Hi,
Subscriber of your channel, Synology fan and IT Guy.
We wonder if anyone is using ABB and having the same experience when a full disc recovery is needed.
Our 1st ever recovery experience was awful and worst at it was out-of-state and had to travel to accomplish nothing as the ABB recovery media was not able to recognize the network and after getting help from Synology support finding the drivers, the media was not able to recognize the same original disc in the PC. As you know, Synology support does not come to the phone easily to help when you most needed.
I know they used the Hardware ID of the NIC to magically get the drivers but we do not know how to do that and can’t imagine having to take an inventory of NIC, Disc and Storage Controllers for 37 PCs, find the drivers for each and visit each one of them to see if the media works well ON THE SAME HARDWARE. Can’t imagine a bare-metal …
Do not understand why the media creation that runs under Windows, with all drivers loaded for all devices in use, can’t gather ALL drivers and place them in the media.
Just upset and confused … will take any light you can shed upon us
That’s why I use Hiren’s BootCD Image. Just install it to USB, boot into Hiren, then run ABB recovery software from there. No additional driver or tweak required, at least for my case.
In my case, I use laptop with Wi-Fi only. So, recovery media never works in its basic form anyway. Plus, Recovery media creation tool also spits out blue screen. (I doubt this is truly ‘for business’…) Hiren’s BootCD just solved all issues; I can use one recovery tool across multiple hardware setups.
Dear Alex,
Wow, great idea. Will give it a try. I can’t seem to find (besides adds) how to download the latest version from their site
and forgot to add … you seem to be techier than me … can you detail the steps to run ABB after booting into Hiren’s?
I am hitting my head against a wall here. I was able to mount the image to extract the GUI for ABB but the Hiren’s BootCD does not support UEFI-Only devices, or I have not found a way …
To download, go to download and click filename(HBCD_PE_x64.iso). Yes, it’s confusing.
You can refer to USB booting manual in their page. Also, did you try disabling secure boot in your UEFI option? It supports UEFI booting.
To run ABB in USB stick: download “Synology Active Backup for Business Recovery Tool”(Not Media Creator) from Synology download center, and put them in another USB stick or somewhere external. (I use Ventoy, so just put it in root of boot USB worked…) Then, boot into Hiren’s BootCD and run (ABB folder)/ui/recovery.exe.
I was able to download it and I did copy a folder from ABB with the recovery.exe.
But I can’t boot from the Hiren’s USB. Secure Boot is disable now but my BIOS shows → Boot Mode: UEFI Only and then Note: Legacy Boot Mode is not supported in this platform.
Wherever I search, I get that Hiren’s does not support UEFI
I just tested, setting Rufus to create GPT partition and setting target system as UEFI(Non CSM) boots successfully(despite their guide says set to MBR).
Alex,
Thanks.
I am using Rufus 4.5 and the moment I select the Hiren’s.BootCD.15.2.iso the partition is set to MBR with no way to change it and the Target to BIOS (or UEFI-CSM). File System to FAT32.
What am I doing wrong?
Make sure to get HBCD_PE_x64.iso from here. Its full name is “Hiren’s BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8)”. It seems you’ve downloaded ancient version(v15.2, which released in 2012).
Many thanks, Alex … novice mistakes.
Will try and report …
Question: This GPT/UEFI(Non CSM) will also boot with non-UEFI devices, or another USB must be generated for them?
You may need separate USB. One for MBR + BIOS, one for GPT + UEFI.
Dear Alex,
Your help has been invaluable. Many, many thanks.
Your idea has simplified the process of recovering ABB.
We also have cases where Acronis Cyber Protect is used to backup to Synology and we noticed Acronis is also in the HBCD. So, we tried recovering from the NAS but had issues authenticating to the NAS, not to a PC though. No matter how we did it, Acronis kept stating to verify user name and password.
Attempting to MAP from a drive from HBCD to the NAS also failed, either through CMD Net Use or PENetwork with “A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated.”
I wonder if you have had this case in the past.
Being able to have one media to recover from both will be ideal.
I think that’s Acronis issue. I used Acronis very long time ago, so I don’t know about that.
(EDIT: maybe that’s because Acronis in HBCD is unregistered trial version?)
Still, if you need all-in-one USB, try Ventoy. Install Ventoy to USB memory, and put OS image files(iso, wim, etc…). When you boot into Ventoy, you can see image selector, which allows you to boot into many different images that you put. Of course, you need to create 2 usb; one for BIOS(MBR partition), one for UEFI(GPT partiton). You can set partition method in Ventoy installer.
Thanks. Will give Ventoy a try … I do not think is Acronis because I can MAP a drive from HBCD to any share in Windows PCs in the network with no trouble. It seems to be an authentication issue/SMB issue between WinPE and Synology. The NAS supports from SMB1 to 3 … read a lot but got nowhere.
The beauty of HBCD is that most of the drivers are in. That, as you know it, it i snot the case with the media creator for ABB and even though Acronis is a bit better, we have had cases where a general Acronis boot-media, Linux-based, can’t find the network or the discs.
Acronis trial is not the issue, I can recover from an USB disc or, as said, via a MAP to a Windows PC. The issue seems to be between the HBCD and the NAS.
Problem fixed: The NAS has to be set for NTLMv1 authentication TEMPORARILY while the recovery operation takes place so that SMB browsing is possible to the NAS.