True Image recovery without a keyboard
My Asus EP121 slate uses both a bluetooth mouse and a bluetooth keyboard, neither one of which seems to be recognized when I boot the the recovery disk. This is a challenge since this computer only has 2 usb ports.
I think it can work however. This is what I tried:
1.) Plug in a USB mouse into one usb port
2.) Plug in my external DVD drive into the other usb port
3.) Boot to the Acronis recovery disk in the DVD drive.
4.) Unplug the DVD drive. (Acronis doesn't seem to need the drive again, which is nice).
5.) Plug in my external USB drive which contains the backup image
6.) Recover the image
I've tested every step except the last step, since I don't really want to recover an image until I have some kind of problem that needs fixing. So I'm wondering if anyone knows if this will work without using a keyboard. Actually I first tried this with a competing backup solution but it required a keyboard. I was able to use the mouse to select the file and partition to recover, but then the software required me to actually type in the name of the partition as a protection from accidentally writing over the wrong partition. Thus without a keyboard it was impossible to recover the drive. I'm hoping Acronis doesn't do this, but does anyone know for sure?
In place of step 6 I tried to do an image backup, and this worked fine. There is an option for Acronis to automatically generate a file name which meant that I was able to run the backup without a keyboard. Perhaps this means that Acronis was thinking about the situation when a keyboard was not available.
I considered trying a USB hub, so I wouldn't have to unplug the DVD drive, but since this doesn't seem to be an issue I decided to save myself from having to make that purchase and carry yet another piece of equipment around for the worst case scenario. The hub would also allow me to plug in a usb keyboard, but again this is something I would rather avoid since that would mean yet another purchase and something to carry around.
~Paul
Paul,
You don't need a keyboard to get the recovery done on the recovery CD: there is nothing to type in during ATI recovery, everything can be done with the mouse. In some cases, some users have to enter some F11 parameters if they have some issues with networking or display, but these are pretty rare.
With ATI 2011's CD, you can actually choose to recovery only one or 2 files instead of a whole partition/disk restore. So you can try.
Thanks Anton and Pat. That information is helpful.
On a related note, I'm wondering if there are any parameters I can add in the rescue disk builder so that it just starts true image right away without requiring any mouse or keyboard input. I find it kind of annoying that it will default to just booting windows. I mean if I wanted to boot windows why would I have put in this CD in the first place?
~Paul
When you create the bootable CD, you can specify what should be the default program starting if no user input happens. I have mine defaulting to launching ATI. You see this option as a check box during the creation wizard.
Pat,
Reading your posting I don't see the option to have it by default boot on start up to ATI rather than Windows. Can you provide additional details as to how you accomplish that?
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
When you launch the "create bootable recovery medium", at the point where you select what to include on the disc (True Image Home, System Report), there is a check box in the right side of the wizard dialog "start automatically after xxs". Select the application (eg True Image Home), check the box, and adjust the time.
See page 163 of the user manual.
Thank you very much Pat,
My first attempt didn't work for whatever reason. The PC booted into the Acronis screen OK but the full version appeared to be selected but it didn't start. I repeated the process and it worked just fine (about 10 seconds).
Once again I thank you for your help. I like this feature.
Bruce