Skip to main content

TI 2017 on Flash Drive

Thread needs solution

I want to create a bootable USB flash drive with TI 2017.

1.  What size flash drive will I need?

2.  I've been using TI for years but always booted from a CD/DVD when doing a recovery.  Is there anything I should know about using TI2017 from a flash drive that might not be obvious to a first-timer?

Thanks.

Peter

0 Users found this helpful

Hi Peter,

welcome back to the Acronis forums. An USB Stick of at 1 GB size should be enough. Please try to avoid using a stick that is larger than 32 GB due to contraints with FAT32.

When you create a recovery USB use an USB 3.0 stick and port to improve the creation and loading times, but this is optional for sure.

Usually the Linux bootable enviroment is sufficient for most users, and the you can boot this stick with UEFI / secure boot enabled or with classic non UEFI setups (BIOS).

There are some limitations, like lack of support for NVMe drives (the successor of the AHCI protocol, which is still the standard atm).
However there is a solution for this using WinPE and other MVPs have  posted a great tutorials about this.

 

Karl,

Thanks for the information!

I am dealing with a new laptop that has a 1TB NVMe SSD.  I was able to use TI2017 to create a backup of the C: partition to an external hard drive.  After that something got seriously corrupted on the SSD and the laptop doesn't even boot anymore.  I created a TI bootable flash drive using another PC.  I put the flash drive in the laptop and was able to boot to it.  TI did find the previously created backup file on the external drive but did not recognize the laptop's NVMe SSD so I was not able to restore.

I assume this is related to what you mentioned -- lack of support for NVMe drives.  Two questions about that:

1.  Does the lack of NVMe support affect creating a backup file, restoring from a backup file or both?  Is the backup file I previously created useable?

2.  You mentioned there is a solution to the NVMe issue.  Where is the best place to go for that solution?

Thanks!

Peter

Peter, the lack of support for NVMe drives is an issue for the Rescue Media only, and in particular, for the standard, Linux based, rescue media.  This should not impact on your backup if this was made from with Windows using the main Acronis GUI, as Windows is supplying all the required device drivers to access the NVMe drive.

The solution for the NVMe issue is to create the Windows PE version of the Rescue Media, ideally, I would recommend using the MVP Tool - Custom ATI WINPE Builder script to do this and including the Intel RST drivers, these are needed if your NVMe drive is being accessed in RAID mode.

One prerequisite for the custom WinPE Builder and any WinPE Rescue Media, is that you need to download / install the Windows ADK - so if you have a working system with ATIH 2017 installed, you can do this by simply launching the Rescue Media Builder tool (from within the GUI > Tools area) then selecting the option to create WinPE media, this will direct you to download / install the ADK if you do not already have this installed.

The ADK download is over 3GB in size but when installing it, you only need to select the top 3 options which are the only ones you will need.

Once you have the ADK installed, then run the MVP Customer WinPE Builder script and follow the various prompts to create the media you need.

Steve,

Thanks for the reply.  A few questions:

1.  I found two versions of the MVP_ATIPEBuilder.  Version 59 BASIC and version 96 ADVANCED.  Which should I use?

2.  The NVMe SSD in my laptop is not using RAID.  Does that mean I do not need the Intel RST drivers?

3.  I'm not familiar with Windows ADK.  I just did a quick Google search and see it's for developers (not me).  Is this something that  gets installed on my working PC? (The PC I'm using to create the PE Rescue Media.)  Again, not being familiar with it, is there anything about it that will cause me to regret having installed it to my PC?

4. I'm a little confused as to the order in which to do things.  You said to use the MVP_ATIPEBuilder tool to create a PE version of the Rescue Media.  You also said to use TI2017 to download ADK.  Should I download/install ADK first and then run the MVP tool?

5.  You said the ADK is over 3GB but I only need the top 3 options.  Can everything I need to have on the Rescue Media fit on a 2GB flash drive?

Thanks!!

Peter

Peter, you can use either version of the MVP ATI PE Builder tool, though I would recommend using the Advanced tool as it gives you a far more useful tool with the ability to use a web browser from the Rescue Media that it creates so can be useful for testing etc.

In terms of needing the Intel RST drivers, again this will not cause any problems by having it on the rescue media as it will only be loaded if needed, this also gives flexibility if you want to use the same media on other computers you may have.

The Windows ADK is a full Microsoft product and completely safe to install on your computer - you do not need to be a developer to use it, but you cannot create the WinPE Rescue Media without having it installed.

I mentioned using the TI2017 Rescue Media Builder tool to let it guide you to the appropriate Windows ADK download page for your version of Windows, which it will do if your select this type of media but don't have the ADK already installed.

The size of the ADK download does not affect the size of the ATI WinPE Rescue media, even with the Advanced version of the script, this will still fit easily on a basic 1GB USB memory stick.as only the required components needed for WinPE are copied to the USB stick.  You can use any size of USB stick from 1GB up to a maximum size of 32GB, but 2GB will be fine.

Thanks a lot Steve for helping him out, I was not online later on.

Steve,

Everything seems to have worked concerning installing Windows ADK and then using the MVP Tool to create a PE Rescue Media flash drive.  I was able to boot my "dead" laptop from the flash drive.  I went through the restore process however it did not work because the TI restore program was still not able to see the SSD drive in the laptop.  So when I had to tell it where to restore to the SSD was not an option.  I have no clue why that happened.  Any thoughts?

