Recover an image over network, can only boot from floppy

I use Acronis True Image 10.0. I have an older laptop with a broken CD-ROM so I can only boot from floppy. I want to restore a TC-Image which resides at the network. So I extracted the contents of the recovery medium to a network folder and booted the laptop with a network capable floppy. On the recovery medium I found a bootmenu.exe and thought this would start the program, but I only got an empty TC-Screen where I had to choose a task - but the task list was totally empty. So this don't work.

I know that the recovery medium is based on Linux, possibly that's the problem.

My questions: Is this solution possible at all? And if not - how can I restore
my laptop with the given restrictions? Or how can I start the recovery program without "booting" it?

TIA

 

zecke36:

One way is to put an Acronis Secure Zone (ASZ) on your laptop. When setting it up, shrink it to the minimum size possible (it will take a little over 30 MB) if you won't be storing any images in the ASZ. The ASZ will then be a separate partition on the hard disk and will contain only the recovery version of the program. You can then boot your laptop into the recovery version on the hard disk and run it from there.

 

Thanks, but it won't work, because the OS (WinXP) ist also broken and does not start anymore. That's the reason I want to restore it.

I don't have any chance to use another medium but the floppy and the network.

I had also the idea to dismount the hard drive from the laptop and connect it directly to another computer. Then I could place a new OS or the ASZ on the HD and put it back to the laptop.

I want to avoid this until there's no other way.

 

Can your laptop boot from a USB flash drive?

 

Hi zecke36,
from the information you have provided, you have some hardware issues that must be addressed if you wish to get the laptop back up and running. First off, from the way you described it the CD/DVD player/recorder is busted. You need to do one of two things. Either get the player working or disconnect it. If your only option is to disconnect it, it would behoove you to do so. Once the CD/DVD player is out of the picture you may be able to boot up into windows and get on the internet and retreive your backup. If not, I'm afraid you will have to do it the hard way. You simply do not have enough room, horse power and capacity with a busted system and only a floppy to fix your system.

 

uptone:

That brings up a good point. The Acronis recovery environment is 30 - 50 MB (depending on which components are installed), so that's way too big to fit on a floppy. But it will fit on a USB flash drive quite handily.

If the laptop can't boot from a USB flash drive then you may need to remove the hard disk and connect it to another PC in order to restore. Hope it isn't an IBM laptop with the 240 head geometry because that's another level of complexity to deal with.

 

By "booted the laptop with a network capable floppy" it sounds like what's being booted is not an Acronis floppy.

It's my understanding that Media Builder can create a set of floppy disks that will boot TI, though I don't know exactly how many would be needed. You may need around 25 at most for just the Full Mode version.

 

The CD drive and the OS is defect. The laptop cannot boot from an USB flash because it's too old. I don't have a floppy drive at my other computer so I can't test the creation of 25 floppies at the moment.

It sounds like there's no way to start the recovery from a floppy with network drivers. I think I have to go the hard way and connect the hard drive to another computer. Then I can put a new OS or the ASZ on it.

Anyway thanks to your answers.

 

Is there any chance that the information in this previous post about PXE network boot is helpful? It's a little sketchy but if you are familiar with PXE booting then maybe you can figure out how to make it work for you.

 

Does TI 10 support creating bootable floppies?

I can't remember since I haven't even tried this since TI 7, and that was just to see if it really worked.

Hmmm, how many floppies would TI 10 need? I don't think I have that many fingers.

 

John:

Yes, it does support creation of bootable floppies. I just ran a quick test with TI 10.4942. If you run Bootable Media Builder and only create the "safe" version of TI 10, the space required is 12.22 MB, so it would probably take 9 or 10 floppies. For network support you would need to create the "full" version, and this takes 14.52 MB, so it would need 11 or 12 floppies. I don't have a floppy drive (nor that many disks) to find out for sure!

