Is there a way to save Acronis Bootable Rescue Media to a small partition?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by OpTicaL, Jun 6, 2009.

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  1. OpTicaL

    OpTicaL Registered Member

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    I was wondering if I could save "Acronis Bootable Rescue Media" to a small partition on the hdd and boot off that partition instead of the using a external source (CD, USB, Floppy).
     
  2. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    If you use Grub4DOS as boot manager you can just copy the iso to the root of your drive and boot it directly from there.
     
  3. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Here's a link for setting up Grub4DOS: Create a Bootable Flashdrive Using Grub4DOS
    It works fine for hard drives too and it's what I mainly use for the being able to boot many, many different builds and programs from a single partition.

    You can also create a small partition just for booting the Acronis Media, but it takes more work. You can see the general procedure by reading the guide for the bootable USB drive linked in my signature.
     
  4. OpTicaL

    OpTicaL Registered Member

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    Thanks Earthling and MudCrab!
     
  5. Tatou

    Tatou Registered Member

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    Don't forget to have something external bootable as well in case the hard drive crashes completely :)
     
  6. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Can I take advantage of this thread to clarify something MudCrab? If you are using Grub4DOS to dual boot say two versions of Windows situated on the first and second primary partitions, where's the best place to locate the ISO?
     
  7. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Earthling:

    It won't matter. When you boot the ISO, just point Grub4DOS to its location. The ISO can be anywhere on the disk. I have mine in a hidden partition and it still works.
     
  8. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Although the methods being described here are preferable, don't overlook the obvious. TI comes with a built-in capability to create and boot into its rescue environment -- the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM). If you create an Acronis Secure Zone on the disk and shrink it to its minimum size (about 30 MB), then activate the ASRM, you will also achieve similar results.

    That said, I still prefer using a third-party boot manager like Grub4DOS.
     
  9. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Thanks. I'm pleased that it doesn't have to go on the first primary because that's the partition I use as a test bed, currently for Win 7.

    Because I have a separate VistaPE partition I've never actually tried this ISO booting, but VistaPE is a bit slow to load these days so I'd like to try it.
     
  10. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Booting the ATI 11 rescue media iso with Grub4DOS works brilliantly, it's up in no time at all.

    The only thing I miss from my VistaPE bootable partition is a file manager, so is there any answer to that?
     
  11. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Earthling:

    What went wrong with VistaPE? One of my earlier builds has proven to be golden, so I've saved an image of it and it's been in frequent use for about 2 years now. Do you happen to have an older copy on an image? Or, do you still have the files from an earlier WinBuilder run? No need to build again if you do...

    If you're looking for an alternative there's always MustangPE.
     
  12. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    It's just taking a very long time - relatively - to go through the finding everything process, accompanied by furious activity on my eSATA which holds a lot of tib files for all the comps here. It's still perfectly usable, but in fact an ATI rescue CD will boot in half the time, so unless I want file management I haven't been using it much at all.

    I might try a new build, as I still have the scripts, but ISO booting is so flash I was thinking 'if only I can add a file manager' :doubt:
     
  13. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    That was on my laptop, but now I'm trying to boot an iso on my main PC and no matter which partition I locate it on I get a boot error from Grub4DOS telling me the file has to be in a contiguous area of the disk.

    I know what it means, but how do you get round this?
     
  14. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Defragment. Remove the ISO file and run a defragmenter, then copy the ISO back.
     
  15. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Yep, that was the first thing I did, using Auslogic. I'd better try again, and if still no good try a different defragger.
     
  16. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    You shouldn't need to defrag the partition. You just need to add an option for Grub4DOS so it loads the ISO into memory first. (I need to make a note of this in the instructions, but haven't gotten around to it yet.)

    For your ISO entry, add the --mem option to the line in the menu.lst file. For example:
    Code:
    title Acronis True Image Home 2009 (9,709)
    map [B][COLOR="Red"]--mem [/COLOR][/B](hd0,0)/acronis/ti-12-9709.iso (hd32)
    map --hook
    chainloader (hd32)
    boot
    I usually use this option for most of my small ISO files because I move them on and off the flashdrive/partition and I don't want to mess with a defrag.
     
  17. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Interesting. Either method should work. From the Grub4DOS documentation:
    Code:
    ******************************************************************************
    ***                  The CDROM emulation (virtualization)                  ***
    ******************************************************************************
    
    The CDROM emulation is sometimes called ISO emulation. Here is an example:
    
    	map  (hd0,0)/myiso.iso  (hd32)
    	map  --hook
    	chainloader  (hd32)
    	boot
    
    if myiso.iso is not contiguous and you have enough memory, add a --mem option:
    
    	map  --mem  (hd0,0)/myiso.iso  (hd32)
    	map  --hook
    	chainloader  (hd32)
    	boot
    I've had success with the first method after a defrag to ensure that the ISO is stored on disk contiguously. The second method requires enough RAM to hold the ISO file (not a problem with the small Acronis ISO).
     
  18. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    It seems neither of these methods is going to work on this Medion. Without the --mem command I always get the contiguous error, and with it -

    Auto detect number-of-heads failed, use default 255
    Auto detect sectors-per-track failed, use default 63
    Unrecognized partition table on disk a0 blah, blah
     
  19. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Earthling:

    On this machine, what do you get as the output from the geometry command when entered into Grub4DOS at its command prompt?
     
  20. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    'Unrecognized device string'

    Correction - Filename must be an absolute pathname or blocklist
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2009
  21. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Geometry (hd0) lists all partitions as filesystem type NTFS, partition type 0x7
     
  22. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    You may need to experiment with different builds of Grub4DOS. Sometimes there is a build that works correctly and earlier and later builds have problems. All you need to do to try a different build is to download the Grub4DOS files and copy just the grldr file into the partition. There is no need to do any reinstallation/setup, etc., so it's really easy.
     
  23. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    At the top of the list did it say something resembling:
    Code:
    [FONT="Courier New"]drive 0x80(LBA): C/H/S=1024/255/63, Sector Count/Size=xxxxxxxxx/512[/FONT]
    A list of partitions follows the first line. Were there any error messages about nonstandard DOS partitions?

    If all looked normal then the error messages in your post #18 must have been referring to the attempted ISO emulation (virtual hard disk). I don't know why this isn't working for you, but try Paul's suggestion. I'm currently using version 0.4.4 dated 2008-11-19.
     
  24. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Seems I had updated the laptop to 0.4.4 at some point, but didn't do it on the PC. That's fixed it, thanks guys.
     
  25. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Excellent! I think that both Paul (MudCrab) and I have come to the conclusion that using Grub4DOS to boot the Acronis ISO directly is the simplest and most foolproof method of adding the Acronis recovery environment to flash drives or hard disks.
     
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