Peter

Peter, in general the problem seems to be that the driver you hopefully included into the WinPE is not compatible or fitting your system.

Which mainboard do you have and which driver did you include into the WinPE?

Karl,

I did not include any extra drivers when I created the PE recovery flash drive because I don't know what drivers to include, how to determine what to include or where to find them.

My new laptop is a Dell Precision 7510.  The specs are listed here but I see no mention of which mainboard it has.  I have the version with the Core I7 6920 processor and the 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Class 40 SSD.   http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m7510-workstation/pd?ref=PD_Family

Any help appreciated as I am stuck!

Peter

PeterM,

You should use the MVP Win PE Builder Tool found in the link below and create a new WinPE flash drive.  During creation you will be asked if you want to add drivers, just say yes and the appropriate drivers will be added to the flash drive for you.

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/127281

Enchantech,

Thanks for the reply.  I did use the MVP Win PE Builder Tool to create my flash drive.  During the process it did ask if I wanted to add any extra drivers.  I said No because I had no idea what drivers to add.  I will try again and say Yes this time and see what happens.

How will it know the appropriate drivers to add?  I am creating the WinPE flash drive on one PC but I need to use it to recover a different PC which currently doesn't boot.  How will it know what drivers to add to make it work on the currently non-booting PC?

Thanks.

Peter

The NVMe drives used in the Dell laptops all use Intel RAID based drivers.  The MVP tool has such a driver.  The driver only is needed so that the drive is recognized by the True Image application.  As that is it's only purpose in that sense it is much like a universal driver.

Peter, the other important point with using the MVP WinPE Builder Tool is that when it launches the main Acronis Rescue Media Builder application, you choose the second option to build WinPE Media, not the top default option. Sorry if I am preaching to the converted here but worth checking.

I used the MVP tool again create the PE recovery flash drive.  This time I said Yes to the two questions about adding drivers.

It works!  I was able to restore the C: drive in my laptop and now it boots once again!  So a HUGE thank you to all of the people in this forum who helped!  I learn a lot in the process.

1.  I would like to use the MVP tool to create a few additional PE recovery flash drives.  Do I have to go through the whole process again for each flash drive or is there a way to tell the tool to just make another drive like the last one?

2.  Will the PE recovery flash drive wotk on my other PCs that do not have a NVMe drive?

Peter

Peter, great to hear that you were able to use the MVP tool to create the media, add the drivers and restore your laptop drive to have it all work again!  Thanks for the feedback.

For your other question, sorry but you will need to run through the MVP Tool again for each new flash drive, the key difference will be obvious when you use it, i.e. it will tell you that some of the required files are already present and offer a choice of recreating these or using what is present - take the latter option if nothing has changed since the previous run.

Yes, the PE flash drive will work on other PC's without a NVMe drive - the base media should work on the majority of computers, drivers are only needed for the exceptions to this rule.

Steve, the additional flash drives I'm going to install the PE recovery on are all 128GB size which is much larger than necessary.

Is there any reason I can't or shouldn't store my latest TI backup file (.tib) in a folder on the same flash drive (so everything I need is on one drive)?

When I create backups they get stored on a network drive but I can set it up to copy the latest backup to the flash drive unless there's some reason I shouldn't.

Peter

Peter, please see KB 58108: Acronis products: using USB sticks with more than 32GB capacity which explains why we would not recommend using memory sticks larger than 32GB in size.

You could use your 128GB memory sticks to store your backup image(s) but not recommended as Rescue Media due to FAT32 limitation as per above KB document, plus having the drive as FAT32 would cause your backup files to be split into 4GB chunks as that is the largest file size allowed for FAT32.

Steve, thanks for reminding me about the 32GB limit for flash drives.  I'll have to get some.

Back to my previous question -- is it OK to put the backup file (.tib) on the same flash drive as the MVP PE program (space permitting)?

Peter

Peter, great to hear that you made it.

PeterM wrote:

Steve, thanks for reminding me about the 32GB limit for flash drives.  I'll have to get some.

Back to my previous question -- is it OK to put the backup file (.tib) on the same flash drive as the MVP PE program (space permitting)?

Peter

Peter, if you are going to try to do this, then it would probably be best to create the MVP PE drive, test that this is working fine, then partition the USB drive to create a second NTFS partition on it, i.e. reduce the ATIH WinPE FAT32 partition down to say 1GB size, then create a 31GB NTFS partition in the space freed.

You may like to read webpage: Is it possible to create multiple partitions on a USB flash drive? which while not related to Acronis may give you some further ideas.

Another option that has been discussed in these forums and which can work is to make a bootable USB HDD drive using the same principle, but to do this the steps would be to first create a working USB boot stick, then make a backup of this media.  Next, restore that backup image to the USB HDD in a 1GB partition, then finally have the remainder of the HDD set as an NTFS partition.  This should work fine with the Linux media but I am not sure if it has been done with the WinPE media or whether this would hit the Microsoft restriction on not allowing Windows to boot from a USB HDD?

Be careful using a single drive to boot and store backups. If you do recreate a newer recovery media, you may be prompted to format the drive first! That will wipe out everything. Instead just copy the new boot.wim  and put it where the old one was. Boot.wim is the WinPE image and you font actually need to format and make the flash drive each time.