Install rescue versions of TI9 and DD10 to hard disk

Now that I've purchased both Acronis True Image 9 and Acronis Disk Director 10 for use with my laptop, I've created a bootable USB thumb drive that contains the Rescue Media versions of both products.

I can boot the laptop from the USB thumb drive and do recovery operations if anything goes wrong. This strategy will work fine IF I happen to remember to bring the thumb drive with me wherever I take the laptop.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to create a separate partition on the hard drive and install rescue versions of both TI and DD? If something happens and Windows won't boot then I could boot into the rescue version of TI and restore a backed-up image or use Disk Director to set a partition active, or perform other maintenance tasks.

I use GRUB as my bootloader and have been trying to do the above. Here's what I've done so far:

• Created a new 100 MB logical partition at the end of the drive
• Formatted it with FAT16
• Temporarily assigned a drive letter so that the partition could be seen by Windows
• Started Windows. Copied the files from the bootable USB stick to the new partition
• Using a utility, extracted the bootsectors from the USB stick
• Using the disk editor in DD, replaced the bootsector of the FAT16 partition with the one from the USB thumb drive (being careful not to write over the BIOS Parameter Block)
• Removed the drive letter from the partition to hide it from Windows

Then I tried from a GRUB shell to start the Acronis utilities:

Code:

root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1
boot

The Acronis utilities do not start up. I get a GRUB error 18 (Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS. This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general).

So I assume that I need to locate this partition at the beginning of the disk instead of at the end?

The bootable rescue media option is a very nice (and necessary) feature of TI and DD and the bootable CD and bootable USB thumb drive versions work well. Does anybody know how to create a version that permanently resides in a separate partition on your laptop's hard drive?

 

OK, got it working.

All that I was missing in the above sequence was to change the value of "Hidden Sectors" in the new partition. When a logical partition is created, this value is set to "63", which is only correct for booting if the partition is the very first one.

To fix, use the View "As FAT16 Boot Sector" in Disk Editor in Acronis Disk Director. Change the value of "Hidden Sectors" to the absolute sector number at the beginning of the new logical partition.

My partition was at the end of the drive and was partition number 8, so here's the addition to GRUB's menu.lst file:

Code:

title         Acronis Disk Utilities
root          (hd0,7)
chainloader   +1
boot

Selecting this from the GRUB menu at boot time brings up the Acronis menu that allows me to choose to run the rescue version of either Disk Director or True Image. VERY NICE! That's just what I wanted.

 

Hello k0lo,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Management Software

We are very glad to know that you have fixed this issue.
Thank you for provided solution.
We shall keep it in mind for the cases alike yours.

Thank you
--
Alexander Gladkov

 

I was wondering if someone would know how to streamline this process with step-by-step instructions under the following conditions:

1) don't have a usb key. But making a bootable partition from and iso image should be fine?
2) use windows xp only.
3) don't know anything about editing boot sectors in a raw fashion.

 

bleh, I figured out the parts I didn't understand. Here's how I did it exactly for the details that seem fuzzy.

I used the usb key thing. I had some problems making the darn thing "software related". But anyhow, after you make it...

You need MKBT - http://www.nu2.nu/mkbt/
You then save the boot record using expert mode (-x flag) from usb key
and load it up on the partition u want (so that it has a boot record)

You might need to fix the mbr of the harddrive if it doesn't have 1. Any utility that fixes mbr should do...like partition table doctor, etc.

 

I dont know why Acronis cant integrate TI into the OSS menu.. you can access DDS from it, why not TI...

In my case DDS and OSS are on a different partion than my OS, so it would not cause any probs for me backing up/restoring partitons.. my OS partitions are seperate from my boot partition.

They could have an Acronis Utility menu, with access to OSS, DDS and TI all from one menu... in a similar way to the CD, and what you have achieved....