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Can't see USB HDD on Ti 2018 or 2021

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Hello All,

I'm having a right frustrating time with UEFi Rescue Media (PE) for Ti 2018 AND 2021. When Attempting to either backup or restore TO a USB HDD, I'm left with the nuisance of not being able to the see that drive. It sees it just fine when prompted for the drive to backup, but when the internal HDD is selected, and I try to direct the software to back it up, I cannot select my portable HDD.

This is the case with 3 different motherboards and a brand new laptop.

Acronis Ti 2014 in MBR mode sees the USB HDD just fine, and I can backup to it, but I need UEFi rescue media to restire it to the new laptop and am at a loss. I want to let loose with a flurry of obsenities, but will hold off in case it's some silly little thing, and something idiotic that I am doing, or not doing.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Cheers
Dave

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Dave, welcome to these public User Forums.

What size of USB HDD is involved here, is this using GPT or MBR, and is it connected directly to the motherboard USB ports when being used?

What type of rescue media are you using / how did you create this?

The recommendation is to use the 'Simple' WinPE version of the rescue media created on the system where it will be used (from the Windows Recovery Environment to pick up device drivers needed etc).

Just to clarify the situation,

Using True Image 2018 bootable media or True Image 2021 bootable media, on a UEFI system:

  • Backup internal HDD to external (USB) HDD: does not work.
  • Backup external HDD to internal HDD: works.

Using True Image 2014 bootable media, on a MBR (BIOS ?) system:

  • Backup internal HDD to external (USB) HDD: works.
  • Backup external HDD to internal HDD: works.

Is this right?

Can you clarify what you mean by MBR? Are you using a BIOS system and it works in this case? Or is this the same UEFI system but running in legacy BIOS compatibility mode with a MBR formatted disk? Am I to understand that this test was done using True Image 2014 bootable media? Why use so old version? Why not try 2018 or 2021 that you have? Are all these tests done on the same computer/motherboard?

Am I to understand that you are attempting to migrate your data from a desktop PC to a new laptop PC? And you want to do this by creating a disk image of your internal HDD in your desktop PC on the external HDD, and then connecting the external HDD to your new laptop PC and restoring the disk image to the internal disk of the laptop? Is that right?

I would second Steve's suggestion and create a Windows PE based Acronis bootable media. The Linux based Acronis bootable media has often issues, especially on newer hardware. But in order to create one you need Windows to be up and running, with True Image installed and activated on it.

You can download the Acronis bootable media from your Acronis online dashboard, but note that this media is Linux based (due to the nature of open source software being freely distributable which is in stark contrast to Windows). So you need to create the Windows based bootable media on a live Windows system, preferably on the same hardware you intend to restore your backup to (this is to ensure that all necessary drivers are baked in from the get go).

Another possible solution for your situation that you could explore, is the ability to clone the old disk, as opposed to creating a backup of the old and restoring it to the new disk. I personally have not worked with cloning in True Image so I can't say much about it, other than that I have seen people on this forum face issues with that procedure too. I personally always go for the same method as you, I create a backup of the old disk and restore it to the new disk. As I recall a recent discussion about this, cloning is supposed to be faster than backup/restore but more prone to errors and issues. That may not be the case in your situation, I think it depends mostly on what hardware you have or rather how old/new it is. The recent issues I read about cloning was related to M.2 SSD disks (and a possible bug in True Image).

Steve Smith wrote:

Dave, welcome to these public User Forums.

What size of USB HDD is involved here, is this using GPT or MBR, and is it connected directly to the motherboard USB ports when being used?

It's a 2TB partitioned to GPT

What type of rescue media are you using / how did you create this?

PE rescue media created through Acronis Ti 2021 for Windows. I then tried the basic one loaded onto a memorystick for UEFI through RUFUS. Neither worked.

The recommendation is to use the 'Simple' WinPE version of the rescue media created on the system where it will be used (from the Windows Recovery Environment to pick up device drivers needed etc).

I appreciate your getting back to me. I transferred the backup to an MBR partitioned drive, and Acronis rescue meda was able to see it, so I'm thinking that was the problem.

