Using the back-up to replace infected installed version
I use Win7 on an SSD, made an Acronis back up several months ago on a USB stick, it is 19 GB in five .tib files.
Now, my SSD has become infected and I want to replace EVERYTHING on it with this back up from the USB.
How do I go about this?
Thank You, RD
Yes, the bad news is, that I made a bootable USB stick for the back-up, exactly as described in the user manual. and now, when I need to use, I finally get the very practical message that one cannot boot an Acronis back-up from a USB stick on a Win OS...
So can please kindly answer my question?
How can I get the backup from a bootable USB stick onto my SSD and replace the compromised version that is on there?
Or at least give a usable location, where it is described, because so far I could not find one... THAT IS why I joined the forum.
I have a not really cheap software, that promised me something, then does not deliver, and when I ask in the forum I get very friendly help!
Ross, please can you clarify exactly what you have been trying to do here?
Have you created the Acronis bootable Rescue Media on either CD/DVD or USB stick using the Bootable Rescue Media Builder tool provided with the software? You can find this via either the Tools page in the main GUI or via the Start > Programs > Acronis > True Image > Tools menu route.
If necessary, you can also download a CD/DVD .ISO image from your Acronis Account and burn this to optical media or even use a utility such as ISO to USB to push the media image to a USB stick.
The key to using the Rescue Media is in booting this in the same boot mode as your Windows OS uses, i.e. if Windows boots using the EFI bootloader then boot the Rescue Media the same way.
See webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS for help in identifying the boot mode.
Once you have booted the Rescue Media (with your USB drive holding your Acronis backup files connected) then you should be able to see both the SSD and the USB drive and then be able to restore the backup to the SSD.
See post: 117004: Great Acronis "How-To" videos and other Acronis Resources which has video guides to many of the common functions used with ATIH.
I finally get the very practical message that one cannot boot an Acronis back-up from a USB stick on a Win OS...
Could you post the screen shot of this message? I've never seen the bootable media state it can't boot on a Windows OS.
For clarification, the USB stick is not intended to be used in Windows. It is meant to be booted to instead of Windows. This is to ensure the disk is "idle" (no OS is running) when you do a system restrore, but is also the best way to take a full disk backup (although backups can be taken while Windows is running).
In order to boot your recovery media, you must shutdown the PC. Upon the PC start, you should use your system one-time boot menu (this varies from computer to computer though - F12 for Dells, some use F1, some use Delete, some use Esc, some use others). If you do not see the USB drive as an option, or, if you pick it and it still boots to Windows- this is a BIOS limitation. You will need to consult your manufacturer documentation to ensure that you've disabled secure boot in the bios and in some cases, that you've enabled CSM\legacy mode as well. This part is completley unique to each computer and will limit you from using any bootable media outside of Windows - it is not a limitation of Acronis.
Once booted into your one-time boot override menu, you would pick your USB flash drive as the boot option and boot into Acronis.
Did you view the video I linked above? It goes through everyth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0KKeh-ue-Y
This one is good to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw-YoKl24G4
Thank you for your help...
I seem to have a virus on my Win7 SSD, and after wasting several days trying to remove it, I think replacing the infected OS with a backup might be less frustrating.
I did use the Acronis tool several months ago to create a bootable disc copy on to a USB stick, size 19 GB. The computer recognizes the bootable USB stick when started with F11, but it cannot boot from it. After the first few attempty I search and found the message that Win will not allow boot from a USB stick, it needs to be an optical disc.
You have not really understood what I am saying...
I have a bootable disc image on a USB stick, the USB stick shows up in the boot menu, but will not boot. So 32 minute Videos thazt show how to create a disc-image om a 2TB external HDD are not really helping.
I do not remember where on Acroinis Page I checked, but I ended up reading somewhere that Win (Maybe it was only Win7) will not allow an alternate boot from a USB stick. And I was wonderimng that now there is another way to replace the existing Win 7 OS with the disc image from four months ago, which is on my USB stick....
What do you mean by you have a bootable image on your flash drive? Are you saying you created an Acronis backup file on that flash drive or that you created your bootable recovery media on that flash drive? These are not the same thing.
