Acronis repartitioned my USB drive and I don't know how to undo that
I tried the Acronis trial version but it failed to create a bootable disk so I am giving up on it.
Unfortunately it repartitioned my USB disk so now when I plug it in, two drives are shown (D: and E:). How do I get this back to the way it was. Reformatting doesn't help as I can only reformat each drive (D:, E:) individually.
If you don't need any data on the drive and can format it, then you should be able to use Windows "diskpart" to fully clear the drive of all partitions and then reconfigure it...
open an elevated command prompt (right click CMD and "run as administrator"
Diskpart (enter)
list disk (enter)
(identify the disk number of the USB drive - make sure you have the right one!!!!!)
select disk X (replace X with the correct drive # enter )
clean (y)
Once the clean is done, go to control panel >> administrative tools >> computer management >> storage >> disk management
locate the USB drive and right click to initialize it. format it as FAT32 and give it a name and drive letter
Thanks, all. Based on the above hints I was able to repartition.
Perhaps I should not have given up on Acronis so soon. My first encounter was frustrating so I just threw up my hands.
What I want to accomplish is a single, stand-alone, bootable USB drive that can be used to restore a disk image. I have other backup solutions (Crashplan, Onedrive) so I don't need any of the day-to-day incremental backup capabilities. This would be for fail-safe disaster recovery. I would occasionally replenish the USB drive, probably in an A/B scheme so I will always have something one level back.
I need to keep an image with almost 100GB data.
How can I use Acronis to best accomplish this? Another question: Will I need an active Acronis subscription to do a restore?
Robert, please can you clarify your statement:
What I want to accomplish is a single, stand-alone, bootable USB drive that can be used to restore a disk image.
Do you want this to be a single bootable drive where you can also store your backup image files, if so, then you will need to have a separate 2GB FAT32 partition that Acronis will use to boot the standalone Rescue Media application from, where the remainder of the drive can be NTFS and used for your backup files.
If you just want a bootable USB rescue media stick, then this can be as small as 2GB but still needs to be in FAT32 format, where you would need a separate storage drive for your backups.
You edition of ATI 2019 will determine what you are allowed to do in terms of recovery etc.
If you have a Subscription edition of ATI, then after the subscription ends, then all function except for recovery of already existing backups is lost.
If you have a Perpetual licensed edition, then ATI will continue to work for as long as Windows allows it to do so, with full functionality.
See KB 61632: Acronis True Image 2019: how to create bootable media
KB 61621: Acronis True Image 2019: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media
KB 61639: Acronis True Image 2019: How to create Acronis Survival Kit
Article: The Acronis Survival Kit
Robert,
No, you don't need an active subscription to restore. If you have a stand-a-lone license, it will always work for backup and restore. If you have a subscription, even if you don't renew the subscription, restore with rescue media will always be possible.
You don't technically need to partition a USB drive to use it for the recovery environment and data (backup files). You could build the rescue media and then just make a folder on the drive called "Backups" (or whatever you want) and then use that location for your backup files.
HOWEVER, if you want to upgrade/update the recovery media down the road, the process usually wipes the drive (partition) so this is something to consider. There isn't a need to update the recovery media if it is working on your system though, but if you like to always have the most current version, this is something to be aware of.
So, the survival kit is designed to give you 2 partition so you only have to update the one down the road, without updating the data partition or wiping it out.
I would try to build the survival kit again. Once built, make sure both drives are assigned a partition letter so you can see what is on both of them.
The first partition (the smaller 2GB one) is the recovery environment. Let us know what is on it... it should likely be a WinRE media, but could possibly be the default linux recovery - depends on how your system is configured and what is available on it. You may need to go to disk management and assign it a drive letter first before you can view it.
Does it have a sources folder with boot.wim in it?
Once we know what the rescue media type is, it will be helpful.
You may also need to tweak your bios to allow booting from external media. In many instances, secure boot is enabled already by the vendor of the computer. You may need to disable secure boot in the bios as this prevents external media from booting.
Steve Smith wrote:Robert, please can you clarify your statement:
What I want to accomplish is a single, stand-alone, bootable USB drive that can be used to restore a disk image.
Do you want this to be a single bootable drive where you can also store your backup image files...
Yes, and I want Acronis to do whatever it takes to make this happen. Instead, I got an error message.
I used a 128GB USB drive because my image won't fit on anything smaller. When I started the process Acronis didn't tell me it wouldn't work. It proceeded to chug away for several minutes then got the error.
I used a 128GB USB drive because my image won't fit on anything smaller.
Robert, what type of drive was this? Was it a USB stick or an actual USB HDD (or SSD) drive?
A stick (I think it's called) but very short. It's by SanDisk.
Robert, thank you for confirming you are using a SanDisk USB 128GB memory stick, can you also confirm that you have Windows 10 build 1703 or later, which is the requisite for using such memory sticks for the Survival Kit process as per KB 61639 Introduction paragraph?
Windows 10, version 1809.
Robert, was this a new error after the format and trying to recreate the survival kit... after you used diskpart to clean the partitions and disk management to initialize as a fresh fat32 USB flash drive, it failed again?
If so, what was the particular error?
As a test, let's forgo the survival kit. Instead, let's just see if it can build winre rescue media directly to the drive, or not.
go back and "clean" it and initialize it. Then go into Acronis and create winre rescue media directly to the drive. If this works, you can use this drive as is and make a backup folder. We can update the drive by simply creating a boot.wim file if an update comes out later and replacing it on the drive.
