NVMe backup/restore

You need to create a WIN-PE based recovery CD. The standard version is Linux based and doesn't support these drives. I have a Z170 motherboard with a Samsund M.2 drive and the WIN-PE recovery CD sees it fine.

I can confirm that the WinPE version does see the Samsung M.2 NGFF NVMe drive in my Asus Z97 board just fine as well.

Ditto for the one on my Gigabyte Z170 ga-z170x-gaming 3 motherboard.  Works fine with the WinPE version of Acronis - the drivers arent' available in the default Linux version yet.  Gaidar, general manager for Acronis, has mentioned in the forums that he expects an update to ATIH 2016 to be released sometime in April.  If/when it is releasesd, I believe we'll see the updated driver support for the NVME PCIE drives with it (but we'll have to wait and see and use WinPE in the meantime).

I hope we can get NVME support into the April release, Bobbo... Stay tuned for the update.

Thanks to all of you for the detailed info in the threads to this topic. Makes me feel good about Acronis now that I know what the problem is. Hope that Acronis will get out a WinPE version shortly.

Note that the downside of using WinPE is the lack of easy networking support, and complete lack of wireless networking support. So, if you have your backups on a network share, move them to a local disk until the native linux recovery version supports NVMe natively.

Friends:  Is there a chance to get a True Image 2016 boot disk iso file with the ability to back up an NVME boot disk? I need to back up a new machine before installing the ATI2016 software because it has not been booted yet and the boot CD made by the .iso file in the present release won't see that NVME boot drive.

Thanks, --George --

In your situation wanting to do what you want will require you to create a WinPE boot disk.

I was hoping that gaidar would have the NVME enhanced release ready to distribute and that it would extend to the ATIH 2016 boot disk .iso file CD image.

-- George --

Unforunately the latest current release of True Image 2016 version 6559 has the ISO embedded into the installed product.  So the only way to get it is to install the product first, then create the ISO using the Media creation tool from within the product.  For users like you this is a problem which probably was not considered when the decision to not distribute a stand alone ISO was made.

Tell you what, you might send a PM to Gaidar and let him know about your situation.  Maybe if you and others were to explain that you desire/need to have a stand alone ISO available it might be reconsidered.

Enchanted, thanks for understanding what I'm trying to achieve. It would be great if I could make a suggestion contribution.  I've been using the Acronis systems since 2012 or earlier and appreciate the team that writes this solid product!!

By posting here I hoped my request would get to Gaidar.  I'm normally a reader and not a poster.  In fact, this is my first post.  How do I reach Gaidar directly?

Thanks, -- George --

There is an ISO file for the Linux version of TI 2016 build 6559. It was released 4/18/2016. I see it under the Bootable Media tab in my Acronis account. It does work with NVMe drives.

Mustang, my experience is that the CD generated by the 6559 build runs flawlessly on a WIN7 machine without UEFI and a standard MBR disk setup. When run on the new WIN10 machine with UEFI and a pair of NVME SSD's in a RAID0 configuration as the boot (0) drive, it just stops after displaying the Acronis logo with "Loading, please wait...". If the failure to load is not due to missing NVME drivers then I'm back to being stumped. Any assistance would be appreciated. 

Thanks, -- George --

I don't have RAID, but am having no issues with default bootable media using build 6559 on a UEFI Win10 x64 install on a 950 pro. Haven't had to restore yet, but it boots and images as expected.

we helped another person with dual 950s (not sure if in RAID) the other day with v6027 WinPE and no issues for them once they got good media to use (verbatim DVDs and flash drive all failed to work). He's sticking with the WinPE though since it took so long to get it working but that was the media itself.

George,

The problem is that the Linux ISO doesn't have drivers support for your hadware. It is not the NVMe driver. It may be the RAID or something else in your hardware that is not supported. WinPE is your best option. It has much better built in driver support. Your other option is to work with Acronis to have them create a custom Linux ISO that will work with your hardware.

My problem is that I don't have access to another WIN10 machine to build the WINPE boot media.