You need to first create bootable media (Acronis True Image 2016: Creating Bootable Media | Knowledge Base) either on a flash drive or a CD/DVD and boot to that first. Once booted into that, you then navigate to whereveryou created yoru backup file (which as you mention above, seems like it is a 19.5Gb file on a USB flash drivee?) which is what the videos show you how to do - basically step-by-step. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CREATE THE BOOTABLE RECOVER MEDIA ON THE SAME FLASH DRIVE WHERE YOUR 19GB .TIB FILE ALREADY LIVES - IF YOU DO IT WILL GET ERASED!!!!!
If you have not created bootable recovery media, you cannot start a restore. Your backup .TIB files are not bootable by themselves - they only contain the original data you backed up in an Acronis proprietary backup format (True Image Backup = .TIB)
Windows 7 will absolutely boot the Acronis bootable recovery media and be able to restore it. You just have to create it first.
Ross, it sounds to me that you are attempting to boot your Acronis backup image of your Windows 7 system from the USB stick where it is stored. This is neither possible nor permitted by Windows.
The correct way of recovering your virus infected SSD drive is to do as both Rob and I have been trying to advise you.
You need to create the Acronis bootable Rescue Media - this can be on DVD or a 1GB USB memory stick.
When booted from the Rescue Media, you can use the Acronis True Image application (running from a separate, standalone Linux OS environment) to restore / Recover your backup image from your USB backup drive to the SSD drive.
The main gotcha with using the Acronis Rescue Media is the need to boot this in the same way that your Windows boots - see webpage: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/check-if-uefi-or-bios for help with finding how Windows boots.
Sorry, my fault. I just checked and saw that I actually forgot to mention that: of course I made a bootable 32 GB USB stick!
I had another of those with different things stored on it, and it is also no longer working. So I guess that is what is wrong.
Question: When you make bootable backup like this, it is not possible to store anything else on that media, right? Like on one of big external HDDs?
Thank you for help attempts, if it should be working and does not... I will do a clean install of Win 7, will get rid of some other stuff at the same time.
Yes, you can store other content on it. However, just keep in mind that if you use the media creator again, it formats the drive first so that data would get overwritten if you didn't move it off first or have a copy to put back after running the media creator again.
The format of the files after media creation is kind of ugly since it's mostly written to the root of the hard drive. Other than that, it's usable.
It sounds like you're not able to boot your recovery media at all though?
If that's the case, I would format the drive to make sure there are no hidden paritions on it that Windows can't see which could be causing a boot issue and then rebuild the media in Acornis again.
Run an elevated command prompt and run a diskpart /clean on it. After clean, I just go back into computer management and format the drive again (or better yet, I typically use minitool parition wizard free and format my drives with it because it does a fantastic job and has a lot of features not in Windows - regardless, I always to a clean on the drive too.
diskpart <enter>
List disk <enter>
(identify the disk that is your flash drive)
Select disk X <enter> (replace X with the disk number of your flash drive)
clean <enter>
Kick off minitool pariiton wizard free and initialize the disk, then format as fat32.
Once you have the media rebuilt - try booting it again. Does it boot?
No, it will not boot, probably the USB stick is finished.
I have decided to do a clean install of the OS, it is not that bad, about three four hours.
It is a Crucial SSD and they have a tool to "sanitze" the disc, once I have done I will a make a bootable disc copy with Acronis, and hope it will survive long enough this time....
Thank you all for your help, I really did appreciate it.
It is frustrating if you have a software to do a certain, and when you need it, it will not work....
Yeah, I understand. If it's the flash drive not booting though, or if the other flash drive with the .tib files is bad, hard to say it's the software failing to do its job. There are soooo many posts in here with people not able to boot recovery mediia due to bad CD/DVD/flash drives, needing to format flash drives, needing to use a different USB port on the sytsem, not having their Bios configured properly to boot to the drive... and a few that had bad upgrades and the media was not being properly created on that machine, but could be built successfully from a different one. I'm confident that if you could get the media to boot, you could do a restore with a good image.
