Universal Restore "Mass Storage Drivers" for Gigabyte GA EP35 DS3L

Background:

I licensed Acronis Echo Workstaton & Universal Plugin to undertake the move of my Windows XP Pro system from an MSI KT6 Delta [MS-6590] socket 7 + VIA KT600 Chipset motherboard to a Gigabyte EP35 DS3L with the Intel ICH9 chipset.

I have tested Echo + UR [8,115] on a VistaPE Boot Disk with Mustang's corresponding Plugin and successfully validated a number of Echo disk images, but also run the Restore operation to the point that the UR component asks for the location of specific "Mass Storage Drivers".

From Gigabyte's site, I have downloaded the appropriate "Chipset" driver for this motherboard. Using WinRAR, I unpacked the exe and from its folder contents have identified all the files with ICH9 in their name. These are:

ich9core.cat
ich9core.inf
ich9id2.cat
ich9id2.inf
ich9ide.cat
ich9ide.inf
ich9smb.cat
ich9smb.inf
ich9usb.cat
ich9usb.inf

Question:

Do all these files comprise "Mass Storage Drivers" or are only some them what UR 'needs'? (My sense is that Universal Restore's search for these drivers is the functional equivalent of having a F6 Boot Disk for a Windows XP new installation.) If all of these are placed on a Floppy or in a Flash Drive folder, will Universal Restore simply 'recognise' and use the correct ones?


Many thanks in advance!

[Still waiting for a reply from Acronis support on Acronis request #1605300.]

 

Hello atitlan,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Remote Workstation Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

You can just specify the location where the drivers are stored as a custom driver location, and Acronis Universal Restore will choose the drivers that best suit the hardware. Alternatively, you can specify the drivers as the ones to be installed regardless of other drivers found for those devices. Please see chapters 3.7 "Acronis Universal Restore" and 7.3.11 "Using Acronis Universal Restore" of Acronis True Image Echo Workstation User's Guide for detailed instructions.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Hello Mr. Setdikov —

Thanks much for your reply. I have read (a number of times) the relevant Universal Restore sections in the Echo Workstation Help PDF. So I had planned on creating a specific 'repository' for the "HAL and mass storage device drivers" of my new motherboard prior to the move/restore operation.

I am reasonably confident that the five sets of driver files I listed compromise this group. But I had hoped for something like a confirmation from Acronis that the non chipset-specific name components — that is, "core", "id2", "ide", "smb", and "usb" — indicate the right class of devices.

Oh well, we learn by doing. If this thing works I shall definitely post back to the forum with a brief account of my experience.

 

Very good question which I have never seen appropriately answered. Dell drivers are especially vexing, with names like R321434. Is it the chipset driver or the SATA driver or the IDE driver or what? The way Dell presents it, there could be 10 different drivers for the same product name (Vostro 200).

Can we point to a root folder on a CD or thumbdrive and let UR work its way through each inf file and enumerate it like Windows does with the %SystemRoot%\inf folder?

Why is it SO friggin difficult to get a simple answer to something as basic as this?

Did you ever get your restore completed?

 

cant_drive_55: Since you ask, the answer, for an utterly unexpected reason, is NO and detailed in this post:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=223829

I ran headlong into an unpublished limitation of Universal Restore. It fails if an "ARC Path" is present in the Boot.ini of a pre-Vista Windows system. Nonetheless, I did 'move' two data partitions onto a new drive and once Wxp Pro was installed and Echo setup, extensively copied configuration files from the mounted archive Universal Restore was unable to.

Epilogue: About three weeks ago I rebuilt that new box into a Vista 64-bit system, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Echo Workstation + UR is working on Vista (x64). During the evolution of this system Nero 7 hosed Vista, so I did a restore from a Vista PE boot disc with Mustang's plugin for Echo of an Archive originally saved to an eSATA external drive by Echo running in Vista.

Flawless recovery in about 15-minutes! (With [x64] I took no chances: Full backup before each new driver and each major Vista utility - then a test period before moving on.)