Salta al contenuto principale

Recovery Boot disk can't see the HDD

Thread needs solution

As per title. When I use the recovery media (a bootable USB disk) it cannot see the HDD - which is a SSD. It WAS working but now does not see the SDD.

What am I doing wrong? I have tried a couple of different rescue media.

0 Users found this helpful

Chris, sorry but we will need some more information in order to understand how to help you with this question.

What type of SSD do you have?  What make, model?

When you say that this was working, when was that, how were you using the Rescue Media, was this on CD/DVD or USB stick?

Which type of Rescue Media are you using?  Is this the standard (linux based) media, or have you installed the Windows ADK and created the WinPE version of the media?

What version of Windows OS do you have, what computer is this?

Thanks Steve

I am using a USB stick Linux-based Rescue media.

Windows 10 on a new Dell XPS13 Notebook Computer Samsung 256GB SSD.

Only yesterday the same USB stick when booted up could see the SSD, but now not. I do not know what is different.

Thanks for any help.

Chris, you said earlier that you had tried a couple of different rescue media, was one of those the WinPE Rescue Media as if so, it is quite likely that the Linux Rescue Media does not have the necessary device drivers to see your SSD and you will need to use the WinPE Media instead.

This is especially true if your Dell XPS13 has an NVMe M.2 SSD drive or if it uses RAID mode for the SSD rather than using AHCI mode.

Hi Steve

My Samsung SSD is an NVMe but I was not using any WinPE media - only Linux-based.

As I said it was working fine and I made an image of the SSD which I used to re-install on the SSD and after that I also made another image - both yesterday. But now the rescue media cannot see the SSD?

Chris, how did you make the image of your NVMe SSD - was this from within Windows using the ATIH main GUI application, if so, then this uses the drivers for the drive used by Windows.

There have been a lot of users coming to the forums with these drives where the WinPE Rescue Media has been the answer to having these drives visible when the standard, Linux media has not seen them.

From Windows, Acronis sees NVME no problem.

From rescue media, Linux media will see NVME drive, only  if the SATA mode is set to AHCI.  There are some motherboards (usually custom ones like ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, etc) that have IRST drivers built into the bios so it will detect if set to RAID as well.  Dell and OEM's usually don't have this feature - I know Dell doesn't.

Check your SATA mode in the bios.  IF it is RAID, that is the issue.  You can temporarily set it to AHCI as a work-a-roudn and set it back to RAID before booting the OS to take an image or restore one.  See ** below

From resuce media, WinPE medial will see the NVME drive if the SATA mode is AHCI.

** From rescue media, WinPE media will see the NVME drive, if the SATA mode is RAID - but only if you have included the IRST drivers from Intel.  To do that, you need to use the MVP WinPE builder - new version released yesterday. Links for Windows ADK and MVP Winpe builder are down below. 

Thanks Bobbo

That fixes it. Changing the SATA mode from RAID to AHCI means the SSD is 'seen' under Linux boot. Then change back to allow the computer to boot in to Windows.

Thing is, I still don't understand why it worked before and then not: I do not recall changing SATA mode.

No idea - I've never been able to get the Dell's to see the PCIE NVME drive with Linux rescue media unless the SATA mode is AHCI.  

I'd encourage you to build the WinPE rescue media with our MVP tool and give it a try though - you'll never have to worry about the bios SATA mode on any system again (well, at least not unless you're using a custom RAID controller like LSI or Rocket Raid - then you might need to add those drivers too, but we already provide the IRST drivers which should work to boot WinPE and detect about 99% of the controllers)

Thanks for the advice - I might just do that.

I am just happy that I CAN use your workaround if I really do need to restore my disk. I mostly, I guess like many of us, just use Acronis TI as insurance and basically hope I don't ever really need to restore my HDD in an emergency. But on the few occasions I have really needed it, it has been absolutely worth it.

Presumably Acronis will fix this issue in future versions?

Thanks again.

It's a driver compatibility issue with Linux and RAID for these new drives. Hopefully someone will figure it out, but I'd guess that WinPE may become more the norm if not.