If I use a WIN7 machine to build a WINPE disk will it work on WIN10?  Currently that WIN7 machine runs ATIH2013 so I'll have to uninstall 2013 and install 2016. Right?

Thanks, -- George --

My problem is that I don't have access to another WIN10 machine to build the WINPE boot media.

If I use a WIN7 machine to build a WINPE disk will it work on WIN10?  Currently that WIN7 machine runs ATIH2013 so I'll have to uninstall 2013 and install 2016. Right?

Thanks, -- George --

Yes, you can build WinPE for Windows 10 on a Win 7 machine.  The PE is based on the version of Microsoft ADK you have installed.  Please use the Windows 10 ADK (see my signature and manually download on your system first - then run the Acronis rescue media builder and select WinPE).

I don't think 2013 will be able to recognize the windows 10 ADK, but I'd give it a shot and see how it goes.  If it does recognize the Windows 10ADK you're good to go.  If not, then yes, you'd need the newer version of Acronis to go from there.  

Thanks, Bobbo!  I'll put ATIH 2016 on the WIN7 machine to avoid more dead end delays. Your assistance is appreciated.  

Here's an "aw, fudge!" moment:  The Drive0, boot disk, backup source, physically, is a pair of 512GB m.2 NVME SSD's running in RAID0 for a combined storage of 1TB. My goal is to backup the system from an external ATIH CD before booting it from the hard drive. However, as I'm writing this question it occurs to me that the fact the WIN10 OS is not running may make this project impossible because of the physical setup. Something has to operate the RAID functions and I'll bet the BIOS won't do that at DOS level. Is that right?  I assumed that the system would always present the RAID0 drive as a single data source, but my assumption may have done me in. (I'm embarrassed!)

In an effort to make faster PC's companies are offering machines with this kind of configuration and many others will run into this dilemma, too.

Please consider that logic problem and let me know your thoughts. Then, how do you do a backup and restore if the OS craps out and won't run?  

Thanks, -- George --

Hmmm, software raid in Windows is always a bit more tricky, but Acronis does say it's supported in Win 7 and Win 10.  I personally don't have this setup and have not had to restore in this situation though. I would suspect that you will be good to restore as long as you use the WinPE and add your motherboard RAID contorller drivers to the WinPE so it can utilize it.  Hopefully someone else who has gone through this can chime in though.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/11681

Here is the Acronis True Image RAID support matrix:

These Windows editions can create software Mirrored RAID:

• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate
• Windows 8/8.1 Pro
• Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2016/#21822.html

• Does Acronis True Image support RAID? - Acronis True Image supports hardware RAID arrays of all popular types. Support of software RAID configurations on dynamic disks is also provided. Acronis Bootable Rescue Media supports most of the popular hardware RAID controllers. If the standard Acronis rescue media does not "see" the RAID as a single volume, the media does not have the appropriate drivers. In this case you can try to create WinPE-based rescue media. This media may provide the necessary drivers.

Wow!  Thanks for your prompt and thorough reply with links.  So, I understand that the WINPE boot disk will have enough of WiN10 running to get the RAID configuration to run and thus make the backup possible. 

Again, Thanks! -- George --

George,

First, let me apologize for misleading you about the Linux based media availability, I had not checked my acoount for quite awhile and for some reason when the latset version was released the stand alone media did not show in my account.  Lesson learned, check your account more often!

Curious, what is the brand, model of your PC here?  I believe at this point most of the raid implementations on NVMe drives are software based.  From my experimentation Windows will see such arrangements as single drives so you should be good to go there.  Some benchmarking tools do not see these raid arrays as single disks and I think that is an issue with the tools themselves.

Looking forward to a post back.

Enchantec: The machine is a new gaming notebook bought by my daughter. It's an MSI GT80S Titan (MS-1814). It just bristles with every new technology and she can't wait to start using it. on the other hand we need to be sure it's prepared in the event of catastrophe whether from system failure or malware incursion. 

I'm uninstalling ATIH 2013 on her WIN7 (old) machine and installing ATIH 2016 now to support building WINPE boot disks in hopes of getting a good backup before booting the MSI machine.

