WinPE-based and WinRE-based bootable media

Bootable Media Builder provides two methods of integrating Acronis Cyber Protect with WinPE:

  • Creating the PE ISO with the plug-in from scratch.
  • Adding the Acronis Plug-in to a WIM file. For example, for building the ISO image manually or adding other tools to the image.

You can create WinRE images without any additional preparation, or create WinPE images after installing Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) or Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK).

WinRE images

Creating WinRE images is supported for the following operation systems:

  • Windows 7 (64-bit)
  • Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)
  • Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
  • Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
  • Windows 11 (64-bit)
  • Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)
  • Windows Server 2016 (64-bit)
  • Windows Server 2019 (64-bit)
  • Windows Server 2022 (64-bit)

WinPE images

After installing Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK), or Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK), Bootable Media Builder supports WinPE distributions that are based on any the following kernels:

  • Windows Vista (PE 2.0)
  • Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (PE 2.1)
  • Windows 7 (PE 3.0) with or without the supplement for Windows 7 SP1 (PE 3.1)
  • Windows 8 (PE 4.0)
  • Windows 8.1 (PE 5.0)
  • Windows 10 (PE 10.0.1xxx)
  • Windows 11 (PE 10.0.2xxx)

Bootable Media Builder supports both 32-bit and 64-bit WinPE distributions. The 32-bit WinPE distributions can also work on 64-bit hardware. However, you need a 64-bit distribution to boot a machine that uses Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).

PE images based on WinPE 4 and later require approximately 1 GB of RAM to work.

Disk management functionality is not available for bootable media based on Windows PE 4.0 and later. Thus, disk management is supported for Windows 7 and earlier operating systems. To perform disk management operations on Windows 8 and later, you need to install Acronis Disk Director. For more information, refer to this KB article: https://kb.acronis.com/content/47031.