Acronis 2019 does not see my C drive
I am booting my DELL XPS 15 with the rescue thumb drive. When Acronis comes up it only lists my thumb drive and my backup drive. My XPS 15 has a 500Gig SSD drive.
Note that the other drives do show up (the external USB drive and the media).
- What type of SSD drive do you have, what technology, i.e. is it NVMe M.2 / PCIe ?
The brand is Seatate (Seagate BUP SL SCSI). It is NVMe (PM981 NVMe Samsung 512GB). Why does that matter? The boot firmware is well above the interface level.
- What type of connection method is used for the SSD drive, i.e. SATA, RAID ?
It appears to be SCSI but again the boot media is above that level. I wrote some of Micron's SSD code and we didn't care about the interface. It is not RAID.
- Which type of USB rescue media have you created, i.e. is it Linux or WinPE?
The rescue media was created for WinPE. I can try Linux but the last time I tried that with
- How does your Windows OS boot in terms of the BIOS mode used?
I don't know. A BIOS will read the boot sector then that reads the OS boot which loads drivers then the BIOS is out of the picture. I wrote BIOS boot at AMI in the 90's which just used INT13 but now I think they use EUFI which is quite different.
- Did you boot the USB rescue media using the same BIOS mode?
There is only one choice and that is EUFI. The BIOS mode where the media was created was not EUFI but that shouldn't matter because that is invisible to the OS.
I have here is the result from msinfo32:
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DESKTOP-B19Q9OJ
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model XPS 15 9570
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU 087C
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz, 2208 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. 1.5.0, 9/3/2018
SMBIOS Version 3.1
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer Dell Inc.
BaseBoard Product 0D0T05
BaseBoard Version A00
Platform Role Mobile
Secure Boot State On
PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.17763.1"
User Name DESKTOP-B19Q9OJ\eddy
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.7 GB
Available Physical Memory 9.93 GB
Total Virtual Memory 18.6 GB
Available Virtual Memory 11.2 GB
Page File Space 2.88 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes
and ---
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model Seagate BUP SL SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type External hard disk media
Partitions 1
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 1
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 3.64 TB (4,000,784,417,280 bytes)
Total Cylinders 486,401
Total Sectors 7,814,032,065
Total Tracks 124,032,255
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #1, Partition #0
Partition Size 3.64 TB (4,000,650,887,168 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 135,266,304 bytes
Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model PM981 NVMe Samsung 512GB
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 5
SCSI Bus 1
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 476.94 GB (512,105,932,800 bytes)
Total Cylinders 62,260
Total Sectors 1,000,206,900
Total Tracks 15,876,300
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size 650.00 MB (681,574,400 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size 461.72 GB (495,766,732,800 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 816,840,704 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #2
Partition Size 990.00 MB (1,038,090,240 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 496,583,573,504 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #3
Partition Size 12.37 GB (13,285,457,920 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 497,621,663,744 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #4
Partition Size 1.12 GB (1,201,668,096 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 510,908,170,240 bytes
Eddy, your msinfo32 output shows the BIOS Mode UEFI - and you say you are booting from the WinPE rescue media from the UEFI option in the BIOS boot menu option, so the core issue if your C: NVMe drive is still not visible is either going to be the drivers needed for this specific make of NVMe drive or else to controller mode being used if this is actually RAID.
I would suggest creating the rescue media on the computer where it is going to be used, especially if you are using the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) files to create WinPE media, as this should take some of the drivers needed for that computer into the media.
If the above doesn't help, then I would recommend using the MVP Custom ATIPE builder script to create the rescue media and take the option to include Custom drivers, which will inject the Intel RST RAID support drivers.
Note: RAID is being used more often for NVMe single drives simply because of performance rather than using SATA. Check the BIOS SATA Operation mode setting on your computer.
Eddy,
The Samsung PM981 drive you have is an M.2 NGFF PCIe NVMe based drive so rather than this drive using the traditional hard disk controller it uses an M.2 slot on the motherboard which works directly with the PCIe lanes to the CPU. Therefore unlike SATA drives you must have a controller driver available for the Recovery Media to be able to work with the drive.
Your best bet here is using the MVP WinPE Media Builder tool Steve referenced to build new media as it's design includes the driver needed. You will find link to the MVP tool HERE
Thanks, I'll build a new rescue media. I worked with the RAID group when I worked for DELL and there RAID was always 2 drives minimum.
