Help creating bootable Image

Hello all. I've recently purchased Acronis True Image Home 11 for the sole purpose of creating a bootable USB hard drive image. I've been looking around and found this https://www.wilderssecurity.com/supportfiles/acronis_bootable_usb_hd.pdf post by a member of the forum. I have a few questions about this though.

What is the purpose of creating the bootable flash drive when the purpose of the article is to create a bootable USB drive?

Instead of a USB drive may I use a CD?

I already partioned my USB drive into 3 sections, a 50GB space for my notebooks image, another 50GB image of my desktop and the last 350GB or so is left for other data. How do I get both images of my notebook and desktop onto the same drive? In the article it says that the drive will be formatted.

If I understand what I'm reading correctly, the bootable media will be restored to the USB Hard disk and then on top of that it will include the image of the drive? Also if I do it once do I need to do it again for the other image.

Thank you in advance for any help.

 

I assume by this that you mean you want to boot TI from the hard drive and be able to restore an image (or images) that are stored on the drive.

The Acronis Media Builder program does not support directly creating a bootable USB hard drive. In order to get the required files to put on the hard drive, it is necessary to create a bootable flashdrive.

Acronis already supports creating CDs and DVDs that include the rescue media and/or the One-Click Restore program. Select the option when you create a backup to CD or DVD.

It's not really necessary to partition the USB hard drive for storing images from different computers. You can more easily save the images in folders on the same partition.

If you follow the insructions in the guide, the contents of the drive will be erased when the flashdrive image is restored to it. There are ways around this if you have the right disk management software. However, it's still recommended that you have any important images and files saved in another location before making changes just in case something goes wrong.

The MBR and the Acronis partition (along with its files) will get restored to the hard drive. No other files will exist on the drive at that point. You'll need to create the NTFS partition(s) you want and then copy (or save) the image files to it.

There is no need to repeat the procedure once you have it setup and booting. The Acronis files can be updated by just copying them from an updated flashdrive (to update to a new build, for example).

Adding the other image to the drive is as simple as saving it there when it's created or copying it back to the drive from a backup location.

Except for the USB hard drive being able to boot to the Acronis media, treat the drive as any normal USB hard drive.

 

Okay, so once I restore the image on the flash drive to the hard disk, the hard disk is able to boot in able computer capable of booting from a USB device? Therefore I can delete the Acronis file on the flash drive because I won't need it anymore, correct?

After I have a hard disk booting into the Acronis program, all I have to do is essentially create an image of the hard drive and save it to the USB hard disk? Also if I have multiple images, when booting into the program, does it gives me the choice of which image to restore even if they are in different partitions?

Now my last question is completely unrelated (sort of) but, how do you hide a partition (keep it from displaying in windows at least)?

Last but not least, thank you for your wonderful help.

 

After you make the bootable flashdrive using the Acronis Media Builder program, make sure it boots properly on your computer. If the flashdrive doesn't boot, the hard drive with the flashdrive image restored to it won't boot either.

After you know the hard drive boots okay, you can do what you want with the flashdrive.

Correct.

Yes, it does. It would be good to read Grover's guides and/or the TI manual if you're unfamiliar with how the program operates.

If you have a partitioning program (like Disk Director, for example), you can hide partitions. Otherwise, you can use Windows Disk Management and just unassign a drive letter to the partition you don't want to see.

 

Okay, awesome. Thank you for your help. The flash drive booted into the Acronis program, the only problem I encountered was when I clicked Turn Off Computer, my notebook would make a long beep and basically freeze until I manually push the power button to power down the system. I don't think its much of a problem though. Thank you again for your help.

 

Another question, I'm at the point where I restore the flash drive image to the USB hard disk. Now do I choose the partition I seperated for my XP system and restore the bootable flash there, or should I reformat the USB drive so it is an entire drive? Preferably I rather keep the 3 partitions I have. Also, when I create the bootable version of the desktop, do I restore the bootable flash again to the other partition? Or will one in one partition be sufficient enough?

The reason why I ask is that in the instructions it says to create an Active partition type and the description says that it is the partition the system will boot from vs a primary one where it says something about selecting which one.

 

Normally, as in the instructions, you would restore the flashdrive image as a Disk Image and resize the Acronis partition to a small size. Then use Disk management to create a new NTFS partition (or multiple partitions) for your data (backup images, etc.).

You really don't want to replace your XP partition with the Acronis partition as the Acronis partition is FAT32 and the XP partition is probably NTFS.

The Acronis partition must be restored as Active. If you restore the Disk Image, then it will be restored that way. If you select to just restore the partition, you'll have to select Active as the type. If the partition isn't Active, it won't boot.

If you have partitioning software (Disk Director, etc.), you could shrink the XP partition to make a little room at the start of the drive for the Acronis partition. Then restore the Acronis flashdrive image partition to the new hard drive partition and finally restore the MBR/Track 0 from the flashdrive image to the hard drive.

If you follow the guide and restore the Disk Image of the flashdrive to the USB hard drive, you will lose your existing partitions and their contents. Make sure you have backups.