 

TI 10 (build 4,942) on my computer shows that 16.49MB would be needed for the Safe Mode version and 35.09MB for the Full Mode version. I wonder why we are getting different values?



I also do not have enough floppy disks on hand to run a test. I don't trust them at all so I only use them when absolutely necessary.

 

Isn't that interesting? I have no idea why, but here's a screen shot. I checked this on two machines (one XP and one Vista) and both say the same thing.

 

We must have have different versions of Media Builder (or something else). Yours shows the Space required in the right-side box and mine shows it below the left tree window. Also, yours doesn't show the Start automatically... option.

 

Since all Acronis programs share the same Bootable Media Builder app, is yours from TI 11? I have never installed any build later than TI 10.4942. If you've installed TI 11 on the same machine then maybe that's an explanation.

*Edit-
Added screen capture of file properties. This is getting more interesting...

 

After a clean install of Vista (when I setup the computer), I installed DD 10 (build 2,160) and then TI 10 (build 4,942). TI 11 was never installed.

Your Date modified is different from mine even though they say the same version, though that may just be the date/time from when it was put on my computer.

The MD5 value on the MediaBuilder.exe file is 32a67e18a3790c04b27945e2ccfd7eb0.

Here are the details from my download of TI 10 (build 4,942):

 

I installed the same two programs in the same order as you did. My TI10.4942 installer has the same properties listed as yours except the Date Modified is a day later. The MD5 sum for C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\MediaBuilder\MediaBuilder.exe is 83c0d868f99f06b05c3a9c9407f310e0, so something is different.

 

The DD 10 (2,160) installation file's MD5 is: df5062f70fdd5dcc0d136b27fa16d45c.

The TI 10 (4,942) installation file's MD5 is: 64ef3274e803a85042671f109376ee8c.

 

Code:

C:\Program Files\Utilities>md5sums "G:\Apps\TrueImage10.0.4942_s_en.exe"

MD5sums 1.2 freeware for Win9x/ME/NT/2000/XP+
Copyright (C) 2001-2005 Jem Berkes - http://www.pc-tools.net/
Type md5sums -h for help

[Path] / filename                              MD5 sum
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[G:\Apps\]
TrueImage10.0.4942_s_en.exe               100% [b]64ef3274e803a85042671f109376ee8c[/b]

C:\Program Files\Utilities>md5sums "G:\Apps\DiskDirectorSuite10.0.2160_s_en.exe"


MD5sums 1.2 freeware for Win9x/ME/NT/2000/XP+
Copyright (C) 2001-2005 Jem Berkes - http://www.pc-tools.net/
Type md5sums -h for help

[Path] / filename                              MD5 sum
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[G:\Apps\]
DiskDirectorSuite10.0.2160_s_en.exe       100% [b]df5062f70fdd5dcc0d136b27fa16d45c[/b]

Well, at least we started with the same installers...

 

Media Builder with TI 11 (8,053) also displays the same as the image in Post #12 (with the exception of the TI version and build). It's also a newer version: 9.4, build 83.

 

Same file size?

 

No. The MediaBuilder.exe for TI 11 is 6.49MB.

 

Well, I'm stumped. Since we both started with the exact same installer files then we must have done something different -- installed in a different order or unchecked some option during an install or something. As far as I can tell, my rescue builds work fine and seem to have all of the appropriate features of TI 10 and DD 10, so I'm at a loss to explain this.

 

On my XP Game setup I still have DD 10 (2,117) and TI 9 (3,677) installed. The screen displayed by it is the same as yours with the Space required on the right side and no Start automatically... option.

MediaBuilder for it is listed as version 9.3.0.68. This is the same as TI 10. The file size is 3.17MB (which is much closer to your size) and the MD5 value is 841dd808cbda1f85da52a721758bdda2.

It seems that Acronis has several versions of the program that all have the same version/build number.

It does seem odd that our installers match, but the screen shown doesn't. Perhaps you installed DD after you installed TI? I always try to install the oldest first.