Any additional hints to enhance success are appreciated.

Thanks, -- George --

I did some checking and looks like the laptop uses Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers.  I am thinking you will probably end up having to inject the IRST drivers into the WinPE for support of the raid arrangement. 

Paul (Mustang) has written an excellent guide to adding drivers to a WinPE media disk which you will find at the link below:

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/100770

This link may be of some use to you to understand the configuraton of raid array and how it is implemented.  Seems to be a combination of hardware config and software implementation.

https://de.msi.com/pic/faq/10014602@2015-0828-1043-360447@How%20to%20cr…

Friends:  Your help is sincerely appreciated!  Although I've not completed the process yet, I am making progress. The new machine even booted from the generic WINPE CD and I've generated a modified "boot.wim" file with the storage drivers in it. Now I just need to marry those two on a bootable CD or USB stick.

-- George --

George,

I would appreciate if you provide feedback on your experience. I will share it with the development and support teams.

Gaidar

Gaidar:  Following Paul's instructions I generated a WINPE USB boot and injected "iaStorAC.inf" and "iaAHCIC.inf" into the boot.wim file.  It successfully boots the system and shows every disk connected to it except the RAID boot disk. The SSD's that make up the boot disk are m.2 PCIe Samsung 512GB 950 Pro modules. What else do I need to add to the boot.wim file to see that disk?

How can it be this hard???  I've never had this problem with an Acronis product in 10+ years.

I'm so grateful for everyone's help, but something is still missing.  Any suggestions? Please?

-- George --

Gaidar:  Following Paul's instructions I generated a WINPE USB boot and injected "iaStorAC.inf" and "iaAHCIC.inf" into the boot.wim file.  It successfully boots the system and shows every disk connected to it except the RAID boot disk. The SSD's that make up the boot disk are m.2 PCIe Samsung 512GB 950 Pro modules. What else do I need to add to the boot.wim file to see that disk?

How can it be this hard???  I've never had this problem with an Acronis product in 10+ years.

I'm so grateful for everyone's help, but something is still missing.  Any suggestions? Please?

-- George --

George,

Those sound like the correct drivers for the RAID array. You should be using iaStorA.sys and iaStorF.sys along with the inf files you mentioned.

I understand you are building the WinPE on a Windows 7 64 bit computer using the Windows 10 ADK. Correct me if I'm wrong.  Where did you get the inf and sys files you used? Did they come from the Windows 7 system? Maybe there are different versions of those files for Windows 10. Just a guess, but that could be your problem. Can you get the driver files from a Windows 10 64 bit system? Or, could you get the files from a manufacturer's website? I use Asus motherboards and these files are supplied if you drill down in the driver file structure.

The link I provided in post number 25 has the correct drivers link at the bottom of the page.  Make sure you are booting the WinPE in UEFI mode which you should be however you should check that the machine bios is set for booting UEFI only.  Do not have UEFI/Legacy CSM selected as that will mask the array and it will not be viewable.  Generally if the drives appear in the bios the setup is correct.

Mustang:  The .inf files were provided on a CD in the package with this machine. There is no iaStoreF.sys file that I can find. Where on the WINPE media do I put the .sys files?  Yes, I downloaded the WIN10 ADK and installed it on the WIN7 machine  Surprisingly that machine still works!  

Enchantec:  I'll follow your link to those drivers in the AM. Yes, everything in the BIOS is set for UEFI only but I'll double check  The RAID drives are shown in the BIOS boot sequence  

My sincere thanks to both of you for coming to my rescue  We'll see if one more try will "...git 'er done...".

-- George --

Here is a direct link to the driver package.  Download and unzip it for the driver files.

http://download.msi.com/dvr_exe/intel_rst_skl_w10.zip

Enchanted:  Thanks for the link, but I've already installed those into the boot.wim file. While the system boots from the media and the Acronis program works as expected, every attached disk is shown except for the boot drive which is not visible.