Like you, though, after a certain amount of time, it's just fater to start fresh and have a nice, clean OS to work with for awhile. You still want to make sure you can boot recovery media though. If you find yourself needing to recover and can't get into Windows, it's the only choice (and the mehtod I would recommend anyway).
Thanks, that I am not unique to the problem is good to know, what to do, s*** happens. I have another 32 GB USB stick that also stopped performing last month.....
But, I use a two TB external HDD (USB 3) as storage. If it is possible TO ADD a folder there, containing a bootable disk image, which I would make after the complete fresh installation, where is the Acronis page that tells me step by step how to do that?
There isn't one, it's not supported. The reason being is Acronis won't let you pick any drive that shows up in Windows as a "fixed disk" as one that bootable media can be created on. They don't want someone accidentally wiping out one of their internal drives by mistake so it's a safety feature. However, thre is a work-a-round I use and it works great for what you want to do.
Before proceeding, backup your external drive content as you will be creating paritions on the external drive (must be an external hard drive - not possible on a flash drive) The backup really isn't necessary, but better to be safe than sorry if you like the data that already lives on that external hard drive.
1) Partition your external data hard drive with 2 paritions. 1 x 2Gb Fat 32 and 1 x the rest NTFS
If you have data on the external drive already back it up first! Paritioning in Windows will format the drive if you need to create partitions at the front of the drive (which you should be doing here). However, I use minitool parition wizard free and shrink the existing volume by 2Gb on the end and then move the free space to the front and parition it. Using minitool parition wizard free instead of Windows, should keep all of your data intact if done properly... However, there is a the risk of something going wrong (although it's worked fine for me many times) so user be warned.
2) Now, you create bootable media to a USB flash drive (a working one). Then take a full disk image of it with Acronis. Then, restore that image to the first 2Gb partion on your external drive.
You now have a bootable external hard drive plus the rest of the space for your data. I usually take it one step further and create 2 x 2Gb Fat32 paritions on the front of the drive - 1 for the linux recovery and 1 for the WinPE recovery. That way, I have a tool that should work on any system.
By using specific paritions for the recovery media, when newer versions come out, you get to keep your data where it's at and just restore the new usb flash drive image to the hard drive parition.
Yes, thank you, I thought that this is how it must work.
What I do not understand yet, is the size of only 2GB, my disc image after a clean install will be around 20 to 30 GB?
2GB is for the FAT32 recovery media partion. 2GB is more than plenty for that - probably overkill, but gives you room to grow in case the recovery media does. Typcially, it is only about 700Mb.
Your 20-30GB disk image would get pointed to the data parition (remaining space on the drive after the first smaller Acronis media recovery partition.
I see, and that external HDD I can then connect with this coumputer and boot it and install the back-up. Will that format the whole(!) SSD in the computer before installing? Or do I have to do that before?
Thank you for your patience...
No, you don't have to format the original drive first - Acronis does that for you. HOWEVER, how you boot the recovery media makes a difference in the way the disk will be formatted.
If you boot the recovery media in legacy mode - it will create a MBR partition scheme. If you boot the recovery mode in UEFI mode, it will create a UEFI/GPT partition scheme. A general rule of thumb is if your OS is currently installed in legacy mode, then boot your recovery media in legacy mode. If your OS is installed in UEFI/GPT mode, then boot your reocvery media in UEFI mode.
You're probably wondering, how do i know? First, check your partiton scheme in Windows - this page shows the difference.
Once you know that, boot your Acronis media. If it is a blue screen with GUI icons for a menu - that is legacy mode. If it is a black background with old school DOS white letters as the menu, that is UEFI mode. **EDIT - forgot the link** This thread explains and shows what the difference looks like, but specifically what a one time boot menu might look like with both UEFI and Legacy options (assuming that a system is capable of either or both options and configured to be able to use either - not all can do both).
If you find yourself booting into the wrong mode by default, use your bios onetime override or one time boot menu (it is different on systems... after rebooting, Dells usually require you to tap F12, other systems use F1, or Esc most often) F2 usually gets you into the bios where some bios have a boot override menu on the last page (usually).
It is definately legacy, thanks, I made a copy of your post and added it to my "install with acronis" file...