TI 2016 Rescue Media and MS Surface Pro 4
Has anyone ever tried to use TI 2016 Rescue media to clone the MS Surface Pro 4? I have been able to use TI Rescue Media 2014 on Surface Pro 3, but i can no longer use it on the Surface Pro 4 even if i have the latest TI version. I believe this is related to Microsoft newest Surface firmware they call it Surface UEFI.
The symtom is that it couldn't not detect any hard disk on the Surface Pro 4. Suppose i have to load some driver for it, but how?
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*Sorry for not updating this. It's been a year. This already got resolved by creating the WINPE boot drive.
You might try Colin B's solution. Post #13
The issue is only with the Surface 4, no problem at all with Surface 3 or 2.
How can we ask the Acronis engineers about this issue?
Thanks
Make sure that you set the UEFI boot order to USB first in list, have read that you must drag the USB entry to the top of the list to get this to work.
Also Secure Boot needs to be disabled in UEFI.
Just tyo clarify things, The Surface Pro 4 boots just fine using the TI USB, but once it boots, it can not see the internal hard drive of the Surface 4
The same problem with ThinkPad Tablet 2. With Lunix USB stick it gives blank screen after menu selection. WinPE stick is not accepted at all. Secure boot is disabled, USB if first boot device.
I am having the exact same issue with a Surface Pro 4 and a TI 2016 Recovery Disc. Error message saying "True Image has not found any hard disk drives."
Ditto. I can log into True Image, even older versions of the acronis imaging software, without problems. Except when I go to back anything up, it simply doesn't list the internal SSD. A fix for this is eagerly awaited. I have a support case with them, I'll post any updates I get from them here.
Yep, exactly the same problem. Things I've tried:
Disabling secure boot.
Disabling bitlocker.
Disabling TPM.
I've tried the standard Acronis bootable USB flash drive, the universal Linux version of this bootable media, the F11 menu (which runs from a partition on the "invisible" C: drive I think because I don't need a USB drive to boot into Acronis recovery). All of these recovery options boot fine and I can see my external hard drive with the recovery image but can not see the SP4 system disk to load the image on to.
No response at all from Acronis support, which is rather piss poor.
I really don't want to have to go down the path of resetting my Windows 10 installation and installing all my programs again.
Edit: also there is no match for the error code it generates when no system disk is found. I tried looking it up here: https://kb.acronis.com/errorcode/
The next logical step is to create a WinPE recovery disk.
What type of SSD is in the Surface Pro 4? Is it an NVMe M.2 drive? If it is, you will to use WinPE.
Tried running Acronis from WinPE, same thing happens. Tried the older version of acronis in WinPE and the same thing happens again.
I tried making a WinPE rescue disc at the request of Tech Support but have run into another hurdle that I haven't gotten over yet. The WinPE recovery disc does see the SSD, however it does not see my network. I have tried adding the network drivers to the WinPE environment and creating a new disc but it doesn't help. From the brief research I did, it appears that WinPE requires 32-bit drivers. Microsoft only provides 64-bit drivers for the Surface Pro tablets.
I even tried an official MS USB Ethernet adapter but that didn't help either.
The Acronis created WinPE for TI 2016 is 64 bit and uses 64 bit drivers.
I didn't get an anwser for the type of SSD used. If it is NVMe, you need to have the Windows 8.1 ADK installed to get NVMe support. https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=39982
One yes and one no. Looks like I'll have to try the WinPE rescue disk method myself tomorrow as my image is on a HDD connected via a USB hub - I don't need network drivers.
The SSD in my m3 SP4 is a Samsung PM951, an NVMe M.2 drive.
If network adapter drivers are in the WinPE, you can use the command window to map a network share.
Example:
net use y: \\ComputerName\ShareName /user:UserName password
This would map the ShareName to the Y: drive. You would find it in TrueImage under ThisPC Y: when you browse.
Thank you Mustang. I created a WinPE boot disk from within Acronis Tools. This succeeded in finding my system drive and I successfully restored the drive from my backup image.
Glad it worked for you, in my case I just created a Win PE boot USB using Acronis TI 2015 Tools, it asked me to download the latest plug-ins and I did, the computer where I created the Win PE bootable also has the latest ADK (not sure if relevant).
The Surface 4 booted fine from the PE and launched Acronis but still could not seee or list the internal SSD of the Surface (NVMe Samsung (MZFLV256)
Can anybody think of anything I am doing wrong?
Note: Acronis TI is not installed on the Surface in question and I dont want it to be, I simply want to clone the HD from that Surface.