It looks like my project to back up the boot drive before booting into Windows is a bust. Hopefully ATIH2016 will work after installing it on the system so I can back it up. Still, if the hard disk dies and restoring it to operation without the assistance of a working Windows 10 system becomes a necessity, it now appears that the Acronis software can not make this happen.  

This can't be a situation of which Acronis is unaware. Is there any projection as to when the True Image program might be enhanced so it will work on these newer PC configurations?

Thanks for your help, but I'm truly disappointed.

-- George --

George,

That is truly disappointing,  unfortunately I am not in a position to troubleshoot the issue with you at this time.  You might send a PM to Paul and see if he can help. I'm thinking there is something not quite right with the driver install that is causing the issue.

George,

I'm not sure you installed the drivers properly. You mentioned not beeing able to see iaStoreF.sys. Enchantech had provided the proper drivers in reply #33 above. IaStoreF.sys is included.  Download and unzip the file. You will find the drivers in the f6flpy-x64 folder. Go through the process of adding those drivers to the wim file. When you do, point it to the f6flpy-x64 folder. I've used those RAID drivers in WinPE before and they worked. I would be shocked if they did not work in your case. If it works in Windows, it should work in WinPE.

Mustang: After re-reading your DCIM tutorial again I'm certain I didn't insert all the pieces into the boot.wim database. Also, I received the updated ATIH, version 6569 and am using that to start over in creating a WINPE USB boot drive. So, one more college try over the weekend and I'll let you know how it turns out. 

Your assistance to me and so many others and prior work to generate all these tutorials and self-help tools is a massive tribute to your dedication to the Acronis product and to helping others. Still, I have to ask: Why does it need to be this hard?  My expectation is to buy a product suited for the project purpose, install it, perform the task and move on.  I've been at this for a week.  Others, even as long as a year ago, have simply bailed and moved on to other products. Other than the fact that I've spent over $100 for an ATIH2016 upgrade now and have various versions running on multiple machines around my house and my daughter's home and have put ATIH on numerous client machines before I retired, I can't believe I'm still fighting this through either. Both the AOMEI product and Macrim-Reflect promise this functionality out-of-the-box.  Does Acronis have plans to do that for ATIH?

Thanks, -- George --

I cannot speak for whether or not the Macrium or AOMEI product can backup and restore these new PCIe based drives.  What I do know is that the manner in which using these devices as boot drives makes it questionable that they can out of the box.  Because on your laptop and to my knowledge all other machines using these devices use the IRST drivers makes it unlikely that any product will work with them natively out of box simply because the IRST drivers are not native drivers but yet are required to access the drives.  These drivers are used in the UEFI configuration to enable them to be used as boot devices so the IRST drivers must be present in any boot medium used for accessing the drives.

I also know that when you are using the bleeding edge of technology at times extra pains are required to achieve a desired result.  I believe this is one of those times.

I am curious if not anxious to see how you come out with this as I am planning on building a similar setup in the near future.  In contemplating that build I was prepared to do exactly what you are doing now so I am truly hoping you have success as that will prove my project will be a success and my plan for implementation of the project is sound.  I am confident that with the drivers added correctly to the WinPE boot.wim you will have that success.

There is no question there is much room for improvment with Acronis' handling of WinPE. In TI vresions prior to 2015, the user had the option to add drivers as the disk was being created. This option was removed starting with TI 2015. The user should also have the option to create a 32 or 64 bit version of WinPE. Disk Director 12 has this ability.

Other companies have done a much better job of handling the WinPE build. AOMEI provides a custom wim that has many additional drivers installed. Macrium scans the system used to build the WinPE and automatically adds the needed drivers.

Now that Acronis has provided both 32 and 64 bit WinPE versions, I have released a MustangPE plugin for TI 2016. I developed MustangPE to make it much easier to use. It has a built-in feature to add drivers. I recommend you follow the link in my signature and give MustangPE a try.

Mustang: Saying Thank You isn't nearly enough.  Just the fact that you would take the time and expend the effort to generate a procedure to assist me and other ATIH users proves you're a true gentleman. I'll follow your instructions and report the outcome.  

