System Image Drive

[Dan99]

I created a system image drive. I also created rescue media. Both with Acronis True Image 2016. I was able to boot with the rescue media drive to the Acronis menu's but when I selected the full image drive and pressed recover from a backup it did not just had some text on a black screen. Then I tried the Full Image drive alone and it seemed to boot with that into Windows 10 but I am not sure if it was the USB image or the system hard drive. Does that sound like I got it right? Do I not need the rescue media to boot the system?

Now when the system boots, right after the bios display, it says starting Acronis loader and another line of text too fast to read. No USB drives are installed I did find the Acronis startup recovery manager which is loaded on my system now and it gives me an option to deactivate so it does not start before system boot.

Will I still have the backup at the end of the free trial ? I guess I will find out in 14 days. and I will not know if I have a backup till the system fails. I wish there was a way to verify my backup.

 

[Trouble]

Acronis creates a disk image with a file extension of .tib
If you have Acronis installed on the Computer from which you are attempting to access the disk image (.tib) file you should be able to right click the .tib file and chose from the context menu acronis, archive, mount.
You should then be prompted to assign drive letters if there are multiple partitions in the disk image. You should then be able to browse the drive to inspect its' contents, and then unmount it.

 

[Dan99]

Acronis creates a disk image with a file extension of .tib
If you have Acronis installed on the Computer from which you are attempting to access the disk image (.tib) file you should be able to right click the .tib file and chose from the context menu acronis, archive, mount.
You should then be prompted to assign drive letters if there are multiple partitions in the disk image. You should then be able to browse the drive to inspect its' contents, and then unmount it.

Did that, thanks. How about my question "do I need the rescue media drive and the System image drive or just the System image drive to boot should there be a system failure?"

 

[Trouble]

I personally rely on Acronis and the disk images that I create using that software.
If I find myself in a position where I need to restore an image for some reason or other, I boot from the Acronis Rescue Media to do that.
On the other hand, IF....
I want to address a Windows issue I use the Windows Installation Media.
I keep multiple instances of the installation on various media (Optical DVD, USB ThumbDrive) and because of my environment I keep both 32 and 64 bit versions as well as media configured to boot legacy as well as UEFI / GPT configured computers.

I do not generally use the Windows Backup utility, so I don't typically create a Windows System Image nor a "system image drive" whatever that is.
A system image is not typically bootable, you would need to use the software that created the "system image" or the "disk image" (not the same thing by the way) to boot the computer and then point it at the "system image".

In the case of Windows, I would boot from the installation media and then use the advance troubleshooting screens to get to "System Image Recovery"

IN the case of an Acronis Disk Image, I simply boot to the Acronis Rescue Media and point it at the .tib file I want to use to recover the disk.

 

[Dan99]

It is all too complex. Just when I thought I was making progress your comments show me how far from success I am. For example, In your last comment "In the case of an Acronis Disk Image, I simply boot to the Acronis Rescue Media and point it at the .tib file I want to use to recover the disk." I can not seem to do even that as simple as it seems to you.

 

[Trouble]

I can not seem to do that as simple as it seems to you.

I don't have a lot of experience with the "free trial" version of Acronis, so I can't speak to what its' limitations might be and I hate to keep telling someone that, something is possible, when they have a version that may have some restrictions as to full functionality, but....
Have you created the rescue media ( as in burned it to a DVD) from within the Acronis Software?
Have to attempted to boot from that media?
Have you configured your BIOS to boot from optical media first?
AND
It may be that you might have to turn off SafeBoot (or whatever it's called in your BIOS) to enable or switch from UEFI to a Legacy boot device. IF that is even an option, some newer computers do not even support booting from legacy devices, in that you cannot disable SafeBoot or SecureBoot or whatever it's called.
Although I'm relatively certain that the latest version of Acronis Rescue Media is UEFI compatible. It may require that you use the WinPE version of the Rescue Media rather than the default Linux Based Rescue Media, I'm not certain.

 

[Dan99]

BIOS is set to boot from the USB drive that has the rescue media from Acronis. It boots and I see 4 menu options on a blue screen which say Acronis and I pick one (64 bit) which opens the main menu. There I select Rescue but get lost at that point. I browse for the backup file and I see the USB drive which contains the Tib file but I can not proceed from there. The OK button is greyed out.

 

[Trouble]

The process is a bit slow when using the rescue media so you may have to wait a couple extra seconds for a response, and....
You have to actually select the .tib file (highlight it) in order to proceed.

 

[Dan99]

I did highlight it. I will try again and see what waiting produces.

 

[Dan99]

I waited but the OK button did not light. I found another option "Entire PC ,,, ,tib" and that lit the OK button but when I pressed it , it went forward but that screen had no OK button or other way to proceed.

 

[Trouble]

Sounds like there is something wrong with your .tib file(s).
I just went through something similar on a friends laptop.
The backup seemed to work from within Acronis installed on his Windows 10 machine, but it was never viable.
He dropped it off today and I yanked the drive and connected it to my Windows 10 machine and performed an Acronis Disk Image of the drive without any problem.
I just finished restoring it to a brand new Samsung 500 gig hard drive that he purchased and am now updating his 10240 install to 10586.

I can't explain what his problem was. He may have had a bad Acronis Install, or......
I noticed that he could never fully defrag the partitions on the old 350 gig, 5400 RPM spinner so there may have been some issues with the drive physically or some issues with the partition structure.
All I know is that I performed a disk image of the whole thing with the drive docked to my PC (after setting error handling to ignore bad sectors) and it worked and the I was able to restore the image to the new disk and it booted without problems and all partitions seem to be intact including the HP recovery (OEM) partition.

The only difference was....
He was using Acronis 2016 (full paid for and registered version) and I'm still using Acronis 2014 on my PC.

Once this upgrade to 10586 finishes on his laptop, I'll take a closer look at his version of Acronis and see if I can get a viable disk image for him onto his Toshiba External USB drive which he dropped off also.
Maybe the problem for him was or is with that external drive...... IDK..... but I'll figure it out eventually. OR, it'll just work and I'll never know what the heck was going on.