Cloning a drive ?

I have a drive I want to clone however it has three partitions on it.I only want to clone the C: so the new drive will become the boot drive. Is this possible? When I go to clone the drive it seems to want to clone all 3 partitions.

Any help/ advice?

Dave

[crofttk]

Cloning is a drive level operation, not a partition level operation. You can copy (not clone) partitions individually but that won't copy over the correct MBR. If you were to copy your system partition to the new drive, you would have to use fixmbr from Win XP recovery console or use the free MBRAutowrite utility that Acronis provides for download: http://www.acronis.com/files/support...towrite_en.exe or http://www.acronis.com/files/support...towrite_en.iso

Alternatively, if the new drive is large enough, just clone it and delete the other two partitions from the new drive -- although it doesn't sound as if this is an option for you.

The last option sounds fine I have a 120Gig to clone onto a 300gig drive. How do I delete the partitions when complete?

Thanks - One hell of a quick response.

Dave

[crofttk]

Good timing !

If your running WinXP, just right click on "My Computer" and select "Manage" from the pop-up menu. Then, once the console starts up, select "Disk Management" (about in the middle of the left pane items).

After Disk Management finishes its scan, just right-click the partition in question and select delete.

Just make damn sure you've clicked the right partition before deleting !

You could also shell out to a command line in XP and invoke the "diskpart" environment. Once you get the "diskpart" prompt, type "help" to see what you can do.

ETA: Oooops ! I don't believe diskpart copmmand line is a standard part of Win XP. I'm fairly certain, however, you can download it at microsoft.com. It's probably part of one of the free resource kits or support tools downloads. Here's a starting description for anyone interested: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...ff6e3e509.mspx

If you're operating with something before Win 2000, you'll probably use "fdisk" or one of countless freeware/shareware/commercial partition management apps out there -- and Acronis Disk Director Suite or the older Partition Expert are certainly among those that are good for just about any operating system and multiple file systems.

Thanks for your help and advice, I will give it a try.

Take care

Dave

Hi, tried to clone the hard disk but I got an error message (when my pc re booted) saying "error with file image?" or something like that anway.

My pc then re booted back to XP.

Any idea's?

Dave

Sorry the message said error with file refence not image.

Dave

[crofttk]

Hard to say from where I sit. If we assume it's not a problem with Acronis TI, you should do at least a chkdsk with autorepair for all of your partitions and see if that finds errors and repairs them. If XP, it's a good bet you'll have to go with the chkdsk on reboot for your system partition.

If errors turn up and are repaired, I would simply try the cloning again.

Otherwise, things could get a little more complicated insofar as diagnosis.

Post back what you find out ?

[Acronis Support]

Hello Davva,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Concerning the procedure of accomplishing the goal you have described in your first post, I would recommend you to follow crofttk's last suggestion. To be more precise, you should clone the "old" hard drive or restore the image of the entire "old" hard drive to the new disk, then unplug the "old" hard drive, boot into Windows from the new disk and only after that delete the unneeded partitions using either Windows Disk Management or any special software such as Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0, for example.

Please be aware that we can not guarantee the success in case of any other scenario. For example, in case you will follow the first scenario suggested by crofttk and restore the image of the system partition only, you might face the known problem when the "new" Windows will never allow you to log in. The reason for this problem is that the partition configuration has changed since this particular Windows installation was running for the last time and so Windows can not find some drive letters it "knows" about.

As for the problem with cloning the hard drive, first of all please make sure that you use the latest build (2337) of Acronis True Image 9.0 which is available at: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/

To get access to updates you should create an account at:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/
then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Please uninstall any previously installed build by following Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Acronis True Image, prior to installing build 2337.

Note that you should create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.

Please also check each partition of your hard drive by Windows utility:

- For Windows 9x please use Windows menu Start\Run
then enter the command "scandskw" and test all drives;

- For Windows XP please use Windows menu Start\Run, then enter the command
"chkdsk c: /r" "chkdsk d: /r" for every partition of your hard drive.

Note that you will need to reboot your computer in order to scan the system partition.

If the problem still persists after installing the update and checking the hard drive then please download the latest version of Acronis drivers, install it with disabled logging and try to perform the disk cloning process once more.

If that does not help then please provide us with the following information:

- Create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

- Try to perform the disk cloning process when your PC is booted from Bootable Rescue CD created using the latest build (2337) of Acronis True Image 9.0 and let us know the result;

- Use a digital camera to make a shot or provide the exact text of the error message you have received;

- When exactly have you received this error message?

- Describe actions taken before the problem appears step-by-step.

Please submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

Excellent advice - It worked fine.

Support has been great thanks to you all.

Kind Regards

Dave