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Can I use one single USB external hard drive to save disk images of 4 different PCs?

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Hello everybody,

I have an Acronis True Image 2020 licence for 5 computers and I would need to know if I can use a single USB external hard drive to save the C: disks of each of my 5 PCs ?

 

All these PCs are running Windows 10 X64.

 

I want to be able to use, the Acronis Survival Kit  (which should then work for each PC). I assume that it can be created on any of these PCs.

 

I use on each PC the Incremential model with a full image every 5 save.

Will Acronis True Image be able to find the right saved image to update by itself ?

Last, in case of recovery, will Acronis True Image be able to find the right saved image depending on the laptop where my external drive will be connected, or should I have to point to the right one, and if yes, how to identify the right one...

Thank you.

Guy

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Guy, you should be able to create a Survival Kit drive and use it on any of your PC's provided that there is no great differences in the hardware involved.

With regards to continuing backups for the different PC's then I would suggest making a separate folder for each PC to store the backups so as to avoid any mixing of files etc.  This will also help you to quickly identify any files needed in the event of doing a recovery.

If the external drive is given the same drive letter when connected to each different PC that will make things simpler but most recent versions of ATI can handle the drive letter changing provided that the actual drive itself is the same and present the same GUID as recorded for the backup task being run.

Hello Steve,

Thank you for your detailed reply.

I have 2 desktop PCs which are identical, (so no problem for these ones), and two which are very different : an MSI laptop and a SONY Vaio Tablet PC. Reading your reply above I assume that it will not be a good idea to use the same USB External hard drive for all of them... 

I will see how to get three different external hard drives (one for the 2 desktop PCs, one for the MSI and one for the Sony)

Regarding the different folders, this is what I already do for the desktop PCs, so no problem here.

It is always a bit stressing when one have to identify what are the correct parameters when making an image, because it is only at restore time (usually when a disaster occurs) that we discover is the choices were correct (or not) and if not, it is a bit too late to make a change ;-)

Guy. 

Guy, before you set out to buy more external drives, try booting each of your PC's from the Survival Kit drive.  The media will boot in either Legacy or UEFI mode as needed if you have systems using both boot methods.

I have used my own boot drive on PC's of various different makes and types.

If you are feeling a little more confident, then download a copy of the MVP Custom PE Builder script and use this to create a bootable USB stick (2GB min size, 32GB max) and test this on your different PC's.  The MVP tool has options to allow injecting additional device drivers such as those needed for RAID and NVMe drives using the Intel RST drivers - I tend to always select to do this regardless of the systems the media is being used for.  It also includes more utiltities to use in the PE environment, i.e. web browser, file manager, PDF viewer, image capture etc.

If you find that the MVP rescue media works well for you, you can take the Acronis_MVP_PEMedia_amd64.wim that it creates in the tool folder (D:\MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186\ISO\Wim on my system) rename it to boot.wim and copy it to the Survival Kit drive to replace the file of the same name created by the Survival Kit process (in the Sources folder of the drive).  Note: you will need to use a partition tool such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software to unhide the SK partition and allocate a drive letter in order to swap out the boot.wim file, then remove the drive letter, hide the partition again after.

Steve, thank you for continuing on this question with me!

I appreciate your suggestion to first identify a money saving option and keep buying external drives as a second option…

Before I proceed, I want to be sure that I correctly understand what you suggest :

I should first build a Survival Kit on any of my PCs (not necessarily associated with a disk image) and check if I am able to boot on it on all of my different devices, correct?  

Then, and here I am not sure to understand how to do it, you suggest that I “download a copy of the MVP Custom PE Builder script”. Could you please tell me how to proceed? In Acronis, in the tool section, I have a so called “Générateur de support de secours” is this what you mean? If yes, I can choose either “Simple” or “Advanced” and if I choose “Advanced” I read that I can select additional drivers to adapt it to different configurations, but then again I am not sure to understand which one should I choose…

What I am sure is that the next time I will go through these steps these choices will be obvious, but for the first time, I am a bit puzzled…

My last question was related to the Acronis_MVP_PEMedia_amd64.wim but I am sure that if I understand properly the previous steps I will find easily this file.

Thank you for your help.

Guy

   

Guy, yes to creating a single Survival Kit drive initially and then testing this on your different PC's to check that this will work and boot those PC's.

The MVP Custom PE Builder script tool is available from the Acronis Community Tools page along with other tools produced by the MVP community.  This is a zip file download that you would extract to your main PC where you have ATI installed, then run as a standalone (non-installed program) to use as needed.

For me, the zip is extracted to my D:\MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186 folder and is run by selecting the D:\MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186\MVP_ATIPEBuilder186.exe and using 'Run as Administrator' then following the prompts shown in the panel that is shown.

When the tool has finished, the Acronis_MVP_PEMedia_amd64.wim is found in the D:\MVP_ATIPEBuilder_v186\ISO\Wim folder.