Newbie can I have help plse cloning a disk??

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by jdoherty76, Mar 9, 2007.

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  1. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Can someone please help or advise on what I am doing wrong. I am wanting to swap out

    and existing hard-drive for a new one of a larger size. I currently own a Sony vaio

    laptop with one internal harddrive. A 40GB fujitsi IDE drive. I would like to clone or

    copy all data from this to a new 120GB Seagate momentus IDE harddrive. I have to

    clone/copy the data by using a harddrive caddy which I have the seagate installed and

    communicates via the USB port. I assume this is possible?

    I want to leave the existing data on the source drive after copy to the target.

    unscrew the source and insert the new target drive and reboot and carry on from there.

    My existing 40GB drive has the following:

    a recovery partition of 5.4GB
    a 'C' drive of 18GB
    a 'D' drive of 13GB

    I would like to readjust the partitions to the following:

    A recovery drive of 6GB
    A 'C' drive of 45GB
    A 'D' drive of 60GB

    I have tried using the clone function from TI 10.0 and tried the clone function from

    migrate easy ver 7.0. Both of these utilities require a reboot prior to proceeding and

    they both reboot then fail.

    ME 7.0 with Partition configuration has changed press any key to continue

    When I use TI 10.0 clone option it appears to use Migrate easy and always produces the

    following after reboot:

    Analyzing partition 100%
    Locking partition 100%
    Checking partition 100%
    the quickly followed by:
    Error: Partition configuration has changed press any key to reboot.

    Thats all I get. Upon looking at the forums I see an option to use Microsofts sysprep

    but I believe this only to be needed for different hardware and I am copying from IDE

    to IDE only of a larger size?

    Also should the target drive that is active in the usb port have any jumper selected.

    Its just plain vanilla with no jumpers active. Which I believe makes it a master

    drive.

    I am currently execution MS XP-Home SP2. and using the trial versions of TI and ME as

    I am in the process of upgrading from MI Home 9.0. OEM whatever this was it did not

    have the clone function present.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance john.
     
  2. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    John,

    As the clone function has failed, here is a scenario to consider.

    Attach your 120 GB HD via USB. Create 3 partitions, 6, 45 and 60 GB. Copy your data from the D: drive (just using Windows Explorer) to the 60 GB partition.

    Using TI from Windows, create 2 images. One of the C: drive and the other of the recovery partition. Write these images to the 60 GB partition.

    Remove the 40 GB HD and replace it with the 120 GB HD. Using the TI CD, restore each image to its respective partition.

    That's how I'd do it but there are other ways.
     
  3. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    Nice & Neat.:thumb:
     
  4. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Thanks Brian but seems a little convoluted. I thought the whole idea of acronis was to be able to take a source drive and write it out exactly to the target drive. Then its just a matter of swapping the drives over. Am I missing something here? or is disk cloning more complicated that 1st meets the eye. I'd really like to be able to perform direct copy from source to target....does anyone know if this is possible?....thanks in advance John.
     
  5. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    PS Brian I forgot to say thanks. Also when you mean create partitions on the new drive I assume you mean use the add new disk function to create these partitions. I noticed when I tried this when going to name them as 'recovery, C & D' it allowed this but when it went to action this it appears to have given them the label G,H & I. Can these be relabelled as Recovery, C & D when the swap occurs? I am a bit of a novice at this. Maybe what I am trying to do is more difficult than the normal. I have only one hard drive in my laptop. The new one is in a caddy..so when it reboots to perform actions maybe it loses the path to the drive in the caddy...don't know. But hopefully you or others will have the answer...thanks again..john.
     
  6. rodnh

    rodnh Registered Member

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    Hi John,

    I don't know the reason you are having trouble but I do what you want to all the time and have never had a problem. I have three computers, all dual boot with 98SE/XP. One is a laptop. My "backup" philosophy is to clone disk-to-disk on a regular basis (to firewire ext encl) in order to maintain a duplicate standby drive. I also do partition images, both to an internal slave drive (except for the laptop) and burn to DVD. Much less frequent to DVD. I use TI7, the older full version, now free from TI. I never clone a drive or restore an image using windows - I always use the TI boot CD. The only time I use TI from within windows is to make automatically scheduled images of my system, boot and data partions to my internal slave. For me, the cost of extra hard drives is well spent to accomodate this philosophy. My master drives (except for the laptop) are in slideout caddies and can be replaced with a clone in about one minute. When I do this, usually about once a month, I immediately swap drives such that the original master now becomes the standby. This also verifies that the clone, now the "new" master, boots properly with both OSs and there are no problems. The standby drive also provides an excellent and simple "test bed" if you want to try out new things that you don't have a high confidence in. If something messes up, just reclone and you're back in business quickly. The entire cloning process of an 80GB drive that is about half full takes me 30 min on a slow 733 Mhz computer. Thats a LOT faster than I can make or restore any images on that same computer, even for just one of my several partitions. I have 9 partitions and creating an image of just my XP partition takes about 40 min, not including the verification time. What you could try, if other things fail for you is to download the free TI7. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles the newer versions have but it does the needed job and for me, has done it very, very well. Create the recovery TI boot disk and use that to do your cloning. Install your destination drive in your external enclosure jumpered as master. I have only cloned to the same size drive but the software will permit manually adjusting the sizes of partitions to accomodate a larger drive. I have not done that but have no reason to suspect that it would not work for you. The issue you might run up against is that the TI boot CD will not be able to "see" your external usb enclosure. You won't know until you try. Make sure that after the cloning is complete, remove the boot CD, shut down and remove the destination drive from the usb enclosure. You do not want to try and boot windows with two active C partitions connected. Then swap your drives and test out the clone.

