Bootable Media - ACRONIS Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server SBS Edition User Manual

6.10 Bootable media

Bootable media
Bootable media is physical media (CD, DVD, USB drive or other media supported by a machine BIOS
as a boot device) that boots on any PC-compatible machine and enables you to run Acronis Backup &
Recovery 10 Agent either in a Linux-based environment or Windows Preinstallation Environment
(WinPE), without the help of an operating system. Bootable media is most often used to:

recover an operating system that cannot start

access and back up the data that has survived in a corrupted system

deploy an operating system on bare metal

create basic or dynamic volumes on bare metal
 back up sector-by-sector a disk with an unsupported file system
 back up offline any data that cannot be backed up online because of restricted access, being
permanently locked by the running applications or for any other reason.
A machine can be booted into the above environments either with physical media, or using the
network boot from Acronis PXE Server, Windows Deployment Services (WDS) or Remote Installation
Services (RIS). These servers with uploaded bootable components can be thought of as a kind of
bootable media too. You can create bootable media or configure the PXE server or WDS/RIS using
the same wizard.
Linux-based bootable media
Linux-based media contains Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Bootable Agent based on Linux kernel.
The agent can boot and perform operations on any PC-compatible hardware, including bare metal
and machines with corrupted or non-supported file systems. The operations can be configured and
controlled either locally or remotely using the management console.
PE-based bootable media
PE-based bootable media contains a minimal Windows system called Windows Preinstallation
Environment (WinPE) and Acronis Plug-in for WinPE, that is, a modification of Acronis Backup &
Recovery 10 Agent that can run in the preinstallation environment.
WinPE proved to be the most convenient bootable solution in large environments with
heterogeneous hardware.
Advantages:
 Using Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 in Windows Preinstallation Environment provides more
functionality than using Linux-based bootable media. Having booted PC-compatible hardware
into WinPE, you can use not only Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent, but also PE commands
and scripts and other plug-ins you've added to the PE.
 PE-based bootable media helps overcome some Linux-related bootable media issues such as
support for certain RAID controllers or certain levels of RAID arrays only. Media based on PE 2.x,
that is, Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 kernel, allows for dynamic loading of the
necessary device drivers.
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