Sincerely, -- George --

Mustang:  Reference your MustangPE2 builder programs:  Could you tell me what 's the editing format for adding to the "add drivers.ini", "plugins.ini", "addpackages.ini"?  I'm at a loss for what to add and how to add them.

Thanks, -- George --

AddDrivers.ini:

[Driver Paths]
driver1=    (Add full path to drivers inf file. Example ---- C:\Drivers\Driver.inf)

[Driver Folders]
folder1=   (Add full path to a folder containing one or more driver folders Example ---- C:\Drivers. All subfolders will be scanned. All drivers in each subfolder will be added.)

Add more than one driver or driver folder by adding lines to the inf:

[Driver Paths]
driver1=

driver2=

[Driver Folders]
folder1=

folder2=

No blank line between driver or folder names.

Mustang:  

Following your instructions for both the direct "dism" modification of the "boot.wim" file and your MustangPE programs there has been only one improvement:  I've been able to see and access the disk on the new machine.  Once I realized that I was able to pull the specific storage related driver files (.inf and .sys) and use those to infuse into the "boot.wim" file and to list in the script in your MustangPE program.

The boot disk generated by ATIH2016 does boot and shows the expected UI.  Although the DOS Window gives access to the drive I want to back up, the Acronis software doesn't show it.  So, there is no way that I can see to back up the disk on the new machine.

Booting from the disk generated by your MustangPE program I believe the disk on the machine was visible from your file manager but there was neither any ATIH UI nor any backup software available so that offered no assistance either.

Today is the last day to try this approach to back up the new machine's disk.  Do you see anything that I've done incorrectly?  If not, I'll have to boot the system and install a backup program on it directly without an image of the disk in its current "virgin" as-delivered state.

Thanks, -- George --

George,

You need to download the True Image 2016 MustangPE plugin from my website at the available plugins page. Then you must follow the instructions in the ReadMe.txt file to add True Image 2016 to MustangPE.

I've got an interesting issue with my ASRock Z170 board with an NVMe RAID 0 set. I'm trying to restore a WIN 10 disk backup I made of my non-UEFI AMD64 based system. Backup was made with ATI 2016. I created a MustangPE disk with MS 10.1 ADK + ATI 2016 + IntelRST driver. When I boot up and try using ATI 2016 to do a restore to the RAID 0 set I have the following problem:

If I select the entire drive as the source I can then see the RAID 0 drive set as a choice on the destinations. Only thing is I don't want to rewrite the MBR and Track 0. That hoses the UEFI boot, right? If I uncheck the MBR - TRACK 0 selection in the source I do not see the RAID 0 drive set in the destination list. What am I missing here?

I believe what you are seeing here is that your backup image being that of a non UEFI installation must carry along with it the MBR and Track 0 because the RAID set that you have configured on the Z170 board is created using a RAID driver (probably Intel RST) that is registered in the UEFI bios and the application needs the information contained in the MBR and Track 0 to register the boot record in the UEFI.

The documentation indicates that to restore to a new disk you should leave the MBR and Track 0 out of the restore.  Since doing that removes your ability to see the RAID set you do have a problem it seems.

I am unsure here if including the MBR and Track 0 will in fact hose the UEFI.  It might be that the application needs that information in order to convert the non-UEFI image to that of UEFI-GPT image and register the boot record in the UEFI.

I would recommend that you contact Acronis support on this issue.  I think as well that you will need to get the problem before a Senior Support Engineer to answer the question.  Keep in mind that restore operations are not subject to the 30 day support limitation imposed on the product as a whole.

I am just about ready to do almost the same thing you are.  The exceptions for me are I am starting with a UEFI-GPT backup image.  In my case I am going to use Universal Restore to install the Intel Raid driver after the image restore is completed as that should enable me to boot to the new RAID array.  This of course means that intend to use the Linux based recovery instead of the WinPE.

Dave, if you unckeck MBR than the restore Wizard will switch to another mode - suggesting to restore partition by partition. There will be just one page per partition in the restore wizard.

I am attaching screenshots - just to confirm that this is what you may see.