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Understanding acronis startup recovery manager

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Hi, 

Could someone explain me: when ypou click on "activate startup recovery manager", what does acronis do? 

1. In the EFI partition: an acronis folder is being added, with a asrm.efi file

2. An entry is added into the EFI list (bios) to point to this file

But what else? Where is the true image program being stored? All my HDDs are encrypted, so I am really wondering where it is.

Thanks

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Serge, welcome to these user forums.

When you activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, you are creating a small Linux based environment on your hard drive which Acronis will then link to the system bootloader to allow you to press the F11 Key during the boot process to boot into that environment and then launch the Acronis True Image application.

As to the precise location of where this Linux environment is being stored, I am not certain - in earlier versions it looked to be linked to the Acronis Secure Zone, but ASRM can be activated without needing the ASZ to be created.

Depending on how your HDDs are encrypted, then booting into the ASRM would not be able to be used to make a backup of your drive data as there is no support in the Linux environment for encryption to allow ATIH to see the drive data.

Please see post https://forum.acronis.com/forum/116806#comment-355736 where one of the Acronis Analysts, Slava, gave some clear warnings about using ASRM with encrypted drives.

Thanks Steve. I figured it out: 

c:\acroldr     //A Hidden folder. 

Hence my next question is: is it supposed to work if C drive is encrypted with say veracrypt?

Serge, well done on identifying the hidden folder - I don't use ASRM on any of my systems anymore as I didn't like some of the side effects it seemed to cause for me, like exposing hidden partitions.

Please see KB document: 56619: Acronis True Image: Compatibility with BitLocker which is relevant to your question about encrypted drives.  The key statement in this KB is: You cannot back up encrypted disks in Acronis bootable media.

ASRM is in essence the same as the standard, linux based Acronis bootable Rescue Media, therefore that statement applies also to ASRM.