    PS: you could also try by making the TI boot CD from your existing TI installation but I don't know if that would be fully functional for cloning since you only have the trial version of TI.

    Rod
     
  7. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Thanks Rod..sounds good where can I obtain a copy of TI 7.0. I don't see it on ther home site. Can you advise and I'll try and do as you recommended. thanks again...
     
  8. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    PS also tried making the boot CD's from TE and ME that i am using. Tried rebuilding from these but also no luck..thanks john.
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    John,

    What you attempted was correct and should have worked. But occasionally cloning to an external HD fails, for unknown reasons. Instead of wasting time trying to clone again (a one step procedure) and probably fail, use the imaging/restore approach (two steps) as it will be faster in the long run. It's also generally more reliable as you are creating the image while the source HD is in the laptop and restoring the image when the destination HD is in the laptop. When you clone, the destination HD is outside the laptop and this can cause problems for TI as it has to make assumptions about how the HD is going to eventually boot and these assumptions may be incorrect.

    No, use Disk Management from WinXP to create the 3 partitions. Create them as the same type as the ones on your 40 GB HD. Need any help doing this?

    Is this an "external HD enclosure"? Not attached to another computer but connected to your laptop by a USB cable and powered by an AC adaptor?
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2007
  10. rodnh

    rodnh Registered Member

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    John,

    I just checked the link I used several months ago for TI7 (http://www.acronis.com/mag/vnu-ati7) and it no longer works. It appears Acronis has now terminated the offer. I guess I am not surprised at that. It probably was a deal that acronis thought would be an incentive for new users eager to upgrade to the latest and greatest version. But for me, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade. There is no feature in the newer versions that is important to me. It is my understanding that the trial versions of the current TI software that you can download for free do not produce fully functional boot CDs, at least regarding the restoration of an image and perhaps for cloning also. You can do all the basic stuff directly from a fully functional boot CD so I guess if the trial version was complete, there would not be a great incentive to pay any money to get something that is. That may be one of the reasons you are having trouble, at least with the boot CD. Hopefully Brian K can help you with a roundabout method to change over to your replacement hard disk by using trial version TI software.

    Rod
     
  11. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Thanks Brian K and Rodnh much appreciated. I don't have a problem buying acronis which I will probably do but I am reluctant to purchase if it wont even do this simple process lol...(maybe not so simple) Brian can you please guide me through the steps required. I am not proficient with using XP to create the partitons. I know using acronis that my partitions are labelled as follows:

    Recovery partition which is of type primary and is approx 6GB in size
    Vaio (C:) partition which is approx. 18GB in size and finally
    Vaio (D:) partition which is approx. 13GB in size

    all ntfs...

    Yes you are correct with you question re my caddy... it is attached to my laptop via usb only.

    Problem I may encounter is when I swap over the drives and use the acronis created boot cd. I hope it has all the functionality I need on it...

    Can you please guide me through this Brian...much appreciated. thanks john.
     
  12. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    John, could you look in Disk Management? Right click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management. Look at the Disk 0 graphic. Are the 3 partitions in the order above, from left to right? ie is the recovery partition on the extreme left? Is the D: drive a primary partition or a logical drive? (See bottom of Disk management window)

    Does it have a power supply? Does it have two USB cables?

    Could you also look at your boot.ini and see if it references partition 1 or 2? Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced tab, Settings for Startup and Recovery, Edit. Copy and paste the text into your next post please.

    Here is a boot.ini for partition 2.

    We are almost ready.
     
  13. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    THanks Brian you are correct there are 3 partitions in the order yoiu specified.

    Caddy is usb connected and does have 2 cables but functions correctly on 1 cable.

    I think I found what you are looking for re boot.ini i have attached it below:


    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

    whatg next brian? i tried to send you a personal email but this does not appear to be working. Can you supply your email address? please advise next steps. thanks John.
     