I built the media on the target computer and now it sees drive C. So you are correct, it needed to pickup the SSD driver.
Eddy, please see webpage: Dell M.2 FAQ regarding AHCI vs RAID ON, Storage Drivers, M.2 Lanes, Performance and more
RAID mode does not necessarily mean you have a RAID Array with a minimum of 2 drives - it is used for performance benefits with single SSD drives.
It appears as though RAID on SSD's still means more than one drive (an SSD is still considered one drive). Here is what is said on RAID with SSD's:
SSD RAID (solid-state drive RAID) is a methodology commonly used to protect data by distributing redundant data blocks across multiple SSDs.
I still know one of the managers for servers at DELL. I'll send him an email and clear this up.
I have emailed the manager of the server group at DELL and when he gets back with an answer I'll get back with you.
While I'm waiting for that response, how would RAID work with only one drive (or SSD)?
Eddy,
This is a bit confusing, hopefully you will understand what I am going to try to say here.
First, SATA has been the standard disk subsystem interface for the last decade or so. With the advent of the SSD using fast NAND memory for storage space those devices were able to push the SATA interface to its limit of 600MBps.
Enter M.2 form factor, PCIe based storage connectivity, NVMe, and a new tech was born. Using the PCOIe interface for a storage subsystem interface meant that the 600MBps limit of SATA could be far surpassed and could run at Gbps rather than MBps. It was not long until users wanted the ability to use this new found speed in a boot device. NVMe drives made that possible.
The NVMe spec calls for the device to be a SCSI class as are most SATA III drives today. This allowed better use of driver technology. Intel took the reins and developed an all in one driver capable of being used by AHCI, NVMe, and RAID technology, a universal driver if you will.
Depending on platform design and UEFI firmware design some early motherboards designed to use the PCIe interface for storage subsystems actually did so via the underlying chipset on the motherboard and in doing so utilized the SATA Express channels to do so. The problem with that is that the 600MBps limitation remained and therefore was a bottleneck. To alleviate that bottleneck the practice began to set the SATA mode in the bios firmware to RAID mode to provide more bandwidth. This workaround had its limits as well so, through advances in PCH design an Oprom was implemented to provide connection directly from PCIe lanes to the CPU. NVMe drives use this means if they are available.
To accomplish this feat Intel makes drivers for the Oprom on the motherboard that work with the OS storage drivers so that everything works as intended.
So the reason that RAID works with a single drive is that it simply provides more bandwidth to the SATA channels that can be used by SCSI class devices as long as a universal OS driver is installed to make it all work together.
So you are saying that by using dual channels it is RAID 0. I never thought of that ... it is exactly like synchronized drives. On those you could go all the way to byte striping (although when we did that at DELL and Adaptec it was block stripping). In the late 60's we just called that dual channels.
It's been a long time since I worked at Micron ... I'll bet they have that now.
You won't believe it but in 2011 when I worked at Cisco on the Nexus 7000 (a very large switch), we could do 250Gbs. I just checked and the switch where I wrote the transceiver library now cost $115,719.06 + Free Shipping ("free shipping" ... give me a break). If you have ever tried to use a non-Cisso CFP and it would not let you, then you can blame that on me. :)
Thanks for bringing me up to date (I'm 75 and retired).
I hate computers, if I didn't have to program them I wouldn't have one.
Lol, I got ya!
I hope folks here don't expect to see 250Gbps on storage drives anytime soon!
Your analogy is close but think of channels as lanes (PCIe lanes) of which there are four used on a current PCIe storage device connection.
In my outline above I made a mistake that I will correct here now. I said "Using the PCIe interface for a storage subsystem interface meant that the 600MBps limit of SATA could be far surpassed and could run at Gbps rather than MBps". That Gbps should have read GBps. So a better comparison is that SATA runs at a maximum of 6Gbps theoretical. The PCIe Gen 3 x4 used by the NVMe drives has a maximum of 4GBps theoretical 3.94GBps actual in each direction.
:)
Yes, I remember at iVivity when, we did a project for Huawei-3Com, we used PCIe to pair two failsafe RAID boards together and it was extremely fast.
I got a response from my friend at DELL and a friend at Toshiba ... they both verified your statement. In fact the guy at Toshiba went into a lot more detail. Thanks for getting me up to date.
Eddy,
No problem, your welcome. Many users find themselves is situations where new tech and methodologies being worlds apart sometimes from what they know or think they know give them problems. Just a matter of getting up to speed in most cases.