products, but when the tech support sucks this bad, it may be time to look elsewhere. This is the major problem with off-shoring support. It may be cheaper for companies to do this, but in the end, it costs them in lost future sales, and the loss of a loyal customer base.

There should have been a patch made available shortly after this issue was reported and confirmed. There is absolutely no excuse for the lack of response from Acronis on this matter.

Yeah, their support sucks alright as is most that is sent abroad. I actually had one guy hang up on me because I started to question his ability to resolve the issue. He started walking me thru such basic things that I just lost all confidence that they can resolve the problem. I really can't believe that they just haven't come right out and reported this as a known issue that they are working on.

Was using Symantec which in it's day, worked great. They've been on the same build now for 3 years and it looks like they have no intention on bringing it up to date. Really tough to get buy without imaging capabilities. I can't fine a single product yet that hasn't been a nightmare to get running. I actually went out and bought a disk duplicator to hold me over. Not ideal but beats building em from scratch.

Looks like I resolved the issue, at least in my case. When you get to the screen about asking which drive to restore it to, instead of leaving it at default, delect drive 2. Finally able to restore the image from USB and the machine boots.

Stan,

Glad you got it to work. It shouldn't be a mystery as to how to use the program. I've been in IT for over 30 years, and I'm extremely surprised over this situation.

I can't see how the software defaults to restoring the image to the usb drive ? That's what puzzles me. If I'm not mistaken, it suggests going with default unless you've changed bios settings for the onboard disk. At any rate - it seems to be working. I'm surprised support didn't recognize the problem immediately.

Hello guys,

I had some luck with Tech support. I sent them a screen shot of the external drive being recognized as a logical.

They admitted it was a mistake in the build. They sent me a link to an older Snap 5 iso and it works fine, as the Snap 4 does.

They assured me that the next build would have this issue fixed. I told them if it isn't they are losing out on approx. 100 licenses.

We shall see what happens.

Hello Everyone,

I was informed that we have a build that should include the fix for the issue.

Please send me a private message so that I could provide you with a respective link.

Thank you.

Hi,

Thanks for your message. Can you please provide the link to the new build? PM sent.

Thanks,
Dean

Pm sent as well

Thanks

Hi Anna,

Link?

Dean, have you received a link or any information at all? I have received nothing.

The company I work is waiting on my referral for an updated back up plan and time is running out. I was prepared to purchase several hundred licenses.

I am now testing alternate back up plans such as Norton Ghost.

Snap Deploy 4 boot disc works perfectly in all areas. It is a shame to see a company try to improve a product and break it.

Thanks for getting back to me Anna,

I downloaded and installed the latest version from the FTP link you sent me. I have tested it on several different machines and conferred with my colleagues.

Our findings show that this version of the boot disc is completely unusable. Once you select stand alone install or anything on the main screen an error is produced: "Unable to load initial ramdisk. Press enter to proceed..."
Unable to laod Linux kernel. Press enter to reboot...
then it reboots and the loop continues.
Doesn't anyone test before releasing your products anymore?
I have been an avid fan and promoter of Acronis products for many years now, but I am losing confidence.
The Snap Deploy 4 boot disc is perfect in every aspect.
Snap 5 unfortunately is broken.
Thanks for trying, but almost a year has passed without a fix. Unacceptable.
The programmers for this version dropped the ball!

I also downloaded the supposed patched version, and the issues have not been fixed!

I've been more than patient, but the support team just isn't getting the job done. It's time to contact the executive team at Acronis and inform them of what is going on. I am also going to request a full refund from our account rep and look for another product. Maybe if more customers do the same, Acronis will wake up and get this product fixed!

Hello Dean,
After much frustration I was able to elevate this issue via email and worked directly with an engineer from the Expert Division. This forum was no help.
The gentleman who assisted me name is Kumud. He built a custom disc and it worked on the very first attempt. I was then sent the full install, which I used to burn a bootable disc with success. This version has not been released to the public yet. (version _1610_)
The interface is more user friendly and works great both creating and dropping images.
PM me and I will share the download link with you. Hopefully it will still be active when you are reading this.

Fyi all - wrt the external USB drive issue, version _1610_ does solve the problem. Thanks to RRC650 for sharing the download link.

Fyi 2 - Just to push it further, I engaged Acronis in chat requesting a fix from _them_ and though the chat tech had to kick it up a level to his
supervisor, I was also sent the same build by Acronis within 2 days. Obviously, the true fix is for Acronis to just have the working build in place from the getgo...

Same problem here:
error: "This is a local disk of the current machine. If the master image resides on the local disk, deployment to this machine will be unavailable. Please save the image on a network share, detachable or removable media and try again"
If this a solution available ?
Thank you,

This has been an ongoing problem with SD5 as you can see here in this forum. I received a link to a new build from forum poster 'RRC 650' (see the post just before mine) as well as a link to the identical build via this ftp link:

lxsvzv1ys4rmp4mnrzwm9yx6thfheocckajahhqgapsym6agbf1grceoj7nucyls. This link was sent to me after I spent time in Acronis 'chat'. The tech on the other end forwarded me the link.
Both are for version 1610.