  14. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    You should plug both in. Two connections gives more electrical power for the USB HD. Your boot.ini is fine. Thanks.

    Here goes. I hope I've covered all points.

    Partitioning.

    Open Disk Management and we’ll work from the graphic section. Note, we accept the drive letters offered and certainly don't try to make use of the C: drive letter. The OS will finish up as C: drive but it assigns that drive letter to itself. We don't.


    The external HD will be Disk 1. The internal HD is Disk 0.
    If you have partitions on the external HD they must be deleted.
    Right click in a partition and click Delete partition
    Click Yes
    The space is now Unallocated Space.
    Repeat this until the whole 120 GB HD is Unallocated Space.



    Now to create partitions.

    First, the Recovery partition.
    Right click in the Unallocated Space and click New Partition
    The Wizard commences, click Next
    Select Primary partition, Next
    Choose 6,000 MB, Next
    Put dot in Assign the following drive letter and accept the letter, Next
    Put dot in Format this partition, Accept NTFS, Default Allocation Unit size, Type in a Volume name eg RECOVERY
    Finish
    Wait for it to format


    Now the OS partition.
    Right click in the Unallocated Space and click New Partition
    The Wizard commences, click Next
    Select Primary partition, Next
    Choose 45,000 MB, Next
    Put dot in Assign the following drive letter and accept the letter, Next
    Put dot in Format this partition, Accept NTFS, Default Allocation Unit size, Type in a Volume name eg Win XP
    Finish
    Wait for it to format


    Now the Data partition.
    Right click in the Unallocated Space and click New Partition
    The Wizard commences, click Next
    Select Primary partition, Next
    Leave the partition size alone as it should be the remainder of the drive, Next
    Put dot in Assign the following drive letter and accept the letter, Next
    Put dot in Format this partition, Accept NTFS, Default Allocation Unit size, Type in a Volume name eg DATA
    Finish
    Wait for it to format


    Restart the computer.

    Copy your data from the D: drive (just using Windows Explorer) to the Data partition on the external HD.

    Using TI from Windows, create an image of the Recovery partition on the 40 GB HD, writing the image to the Data partition on the external HD. Name the image "recovery". (Without the " ".)

    Using TI from Windows, create an image of the OS (your C: drive) partition on the 40 GB HD, writing the image to the Data partition on the external HD. Name the image "C_drive". (Without the " ".)

    Shutdown the computer, remove the HD and put your 120 GB HD into the laptop. The 40 GB HD will not be used anymore for this procedure.

    Boot to the Acronis TI CD. The drive letters you see from now may be totally different from what you have seen in Win XP. Accept this. Also, the trial TI CD should not be "crippled" for restoring. It is crippled for creating images.

    After Booting to the CD
    click Recovery
    next
    navigate to your recovery partition image and select it
    next
    dot in Restore disks or partitions
    next
    tick in recovery partition
    next
    select the appropriate restored partition location
    next
    dot in Primary
    next
    may need to adjust partition size so the Free space before and Free space after are both 0 bytes
    next
    dot in No,I do not
    next
    tick in Validate
    next
    Proceed


    When it's finished and you are back to the start screen
    click Recovery
    next
    navigate to your image and select it
    next
    dot in Restore disks or partitions
    next
    tick in Win XP partition
    next
    select the appropriate restore partition
    next
    dot in Active
    next
    may need to adjust partition size so the Free space before and Free space after are both 0 bytes
    next
    dot in Yes, I want to restore another partition or hard disk drive
    next
    tick in MBR and Track 0
    next
    choose Disk 1
    next
    dot in No,I do not
    next
    tick in Validate
    next
    Proceed

    When finished, remove the CD and restart the computer. Your laptop should boot into Win XP. You will probably have to remove the drive letter for the Recovery partition.
     
  15. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Cheers Brian..will follow your instructions tonite and get back to you...thanks John.
     
  16. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Brian your a bloody star this worked as you documented I cannot thank you enough. many many thanks...couple of questions:

    When I restored the recovery partition there was also an option to restore the MBR0 TRK0 information. I ignored as you stated. Was this correct?

    My D drive was called data as you suggested. I renamed this to Vaio (D:) as it was before was this okay?

    Will I delete the 2 image files I created on the 'Data' drive?

    I will probably buy Acronis version 10 as I was impressed with what you have shown me. But not impressed by my initial foray into it. I thought it could clone a disk verbatim..but too many problems..

    I'll just keep the other drive away as is...particularily during the new disks burn in period...
    Thanks again John.
     
  17. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    John,
    You are very fortunate and lucky to be receiving such detailed instructions from a very knowledgeable guy. Kudo's to Brian. This is another example of what a great forum this is! Lot's of people helping other people.
     