Thanks
Joseph,
What ADK are you using? Look at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\. What is the number of the next subfolder. Is it 8, 8.1 or 10? It needs to be 8.1 or 10 to have built in driver support for MVMe drives.
You say you are using TI 2015. I'm not sure what ADKs will work with TI 2015. If you need to use the 8 version of the ADK, you will need to manually add the NVMe drivers to the build. This is relatively easy. Just follow my guide in the TI 2016 sticky part of the forum.
Thanks MUSTANG
this is what is insntalled on my desktop PC C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit
Are you saying when I use TI 2015 to create the Win PE USB, it reaches out to the installed ADK in Windows to get its files?
I will now try to manually add the drivers per uour article
Thanks again
Bingo, that solved it for me too. I was using TrueImage on a 32 bit win7 machine, created the recovery media on a 64bit win10 machine with most recent ADK and it worked. Thanks again.
Joseph, not sure if it's relevant but I had TPE disabled in bios when I got it to work. Maybe something to try.
I finally got it to work,
Turns out that ADK 10 installation path is different from the ADK 8.1, therefore Acronic builders (2015) couldnt pull the drivers, I forced install ADK 8.1, re-created the media and it worked.
Thank you Mustang, Tom and all the rest for the help.
I was finally able to get it to work. I had to use the WinPE version of the recovery disc and use a Net Use command to map the network drive. Huge shout-out to Mustang for the suggestion. I didn't think of using that.
I did have to play with the syntax a bit with the net use command. It seems to be much pickier in the WinPE environment than it is in Windows. The command i used was "net use * \\<insert IP here>\<share name> /user:xxxx pass:xxxx obviously replacing the x's with the real username and password. After that, it worked perfectly.
Acronis still needs to update the regular recovery disc image so that all this hassle isn't necessary!
Mustang is the hero again! :)
I think here would help a new kernel. And it would be much apreciated.
Clone.Zilla works with kernel 4.4 and detects NVME M.2 in Surface 4
It would be nice, if Acronis could upgrade the kernel. Unfortunately I don't know which is the oldest version supporting Surface 4.
1-Create a PXE boot using Acronis TI 2016
2-Dock the Surface and connect the LAN cable and Keyboard and Mouse
3-On Surface Pro 4 search for these Apps and right click and uninstall: CandyCrush and Twitter if Syspreping
4-Run Sysprep and generalize and select Shutdown option
5-On Surface Pro 4 change the boot order to USB and turn off the secure boot to none
6-Insert PXE USB Boot into Surface
7-Turn off Surface and back on
8-Once Acronis boots into PXE login to your NAS
9-proceed with imaging and on restore select only the primary partition
Löpa - agreed. We have mentioend this in the MVP forum a few times now and it sounds like we should be seeing this soon - I'm personally hoping to see it in the next quarterly release, but can only speculate as we're not privy to the release information date or all of the changes. For now, ADK is the next easiest method and as long as you get the correct ADK installed, Acronis WinPE will find the NVME drives.
To complete this process :
go into the setup disable secure boot and tpm .
I booted off a cd 11.7 Acronis Image , used the latest 4461 build . I would buy a business license and maintenance, support and updates are included.
I was able to see both drives and backup to a usb MyBook You can use a dock for this whole process but I used an IOGEAR powered (comes with a power adapter) standalone will not work. Hookup a keyboard to change the name of the image . If it doesnt matter then do without it.
I have been using this product almost 10 years now. Usually updates will do the trick I was using an iso six months old and it didnt see it.
Thanks for the other comments above very helpful.
Okay, I have read multiple post from various web resources and all seemed to have mis communication or different ways of solving this.
I restored my SP4 Image to a brand new SP4 device (replacement due to cracked screen). So I needed an image of my old SP4 and transfer that over to SP4 (new device).
Took me only 2 hours to do this.
1. I decrypted my SP4 drive, "turn off bitlocker"
2. Made a full image backup of my old SP4 using Acronis True Image 2017 (purchased August 2017). Stored this on a portable USB drive. (single file)
3. Turned on my new SP4. Did the default basic configuration to get it functional.
5. I decrypted my NEW SP4 device, "turn off bitlocker"
6. I installed Acronis True Image 2017 on the new SP4.
7. I then "added a backup" from the interface of Acronis.
8. I then chose the option to "recover pc" and choosing the file from the portable USB drive
9. Let it do its thing and your all set.
10. New SP4 is restored to the exact image, hassle free. Amazingly simple folks