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February 25th, 2025 23:58
XPS 8960, Acronis True Image 2019 rescue USB media?
Has anyone had success making a rescue USB media for Acronis 2019? Or restoring from it?
It backs up fine. But:
- When trying to restore a backup on top of my C: drive SSD, it reboots, shows it's starting the restore and then terminates with an error. The SSD is unchanged.
- When booting from a USB rescue media, it boots into Acronis, but can't see any of the internal drives - just its drive and anything else on a USB port.
Any suggestions? Has anyone made it work?
Running Windows 11 Pro, BIOS 2.12.0.
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toolworker
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March 9th, 2025 20:13
With help on the Acronis forum, there is a solution - see here.
The problem applies to any PC where RAID is enabled - and is particularly widespread on Dell because they always ship with RAID enabled in the BIOS.
In this situation Intel grabs control and puts its VMD driver on all the internal drives. Acronis can't cope with that.
Acronis is capable of inserting drivers while creating a bootable rescue media. But for some reason the standard VMD driver downloaded from Intel does not work. There is a driver in Windows/System32 ... that does work.
Once you know that, as explained over there, it's quite easy to make the bootable media that will see the internal drives. You just need to know how to boot from it, which is to press F12 when the Dell logo appears during boot.
It is not possible to restore from within ATI because it ignores the VMD drivers, so it's necessary to use the boot media.
toolworker
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March 6th, 2025 17:27
Can I turn RAID off in the BIOS without messing anything up? I don't need RAID.
I ask because this post, for another computer, suggests turning off Intel Volume Management Device (VMD) to make internal drives visible to backup software. There's no setting in the 8960 BIOS for VMD, but apparently it is for RAID, and an Intel app says the controller for all my internal drives is VMD.
The BIOS setting is SATA/NVMe Operation Mode, and the choices are:
and the current setting is RAID on.
Can I change this to AHCI/NVMe without hurting anything? Some posts suggest that this has to be done before installing the OS ...
ispalten
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March 6th, 2025 18:26
You might want to head over to the Acronis Forums for help on this ==> https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-cyber-protect-home-office-and-acronis-true-image-discussions/acronis-true-image-formerly-acronis-cyber-protect-home-office?ckattempt=1
I've used the 2016 and now the present True Image 2025 on an XPS without a problem.
More info would help as well.
Did you create the Boot Disk for Acronis? Is that the one you are calling the USB Rescue? It should have been built prior to needing it as it would grab all the required drivers and tested it? Did you do that?
Drive letters change using the Rescue drive, you need to know (by size usually) the actual C: drive.
That ERROR sure would help understanding what happened as well, but again, you'd have better luck over on the ATI forum I linked above.
toolworker
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March 6th, 2025 19:52
Thanks for your reply, @ispalten .
Yes, I built a USB Rescue Media in ATI. But the internal drives were not recognized either when booting from Rescue Media, or when rebooting to restore a backup from ATI in Windows.
That article did solve the problem. RAID needed to be disabled in the BIOS for the drives to be recognized.
And then after the restore RAID must be enabled again or the restored OS won't boot. So just changing it can cause problems if it isn't changed back.
I posted here instead of the Acronis forum because I suspected the solution would lie with Dell rather than general PCs, and indeed I did find it here. But I'll post the solution over there too.
toolworker
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March 6th, 2025 20:17
BTW @ispalten it would be interesting to know whether your XPS BIOS is configured for RAID or not.
On my 8960 that can be seen in the Intel Rapid Storage Technology app. Clicking on any drive will show "Controller: VMD" at the bottom.
If it is configured for RAID, and your Rescue Media could see internal drives, perhaps ATI 2025 has solved the problem and is able to create a boot that works with RAID enabled.
ispalten
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March 6th, 2025 21:47
@toolworker
I am NOT in a RAID configuration... changed that as soon as I get the XPS, an 8940 model shipped with a boot SSD and a mechanical hard drive. I had to change it as I was installing a 2nd SATA SSD (not an M.2 one) and I knew it might be picked up by RAID. My wife's isn't either. It is an OLDER XPS8500 with a SSD boot drive and 2 physical hard drives.
BOTH have been restored by ATI s/w, 2014/2016, and now the 2025 version.
As long and you use the Rescue disk to 'snapshot' you PC, it should work.
Again, the 'trick' is to find the right drive, it might not be called C:.
Unless you have 2 drives, and both as SSD's, there is little to be gained with RAID, as a mechanical drive is slower.
You can search this forum on how to do it, many threads/subject detail it. Do it wrong, and you could have some problems. The best one would be the ones that use MSCONFIG to boot into Safe Mode, but the BCDEDIT works as well.
BACK UP at least the C: drive, because if there was a problem, you'd be looking at a complete
Windows install.
BTW, DELL ships ALL PC's is seems with the RAID setting enabled.... as I recall, you are NOT in a RAID configuration unless you configure it that way?
toolworker
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March 6th, 2025 22:01
Yes, mine was shipped with RAID enabled, but I don't use RAID. I have a second m.2 SSD and two HDDs, and could spend hours reading different opinions about whether RAID or ACHI is better.
My C drive backs up to one of the HDDs at 3:30 am every day. It saves my butt two or three times a year. And I always back up again before doing system surgery.
ispalten
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March 6th, 2025 23:07
@toolworker
If you have 2 M.2's, then you might be in RAID configuration... and depending which it is, you might REQUIRE both to operate. As I recall, RAID 0 uses both disks alternating between to 2 for storage. RAID 1 duplicates everything on each disk...
Breaking AHCI on a RAID 0 would require a new OS (and apps) install.
Using C: though in RAID 0 acts as ONE drive... so you'd be writing to 2 drives if that is the case.
I suspect Dell using RAID 1 though.