  18. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    I totally agree GroverH I really do appreciate this. And all kudos to the forum and the power of the Internet. Here you have someone sitting in Scotland being help by someone in Australia..a marvel I think so this will not go unnoticed If I can help someone I will. But not sure If I'll aspire to the knowledge of Brian K...thanks...again.
     
  19. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Thanks for the pat on the back. I'm pleased it worked. I was afraid I'd left out a critical step.

    Correct. You restored the MBR later.

    I'd delete the recovery image but keep the C: drive image as a backup. You could transfer it to your external HD later. When you are happy with the new HD I'd delete all partitions on the 40 GB HD, create a single partition and use it as your backup HD.

    Go to Disk Management and remove the drive letter for that recovery drive. Right click the partition, Change Drive letter and Paths, Remove, etc.

    Now you could clean up the other drive letters. Right click the CD/DVD drive, Change Drive letter and Paths, Change, make it Y:
    Right click the Data (Vaio) drive, Change Drive letter and Paths, Change, make it D:

    Happy imaging.
     
  20. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Thanks again Brian re your final requests. I checked the disk manager again and noticed that I don't have a drive letter for the recovery partition. Its just called 'recovery partition' I also noticed that during my initial set up prior to new disk I had the recovery partition and C drive as primary partitions and my D drive was logical. After swap to new disk they are all primary. Is this a problem?

    I am not sure what you mean by cleaning up the other drive letters. The other drives I have are as follows:

    Disk 1 removeable (E:) I think this is my memory stick slot on my laptop
    Disk 2 removeable (G:) I think this is something to do with my HP printer as this as the option to print directly from various memory cards etc but not sure how I'd know exactly. finally
    CD-rom 0 DVD (F:) I assume is my cd/dvd rewriter?

    with regards to the images I'll just leave the 40GB drive that was removed I can always pop it back in when the laptop gives up the ghost. I have another 80GB separate caddy drive I can use. I'll transfer the 'C' image to this.

    Is this us all done when the above has been answered? thanks john.
     
  21. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    No problem, John. In Post #12 I asked if the D: drive was primary or logical but you must have missed this question. We could have made it a logical drive during partitioning. It doesn't really matter as you aren't short of partitions so leave it as a Primary partition. Primary partitions (non active) can be converted to logical drives if desired, but I wouldn't bother here.

    The Recovery partition has no drive letter. Good. As far as the drive letters of the remaining partitions, leave them if you are happy. It's just personal preference what they are called.

    The advantage of having an image of the C: drive in the D: drive is convenience in restoring if ever the C: drive becomes corrupt. But you also need to have an image of the C: drive stored off the laptop to cover the event of HD failure.

    You have certainly been introduced to imaging from the deep end. Cloning is the easy way. If it works.

    All the best.
     
  22. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Thanks again Brian especially for the quick reply. Maybe I should convert my 'D' drive back to logical. Knowing Sony if I ever need to use the recovery partition(not that I ever had) no doubt it will look for a logical. They never do nothing simple. What's the difference between primary and logical?

    re keeping my image on disk it is around 11GB so its not small. I'll probably move it off the hard drive to external. Probably buy acronis home. But not sure if this is the complete product I see they do a partition type manager tool as well. lifes just complicated. So much to do so little time....
     
  23. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    See http://fdisk.radified.com/



    The easiest way for you is to copy all of your D: drive files and folders to an external HD. Go to Disk Management and delete the D: partition. You will now have Unallocated Space instead of the D: drive.

    Right click in the Unallocated Space and click New Partition
    The Wizard commences, click Next
    Select Extended partition, Next
    Leave the partition size alone as it should be the remainder of the drive, Next
    Finish

    Now you have a partition with a green band above and it is called Free Space
    Right click in this space and click New Logical drive
    The Wizard commences, click Next
    Dot in Logical drive, Next
    Leave the partition size alone as it should be the remainder of the drive, Next
    Put dot in Assign the following drive letter and accept the letter, Next
    Put dot in Format this partition, Accept NTFS, Default Allocation Unit size, Type in a Volume name eg DATA, VAIO
    Next
    Finish
    Wait for it to format

    Copy your files and folders from the external HD back into your new D: drive.
     
  24. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    What can I say Brian..leave it with me and I'll read over thoroughly what you have sent me and get back to you. Sorry this is so long winded..could have PM'd you..but I am sure plenty of others will have learned a great deal from your help here....well done and thanks....jd76
     
  25. jdoherty76

    jdoherty76 Registered Member

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    Brian attempting your instructions as per previous post. Have copied 'D' drive files off to external HD and in process of deleting partition. But when I attempt to delete 'D' drive it posts the following message:

    "request could not be completed because the volume is open or in use it may be configured as a system, boot, or pagefile volume or to hold a crashdump."

    Force deletion Yes or No ?

    replied no until I get your feedback. How do you think I should proceed?

    Thanks john.
     
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