Repair corrupted Survival Kit drive?

Tom, there are no direct repair methods for the Survival Kit but you can rebuild this as follows:

1. Open Windows Disk Management and assign a drive letter to the 2GB FAT32 partition.
2. Once you have the drive letter, i.e. F: then launch the normal Acronis Rescue Media Builder tool and create the Simple version of the media.  When asked where to create the media, choose the new drive letter, i.e. F: and let the tool reformat the 2GB partition and write the rescue media to it.

Thank you Steve! It seems though that Windows Disk Management is greyed-out except for Delete Volume, so it will be a bit more fiddly to accomplish.

So I will delete the volume and make another, and thanks for reminding me that it needs to be FAT32. I'll post-back my results.

Hmm dunno what is going on with this. I created the FAT32 partition as F:ACRONIS and trying Simple resulted in the MediaBuilder hanging mid-process when "Saving .wim file". Cancel did not work and so I End-Processed the MediaBuilder using Task Manager.

Checked the newly built F: drive for bad blocks, no problems.

Ran Media Builder again and it said "Unable to copy WinPE files"

Rebooted the PC and MB did TRY to install but ended with a big red X "Unable to mount the source wim file".

When I look at Acronis' kb it says I need Windows AIK or ADK installed but gives no clue as to how to get these, and I dunno where on my PC I would find same if already installed--there is only a single file in Acronis TrueImageHome WinPE folder: winpe_resources.dll size of 78,402KB.

As I said creating a Survival Kit yesterday on a different USB drive worked, so it seems I have the needed WinPE files. What could possibly be wrong here?

Tom, if your Windows Recovery Environment is working correctly and enabled, then you should not need any Windows AIK or ADK to be installed - those are needed when WinRE is not available or is disabled etc.

If the Survival Kit process was able to create the 2GB FAT32 partition on a different USB drive, then that would suggest your WinRE is good.

To check WinRE, open an Administrator Command window or Powershell window then issue the command:

REAGENTC /INFO

Check that it shows the recovery environment as being enabled.

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS D:\> reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: f613c408-ab3e-11e9-ac1c-a86daa71efa2
    Recovery image location:
    Recovery image index:      0
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

PS D:\>

If you have a spare small USB stick (2GB upto 32GB max size), try running the media builder to that media to see if the source.wim / WinPE files can be copied without any problems?

If all works fine except for the original problem SK drive, then download a copy of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software and remove the 2GB FAT32 partition then resize the existing NTFS partition to use the freed space, then create a new disk backup task to that drive and take the option to create the Survival Kit again to see if that works.

Thanks again for being so clear, and so detailed SS! Powershell tells me that my RE is enabled on partition 2 of hdd 0 which AFAICT is that partition that was created when Dell shipped this Laptop! Which may explain why my "corrupt" SK USB drive, which iirc was created with an early (the initial) release of ATI2019, brought-up the Dell recovery stuff. I must (regretfully) admit now that I made the SK when setting-up this drive and then never tested it! Ouch.

Now, when I try to us Media Builder with an 8GB USB stick I get the same "Saving .wim file...." hang as in Post #3. Now I'm really confused as I *had been able* to make a new Survival Kit on a USB hdd, as if the SK creation process works some further magic vs. using the Media Builder alone.

I'm reluctant to delete/expand/retrySK on the subject drive, owing to all the backups on it, but if you have no ideas about MB not working (must have something to do with my Dell recovery partition) I might still go that route when I've calmed-down a bit.

Oh crap, wait SS--I just realized my temp files are on my RAMdisk, which is 2GB in size but which almost no doubt is at issue here!

Will fix it...

I apologize Steve. Your original idea, after I re-created the 2GB partition, has worked. No doubt my 2GB RAMdisk handling all TEMP/TMP files was somehow inadequate to the task originally, and subsequent attempts (to do anything at all) failed because RAMdisk was full. After cleaning it out the Media Builder worked and I tested that the USB drive now boots to Windows and ATI not Dell!

Can I ask you one other question: I accidentally made the 2GB recovery partition Active when I mis-clicked in Disk Mgmt, and see no way to reverse that. It works, but do you know how I might un-do that?

Thanks so much for your help here.

Tom, glad that you have figured out what was happening here!  Checking my own boot drive for ATI - that is also set as Active so no need to change anything that is working!

Thanks again; your presence here, and sharing of your knowledge, are greatly appreciated!