Booting from USB Flash Drive
I currently have a trial version of Acronis True Image 2014. I also have two previous versions on other computers. I have Acronis 2014 on a newly purchased HP laptop 15T-J000. It does not have an internal dvd drive. I created a bootable USB flash drive backup and put it into one of the USB ports. I gained access to it on boot up by either pressing the F9 or F11 key repeatedly on startup. When prompted I chose the stick and then I got this screen:
Actronis
Loading, please wait...
Raid set " isw_dhgigebfc_cath_volume" was activated.
Raid set " isw_dhgiebfc_Data_volume" was activated
___
The screen stayed like that.
My main concern is to be able to boot from a computer that is unable to boot normally. At present
my computer boots normally but I was just doing a test run to determine if the bootable rescue USB stick works. Can anyone help? I have windows 8 on the computer.
Ray
I have not tried it for longer than about twenty minutes.
Ouch. Something should surely happen within that amount of time. Can you boot with something else to the same USB flash drive? If you don't have anything to test with, you can try making a USB boot drive using this. You can use anything listed and see if the computer boots properly. I would have to say it should since the computers started booting with it. You may also try making an ISO and use the custom ISO option in the software, see if you can get it to run.
Hopefully it's OK to post that link, since it's an open source project, I don't see why not. Sorry mods if it's not.
Hopefully it works for you.
I think I overestimated the time I waited. I looked at your two posts and tried again. It worked. Its probably about five to 8 minutes. I don't remember waiting so long on Acronis 2011 when I used a rescue DVD on my windows 7 computer.
Thank you very much. It looks like I will invest in this software again. I have gotten used to it over the years.
I have only had this HP laptop since the middle of July. Everything was fine until an HP support icon informed me that an important Bios update was available. After the download, the computer would not reboot. I had to do a factory reset using the recovery usb stick drive that I made of operating system when I first purchased it. I lost all of my programs and had to reinstall the software which took hours. I have not had to do that since before I had Acronis on my Windows XP about 8 years ago.
I am going to get a few more USB memory sticks and make at least one more copy. I have four usb 3.0 ports on the laptop and one is powered. Do you think using sticks that are for usb 3.0 would be faster on booting up Acronis? The current stick that I am using has the acronis is 2.0.
Do you think using sticks that are for usb 3.0 would be faster on booting up Acronis? The current stick that I am using has the acronis is 2.0.
The sort of delay you describe sounds like a lack of full support for your hardware, not due to speed of USB 2.0. USB 3.0 will be no faster for this, as the USB bus is not the source of the slowness.
However, one of the hardware components that may not yet have full support could be your USB 3.0 controller. Try a USB 2.0 port, if you have one.
Thank you, I don't have a 2.0 port but although it takes its time, at least it will boot from the stick. Once the Acronis fully loaded, I sucessfully booted from the last image I had on a ssd drive connected to another usb port.
For a laptop that only has one internal optical drive, is the only option to have to have at least two available usb ports? One port for the drive that contains the images and one for the bootable usb stick. I don't think booting from a ssd card is an option. I saw an SSD card that was 64gb at Costco the other day. I imagine you could have one or two images on it but that would not make it a good option.
Ray,
If you had an external USB hard drive it is possible to give the hard drive an Acronis bootable partition and store your images on the secondary partition. This is what I have for my external laptop drives.
It might be possible to do something similar with a USB stick, but of course their capacity isn't large enough yet for disk images. The exception would be that you wouldn't partition a flash stick but boot the recovery environment from an ISO on the stick.
In fact, only a single port is required. The ATI Rescue Media will, upon boot, load itself into RAM. Once you've selected True Image and loading is complete, you may remove the USB flash drive containing the Rescue Media and attach the external HD. However, as your system appears to have incomplete hardware support in the Rescue Media such that response is slow, it may take some time for the external HD to mount.
I was wondering about the "incomplete hardware support" you mentioned. I made a recovery drive on a USB stick from the software on the HP when I first purchased it. When I used it to do a factory reset, it was not slow loading. Would these involve the same hardware? I am just trying to gain an understanding of what hardware support you are referring to.
I was wondering about the "incomplete hardware support" you mentioned. I made a recovery drive on a USB stick from the software on the HP when I first purchased it. When I used it to do a factory reset, it was not slow loading. Would these involve the same hardware?
That's a totally different thing that has nothing to do with Acronis. I assume you're referring to a backup made via some HP utility, to return the PC to factory state. I'm talking about the subject of this thread, the ATI Rescue Media.
The ATI Rescue Media is based on Linux, not Windows. Acronis includes support for a wide variety of hardware in it. As new hardware components and versions are issued, sometimes a particular combination is too new to have solid support in the ATI Rescue Media. In such cases, on some hardware the ATI Rescue Media won't run at all, on some hardware the ATI Rescue Media runs, but slowly.
