Skip to main content

Bootable External HD

Thread needs solution

I believe Acronis true image home 11 recovery environment is based on a Linux 2.6 kernel, and I am looking for a clean way to install the recovery environment to an external hard drive which would be large enough to additionally contain backups. In other words take a 2 TB or 3 TB (if the kernel fully supports GPT), make it bootable directly into the recovery environment so that I could take this drive, hook it directly to the USB port of a computer to be restored, boot directly to the drive and restore a computer. I understand that it is very simple to boot to a USB stick and then select a restore source, but I'm trying to keep the recovery environment and backups on a single external source.

I realize that I could take an old Windows license and use it to boot into recovery environment, but that seems like a waste of resources.

Any suggestions?

0 Users found this helpful

Click on the yellow link in my signature below and select item 4-D by MudCrab. This shows how to make a usb disk bootable and it can also hold any number of backups.

I'm not sure a disk this large will work or one with GPT.

pkn2:

Here is a guide describing a couple of ways to make a bootable external USB hard disk with the Acronis recovery environment included: http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_grub4dos.php

This method works well on MBR disks. I don't know about GPT disks. Doesn't booting from a GPT disk require EFI firmware in the PC? If so, a GPT-formatted disk would be very limited as a boot device today since most motherboards do not have EFI firmware yet.