User Guide

Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010 247
6.9 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager
Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is a modification of the bootable agent (p. 363), residing on the
system disk in Windows, or on the /boot partition in Linux and configured to start at boot time on
pressing F11. It eliminates the need for a separate media or network connection to start the
bootable rescue utility.
Activate
Enables the boot time prompt "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager…" (if you do not
have the GRUB boot loader) or adds the "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" item to GRUB's menu
(if you have GRUB). If the system fails to boot, you will be able to start the bootable rescue utility, by
pressing F11 or by selecting it from the menu, respectively.
The system disk (or, the /boot partition in Linux) should have at least 70 MB of free space to activate Acronis
Startup Recovery Manager.
Unless you use the GRUB boot loader and it is installed in the Master Boot Record (MBR), Acronis
Startup Recovery Manager activation overwrites the MBR with its own boot code. Thus, you may
need to reactivate third-party boot loaders, if they are installed.
Under Linux, when using a boot loader other than GRUB (such as LILO), consider installing it to a
Linux root (or boot) partition boot record instead of the MBR before activating ASRM. Otherwise,
reconfigure the boot loader manually after the activation.
Do not activate
Disables boot time prompt "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager…" (or the menu item in
GRUB). If Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is not activated, you will need one of the following to
recover the system when it fails to boot:
 boot the machine from a separate bootable rescue media
 use network boot from Acronis PXE Server or Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS).
See the Bootable media (p. 247) section for details.
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