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Restoring Microsoft Surface Pro 4

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Forum Member
Posts: 12
Comments: 31

I have been backing up the entire disk of my Surface Pro 4 (comes with 3 partitions) to an external USB disk hooked in via a USB 3.0 hub (which connects to the SP4 lone USB port). Recently I sent my unit back to Microsoft due to some video artefact problem and they sent me a replacement unit. Turns out trying to restore my backup images to an SP4 is much more troublesome.

Since these type of tablet models don't come with a built-in optical drive, I created bootable media with a USB thumb drive. The thumb drive is connected to the same USB 3.0 hub. It can boot the Acronis launcher, so working through the hub is no problem. However it complained that it could not detect any hard disk at all, neither the SP4's own internal disk nor my external ones. So I am stuck with no avenue to restoration.

Has anybody ever successfully restored entire disk images for Surface Pro units?

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Legend
Posts: 110
Comments: 29173

Aaron, if you do a search for Surface Pro 4 in these user forums, then you will see a number of posts related to these, and in particular the issue of the internal drives not being recognised by Acronis Rescue Media.

You are running an older version of ATIH with 2015 and this does not have the necessary support for your Surface Pro 4 in the standard Linux based Rescue Media, so you need to create the Windows PE version of the Rescue Media using the Windows 10 ADK, which I do not think the Rescue Media Builder tool in ATIH 2015 supports using.

You can try using Mustang's PE tool per the top sticky post in this forum, or else if you have either ATIH 2016 or 2017, you could create the WinPE rescue media from those versions.

Forum Member
Posts: 12
Comments: 31

I followed your recommendation to use WinPE rescue media instead of the default Linux one. That (even a Windows 8.1-based ADK) managed to detect the disks and perform the restoration.

Thank you.

Legend
Posts: 110
Comments: 29173

Aaron, thank you for feeding back your results, glad to hear that the Windows 8.1 ADK had the necessary drivers to allow the WinPE Rescue media to see your disks and allow the restore to be successful.

Beginner
Posts: 0
Comments: 1

Hello Steve,

My MS Surface 7 was smashed and I made a Image with acronis last year august.  bought a MS Surface 8 as a target to restore the MS Surface 7 installation.  Made a WinPE rescue media on USB stick according to latest version Acronis with the Windows 11 ADK.  have both USB stick and USB backup brick connected to MS Surface8 and reboot to WinPE goes fine:  Acronis window shows up.  However: keyboard, touchpad, screen are not responsive so i must have missed some drivers that are needed during the creating of the WinPE rescue media.  Do you know which one are needed or is there another way to restore my MS Surface7 windows11 installation on my replacement MS Surface 8?

looking forward for help: I am stuck for now.

Olivier

Legend
Posts: 110
Comments: 29173

Olivier, this particular topic is nearly 4 years old and a lot has changed in the interim period!

If your MS Surface 8 already has Windows 10 or 11 installed and you have installed ATI 2021 or ACPHO then the best recommendation is to create the Simple version of the WinPE (WinRE) rescue media on that computer which should try to pick up device drivers for your installed devices from the Windows Recovery Environment of that system.

If your rescue media was created on your old Surface 7, then there may be different device drivers involved than those needed for the Surface 8.  If so, then you may need to use a USB dock or hub and attach a USB keyboard and mouse to use.