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Creating Acronis Bootable Rescue Media to 64GB USB drive, how?

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Hi!
I tried to use the Acronics True Image 2016 trial version to create acronis bootable rescue media to a 64GB USB drive. But failed.
Even when I ticked the checkbox Format the selected media & permanently delete all data, click next still generate failure message. Error message is unable to format media. There is a link to click:
Link to KB with error code.
Click on it lead me to an error page:
https://kb.acronis.com/errorcode/bookmark/term-not-found/term-not-found…
There is absolutely NO problem with that 64GB USB drive (by SanDisk). I can format it under Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 machine. Format can be either eFAT or NTFS are both ok. I tried to read/write file(s) to this 64GB USB drive, there is no problem.
A chat with Acronis support team seem to give me an impression Acronics True Image 2016 (or 2015 version) can't support to create a bootable rescue media to a very big USB drive. This seems is the software limitation.
In case I only create backup image to this 64GB usb drive without making it bootable, in the even of my Windows crashed and I can't boot it up. I have to opt booting from USB, will this still work? Or it must have the bootable option first?

thanks,
Boy

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If you have another flash drive other than the brand SanDisk, try using it and see if it works.
SanDisk has special partitions which interfere.

As GroverH has stated Sandisk drives usually have hidden partitions. These drives also often report themselves as fixed disks instead of removable disks, and True Image will not create rescue media directly to fixed disks. Sandisk USB drives are the only drives I have ever had issues creating Acronis rescue media on. Most systems also will not boot from a USB drive unless it is formatted fat32, and Windows will not allow a disk to be formatted fat32 if it is larger than 32GB. The easiest solution would be to use another branded flash drive that is not larger than 32GB.

https://forum.acronis.com/system/files/forum/2015/07/94128/hpusbdisk.zip

You can try using the utility in the link above to format your Sandisk drive to fat32. After that use the rescue media builder to create the ISO file and save it to your desktop. Double clicking this file in Window 8.1 or 10 will mount the ISO and open it in Windows explorer. Copy all of the files to your Sandisk flash drive and attempt to boot your computer with the flash drive. If this doesn't work your just going to have to use another flash drive.

In previous versions of True Image it was almost impossible to convert the rescue media ISO to USB. This is one welcome improvement.

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I just did what you want to do. I have a 64 GB Sandisk USB 2.0 Glide 1.26 drive. This particular drive reports itself as a Removable Disk, so it was a good candidate.

The procedure I used was a simple one. Here's what I did:

1. I used a third party partitioning software called MiniTool Partition Wizard to delete all partitions from the drive.

2. I used MiniTool to create a Primary Fat32 partition just under 32 GB leaving the remaining space as unallocated.

3. True Image would now accept the drive and create bootable media on it. I tested it and it booted and ran True Image.

4. I booted back to Windows and used MiniTool to resize the Fat32 partition to the maximum size using all the space on the drive.

5. The drive remained bootable.

I successfully tested this procedure with both Linux and WinPE bootable media. Keep in mind that any backups you want to place on the drive must be split into 4 GB pieces as this is a limitation of Fat32 partitioning.

Hi!
I don't have another USB flash drive which is 64GB in size.
I do not think the special or hidden partition is interfere it.
I have formatted the Sandisk 64GB flash drive..the special or hidden partition should be gone.
I did try to use a small USB flash drive like 1GB, it works ok as expected.
To me, it is not the size of the flash drive problem. it is more like the limitation in TrueImage where it may
have some limitations to handle big size flash drive like 32GB or more.

Cheers...

Hi!
Thanks a lot for your details explanation and experiment. I will try to give a trial when I have more spare time next week.
What about if your format the 64GB flash drive as eFAT instead of FAT32 only?
FAT32 max size is 32GB. I think eFAT format will support bigger than 32GB??
Does it work?

Cheers..

Hi!
Thanks a lot for your details explanation and experiment. I will try to give a trial when I have more spare time next week.
What about if your format the 64GB flash drive as eFAT instead of FAT32 only?
FAT32 max size is 32GB. I think eFAT format will support bigger than 32GB??
Does it work?

Cheers..

Hi Mustang,
I just did what you recommended and it works for me too. However, my steps are little difference than yours.

In Windows 10, when I format the 64GB SanDisk USB drive, there are only 2 options: NTFS or eFAT. There is no other format options (eg. FAT32) with Windows 10.

If I formatted the 64GB flash drive as NTFS, it can't be detected properly by MiniTool Partition Wizard 9.1 free version. It shows as BAD drive.
But this flashdrive definite not a bad one coz' I can format it under Windows 10 and read/write file(s) to this drive when in NTFS format.

Hence, I formatted it as eFAT first, then go to MiniTool Partition Wizard 9.1 and delete the partition, then recreate it as FAT32 as you suggested.
What surprise me is that I can directly create this partition with 64GB even with FAT32, I do not need to resize this partition like your case from 32 to 64GB (save 1 step :-)). The actual size turn out to be ~59GB only. This is fine for me.

Next, I go to TrueImage 2016 to create it as Acronis Bootable Media and everything is fine. I tried to boot it and it is able to boot from this USB drive.

To my conclusion, if MiniTool can somehow "force" this 64GB flash drive as FAT32, then it sounds to be is TrueImage 2016 limitation that it can't do a
similar job when flashdrive size is too huge?

Furthermore, why can't TrueImage2016 (or 2015 version) support to create the Acronics Bootable Media with eFAT or NTFS format? Again, is this a software limitation? I have no idea.

Anyway, really appreciate your suggestion and now I can backup my C:\drive to this 64GB flash drive and it is also a bootable flash drive.

Thanks a lot!

Cheers.

Good find. I did it again going directly to 59 GB using MiniTool and it worked.