When I got my new laptop, initially the ATI Rescue Media ran rather slowly on it. A later build must have added support for my new hardware, as it the later builds ran quickly.
Ray,
If you had an external USB hard drive it is possible to give the hard drive an Acronis bootable partition and store your images on the secondary partition. This is what I have for my external laptop drives.
It might be possible to do something similar with a USB stick, but of course their capacity isn't large enough yet for disk images. The exception would be that you wouldn't partition a flash stick but boot the recovery environment from an ISO on the stick.
How would I format these partitions? I am planning to get a 1 TB external portable hard drive. I probably don't need much space for the bootable partition. How much would you recommend. My current external drive is a 120gb SSD internal drive that is in a 3.O USB Anker docking station. I have just been using that to put my images on to test my trial version of Acronis.
I was wondering about the "incomplete hardware support" you mentioned. I made a recovery drive on a USB stick from the software on the HP when I first purchased it. When I used it to do a factory reset, it was not slow loading. Would these involve the same hardware?
That's a totally different thing that has nothing to do with Acronis. I assume you're referring to a backup made via some HP utility, to return the PC to factory state. I'm talking about the subject of this thread, the ATI Rescue Media.
The ATI Rescue Media is based on Linux, not Windows. Acronis includes support for a wide variety of hardware in it. As new hardware components and versions are issued, sometimes a particular combination is too new to have solid support in the ATI Rescue Media. In such cases, on some hardware the ATI Rescue Media won't run at all, on some hardware the ATI Rescue Media runs, but slowly.
When I got my new laptop, initially the ATI Rescue Media ran rather slowly on it. A later build must have added support for my new hardware, as it the later builds ran quickly.
I am staring to understand. I think you may be referring to a newer build of Acronis. If that is the case, I am using a trial version, perhaps when I download the latest build, the ATI Rescue Media may be fully supported. I just noticed there does not seem to be any updates since its release.
The trial version Recovery CD has only one function which is functional--that is "recovery a prior created backup".
Due to its restricted nature, it is not programmed to perform backups or clones, etc. Only a purchased version will perform these functions via the CD. The Windows installation will create backups but not the Recovery CD.
If you need to have the trial CD perform these functions, your only recourse is to purchase the retail product and if it does not perform to your satisfaction, ask for a refund but there is only a 30 day window from purchase to a refund request.
The trial version Recovery CD has only one function which is functional--that is "recovery a prior created backup".
Due to its restricted nature, it is not programmed to perform backups or clones, etc. Only a purchased version will perform these functions via the CD. The Windows installation will create backups but not the Recovery CD.
If you need to have the trial CD perform these functions, your only recourse is to purchase the retail product and if it does not perform to your satisfaction, ask for a refund but there is only a 30 day window from purchase to a refund request.
I have a backup that was made by the trial version. I made it immediately after downloading the trial version. It is on an external hard drive. I also made a bootable media on a USB stick. I was able to boot from the USB stick but it took between five and ten minutes to load. Once I booted from the USB stick and the Acronis software fully loaded, I did a recovery from the image I made when I first got the trial version. All went well. I was just referring the length of time it took for the recovery USB stick to load. I was hoping a future build would be quicker. The laptop I purchased is very new. It first became available in July 2013, the HP 15t-J000.
[quote=Ray S]
I was just referring the length of time it took for the recovery USB stick to load. I was hoping a future build would be quicker. The laptop I purchased is very new. It first became available in July 2013, the HP 15t-J000.
I've answered that.
You could send details of your hardware configuration to Acronis, explaining the slowness with Rescue Media. That could ensure that such hardware gets put on the list for inclusion in future builds, though it may happen without such communication.
I will explain the slowness of the Rescue Media and will send them the hardware configuration but I am not sure what to include. Is the following enough:
I have a HP ENVY Touchsmart 15-T-J000, Windows 8 computer. The USB are all 3.0. The processor is i7-4700MQ. The graphics include Intel (R) HD 4600 and a dedicated card Navidia GeForce GT 740M. The hard drive is 1TB 5400RPM Hybrid Hard Drive.
There is 8GB DDR3 System memory. It also has a 24GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache.
How would I format these partitions? I am planning to get a 1 TB external portable hard drive. I probably don't need much space for the bootable partition. How much would you recommend.
The boot partition with the recovery environment is formatted as FAT32. I have made that partition around 500MB, the used space is actually 116MB, this however is an older version and the newer versions are larger.
I've attached a PDF file made by MVP Mudcrab, this was made some time ago, the method though is the same with current versions.