I recommend contacting Acronis support at http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/contact-us.html. The more of us that keep hounding them for the solution to this problem, the better. Apparently, this problem of not seeing the external drive didn't exist until SD5. Acronis should update this version
with the working build. I'm surprised it has not already happened.

Here is the fix:

I am posting this for use as long as the link works. I honestly don't know why Acronis hasn't made the build public yet. You still need a legit license key to make this work, so I don't feel this is inappropriate.

Please download the installer of the newer version, and upgrade your installation:

After that, feel free to create a new bootable media.

If this helps, feel free to post and maybe Acronis will make it public.

FWIW: Though imaging and deploying systems is a smaller part of my job, the following info might be useful to SD newbies using the standalone feature for SD5. Through trial and error I've learned to make sure of the following conditions, some of which you may be already aware:

*the SD5 build currently on the Acronis site is buggy and in many cases it fails to see an external USB drive. Either download the newer (v.1610) build from the link provided by another post in this forum or ask Acronis for a replacement build after logging on to your account at acronis.com and sending mail to tech support describing your problem.

*make sure that your SATA settings in Setup/Config for the system you used to create a master image and your clones are identical or the imaging will fail.

*if you receive weird messages when trying to save your master image to an external drive, quit out and remove any unnecessary images from your external drive before trying again. Ex., when saving one of my master images I kept getting a message saying that I needed 'elevated permissions' to save at that location and to choose another location. Mind that the external drive was only 25% full so it was not a space issue. Deleting images from the external USB drive that I no longer needed solved the problem however.

*if you seem to have succeeded in cloning the image but the system reboot yields a 'BOOTMGR is missing' error, that is likely because you didn't also include the 'System Reserved' partition in addition to the C: partition when creating your master image bootable media. If true, you'll need to create new master image bootable media. Checking the 'System Reserved' box when deploying the image is required as well.

Note that I've actually had productive troubleshooting exchanges via email with the Acronis tech staff.

This link now requires a password. I've tried all the passwords given to me from Acronis, so most likely this link is no longer available to the public.

I have been able to get around this by using an external drive that is USB 2.0 and NOT USB 3.0 when the destination system has USB 3.0 ports. I have also been able to get around this by plugging in the drive after the Acronis system boots up and let it find the drive.

Having the same issue here, and even better, the installer deletes the partition information on the external drive. Tried using the contact form for support, but none of the error codes shown on my screen are accepted by the form.

Hi Felix,

error message fields is optional in our contact for and you don't have to fill it in.

As far as I see you successfully created a support ticket and you'll be contacted soon. If you need urgent assistance, please don't hesitate to contact our support chat.

Thank you,

To any moderators or Acronis staff.

Why is  (version _1610_) not available to download as latest build?  This is the fixed version.

??????????????????????????????????

Hi RRC650,

We're preparing for an official release of Acronis Snap Deploy update (Update 2) which is pending to be released in the end of this year. The official new build will be available then.

Thank you,

For those of us having this issue that need to depoy things ASAP, what is the fix or workaround?

Hi Everyone,

a couple of days ago we released an update, which contains the fix for this problem.

Please update to the latest version (build 1656): Checking for software updates

Thank you,

Hello everyone,

For anyone coming to this post late as I have this issue still appears to be present in the latest (but unreleased) v. 1666. I have this build due to another issue for deployment of SP4's. When I went to use a USB to deploy my images via the Standalone Utility I ran across a couple of issues. First, was when using FAT32 for my bootable media I am unable to have my image on the same USB due to the limitations. This is fine as I have another USB that I can use to deploy the image from. However upon inserting both USB's and loading to the Standalone Utility I came across this same issue, it said my USB with the image was a local disk of the current machine. What worked for me was to go back to the first screen before I choose the image and unplug both USB's and re-insert them. After this I found that the message went away and I was able to select the image that was on my second USB and continue on successfully. I hope with workaround will work for other people experiencing this issue. One thing to note is that I did switch to using USB 2.0 ports instead of USB 3.0 ports. Oddly enough the next machine I tried did not have this issue and I used the USB 3.0 ports this time. Just my 2¢.

Regards,

Paul Masselli

Still an issue in Version 6. USB 3 drive on a system with UEFI detects the USB attached storage as a local drive, assigns it to drive C and can not restore from USB as a result.

I doubt this is strictly a Acronis issues, however a work around would be useful.

Hello BHITS RPPEO,

thank you for your posting! I haven't found any open tickets in our internal systems for the issue you're describing. If you have some time for the investigation, I'd recommend raising a support ticket, so that our engineers can look into the situation.