When to remove bootable ATI flash?
In old ATI v10/11 it was ok to remove the CD/DVD soon after ATI recovery loaded.
But now with this whole big affair I'm not so sure what ATI is doing.
All I want to do is make sure I can still save logs to a local drive and hit X after that, so that the next boot is into Windows.
I normally remove flash the instant I see a Thinkpad startup but before the selection of Windows comes up. Not much room for a timing error.
(I was a tad early Late yesterday but doubt you want to hear that story)
Flash drives should be removed and inserted while the system is offline - not trying to time between POST and the OS bootloader. Your second screenshot shows an error booting to Acronis rescue media - is that the issue you need help with?
1) configure your bios with the boot order you want. If you want to boot a flash drive, put it as a priority above your main hard drive. If you want to boot the hard drive first, put it first
2) If you have your hard drive first and don't want to change the bios boot order to boot the flash drive, use your onetime boot menu to pick a specific device. This is normally F12, F1, ESC or Del (but depends on the system bios). On my gigabyte board, if I use the one time boot menu, it works fine. HOwever, if I use the bios configuratoin boot override menu, I also get a boot failure with USB flash drives like acronis. Try the one time boot menu instead of the boot override menu if your system has one - read the user manual to find out.
Bobbo, Thanks for answering.
What do you mean by "offline" - shutdown, powered off?
I would very much like it to be powered off when I'm done. But when I close ATI by using X in the upper right corner of GUI, it closes ATI and immediately wants to restart. Which is why timing to remove the flash is so tricky and might lead to the screen I posted.
There is an option at the bottom of GUI to check to "shutdown the computer when the operation is completed", also a restart option. Both are blank because I want to be able to save a log, so I can't select that shutdown option.
I don't but can use F12, hitting it many times. DVDROM is first, then USB flash (if plugged in), then harddrive. I can select any, but it's a pest to do because if the flash is still connected, I might be too late or too early hitting F12.
I have not seen any boot override menu in the Lenovo information, and probably wouldn't want to use it.
Funny thing is, I have no such problems with a live linux flash. Mint gives me an option to just shutdown so I don't have to go through hoops of when to remove.
Oh, back to my original question - can I remove my flash once it loaded I'm on the ATI screen? Because if I can (as was in v11) the problem is solved.
If I can't, then I guess I'll check that option to shutdown and forget about the logs.
My understanding of Rob's comments is that when wanting to boot from USB flash media, you should plug in that media while the system is powered off, but alternatively, you could insert the media whilst Windows is active, then simply do a restart to choose to boot from it.
As far as what to do after you have finished using the USB bootable media, then as you state, you cannot use the 'Shutdown on completion' option if you want to be able to save the logs for the actions performed.
I have encountered the same issue with timing the removal of USB media, and have simply removed the media while still in the Acronis application in the belief that I couldn't cause any problems by doing so as all my Backup or Restore activities had completed. It's been a little while and I can't remember if there was any side effects in doing this, but can only suggest giving it a try for yourself. Worse case you will need to force power off and restart if Acronis is looking for something on the media to facilitate the shutdown or restart.
256egd:
To answer your question, yes. The TI recovery programs (either the Linux or the WinPE versions) load into and run from RAM. So once the recovery program has loaded you can remove your flash drive.
Experiments, using Linux version:
#1: See flawed img8170. I pulled the flash after ATI loaded but before clicking to do disk backup. None of my drives were visible. So I plugged it back in. Drives and partitions reappeared, ATI didn't get confused, and I made a diff image and saved the log.
#2: See correct list in img8176. Here, I pulled the flash soon after it started creating partition image. Got backup, validated, saved logs.
In both instances after I clicked X to close ATI, it did, Think Pad splash screen came on, immeditately ATI wrote 4 lines on a black screen. One line said "requesting system reboot", I had no time to read the others. I got selection of windows to boot, and all is well.
So it looks to me like I need to delay disconnecting just a bit so that ATI can know all about partitions.
Thanks for your update and results of testing, sounds like Mark was correct about all being loaded to memory, so just really a case of removing the USB media once that has completed or prior to shutting down.
If you would like to end your Linux based boot media session with the boot media still attached to your system and not have to worry about it rebooting into the boot media once you are finished with the application you can do the following:
Press Ctrl+Alt+F2
This will take you to the Linux shell command prompt. Once at the prompt type
shutdown
Your machine will power off which will allow the removal of a boot media flash drive. If you are using CD/DVD media then your method is the way to go.