Cheers
Dave

Samir wrote:

Just to clarify the situation,

Using True Image 2018 bootable media or True Image 2021 bootable media, on a UEFI system:

  • Backup internal HDD to external (USB) HDD: does not work. (I can testify to this)
  • Backup external HDD to internal HDD: works. (I'll keep that is mind, would've been a decent solution early into the evolution)

Using True Image 2014 bootable media, on a MBR (BIOS ? yes) system:

  • Backup internal HDD to external (USB) HDD: works. (Yes, very reliable edition!)
  • Backup external HDD to internal HDD: works. (Yes, again)

Is this right?

Can you clarify what you mean by MBR? Are you using a BIOS system and it works in this case? Or is this the same UEFI system but running in legacy BIOS compatibility mode with a MBR formatted disk? Am I to understand that this test was done using True Image 2014 bootable media? Why use so old version? Why not try 2018 or 2021 that you have? Are all these tests done on the same computer/motherboard?

BIOS or MBR meaning booting legacy, old school on a machine that supports both

Am I to understand that you are attempting to migrate your data from a desktop PC to a new laptop PC? And you want to do this by creating a disk image of your internal HDD in your desktop PC on the external HDD, and then connecting the external HDD to your new laptop PC and restoring the disk image to the internal disk of the laptop? Is that right?

Correct

I would second Steve's suggestion and create a Windows PE based Acronis bootable media. The Linux based Acronis bootable media has often issues, especially on newer hardware. But in order to create one you need Windows to be up and running, with True Image installed and activated on it.

Yes. I created and tested both, on both 2018 and 2021 from the native programs within Win10

You can download the Acronis bootable media from your Acronis online dashboard, but note that this media is Linux based (due to the nature of open source software being freely distributable which is in stark contrast to Windows). So you need to create the Windows based bootable media on a live Windows system, preferably on the same hardware you intend to restore your backup to (this is to ensure that all necessary drivers are baked in from the get go).

I normally use the Acronis Windows builds to create both the PE and Linux rescue media as ISO's, then use RUFUS to create USB media.

Another possible solution for your situation that you could explore, is the ability to clone the old disk, as opposed to creating a backup of the old and restoring it to the new disk. I personally have not worked with cloning in True Image so I can't say much about it, other than that I have seen people on this forum face issues with that procedure too. I personally always go for the same method as you, I create a backup of the old disk and restore it to the new disk. As I recall a recent discussion about this, cloning is supposed to be faster than backup/restore but more prone to errors and issues. That may not be the case in your situation, I think it depends mostly on what hardware you have or rather how old/new it is. The recent issues I read about cloning was related to M.2 SSD disks (and a possible bug in True Image).

I seem to be in good company. Yes, I've used the cloning methof before, and would only use in dire need, or when risk mitigation of data loss is not a high oriority. Not that it hasn't been reliable in the past, it's just that if you screw the pooch, you really screw the pooch.

Thank you so much, Samir :) 

Thank you Steve and Samir for getting back to me with thoughtful, non-smarmy (some forums are just painful) replies.

I think I'll probably go with removing the source media and attaching to the USB system and backing up to USB to see how that goes. As I said, I was later able to restore the backup, but only after I moved the image to a non-GPT USB disk. Come to think of it, I have no idea how that backup drive came to be partitioned that way.

Cheers
Dave

Dave, a brief comment, if your external USB HDD is only 2TB in size, then it doesn't need to be using GPT as this is really only needed for larger drive sizes which exceed the maximum size supported by MBR which is 2TB.

I don't have any such larger drives outside of my NAS which uses 2 x 3TB drives in RAID so have never tested the scenarios described above.  My own 2TB MBR HDD drives work just fine with both UEFI & MBR boot systems, so have never had a need to use different schemes!

The most import factor that needs to be stressed is to always boot the rescue media to match the BIOS mode used by the OS being restored.  This is to avoid Acronis getting clever and migrating the OS to a different BIOS mode based on how the media is booted!

Obviously, if you have drives larger than 2TB these will need to use GPT and in turn will need UEFI for best support.