Can No Longer Clone To Smaller Hard Drive Using 9.0

I was regularly making a clone of my larger 360gb hard drive to a smaller 80 gig hard drive once a month just so that I could have a back up in case the larger drive failed or got corrupted.

The larger drive currently has 54gb of used space. The 80gb smaller hard drive is currently empty. I would format the smaller drive right before I would make a clone just so the total amount of space was clean. Now I can no longer do this.

Is there a setting somewhere that I have to change so that I can clone to this smaller hard drive? I have attached a screen shot of the error I now get.

 

Have you eliminated the possibility (1) of there being errors? Have you run chkdsk /r on all partitions ?

Have you considered using image backups rather than a clone ?

F.

 

There is no need to pre-format the destination drive. When you run the Clone process it will recognize that there are already partitions on the destination and ask if it is okay to delete. You have to accept this option to procede. Try doing it this way. If that does not help try the Clone process using the bootable Rescue CD.

 

I did run Chkdsk on the smaller drive and had it automatically fix any errors. And I did ask Acronis to delete the partition that was already there when I was trying to do the clone.

I guess I can try to do an image backup and see if that will work. How would I use an image backup if I ever needed to fix my original hard drive?


Could it be possible that the 360gb primary hard drive with 54 gigs used up is too much for the 80gb hard drive that I want to clone to?

 

You would restore the file using the TI Recovery function.

The advantages of imaging over cloning are:

a) you can store more than one copy of your drive on your backup drive. E.g. you can maintain a monthly or weekly (or whatever) history.
b) you can copy the image elsewhere for a secondary (e.g. offsite) backup.
c) it should be a lot quicker!

Forgetting the fact that you have a problem with cloning, I think it is IMHO the wrong tool for what you are trying to do.

F

 

Forgive my ignorance but I am not sure what you mean by the T1 Recovery Function. Is that something that you do through Windows when your format a new hard drive. I have done image backups in the past but I wasn't sure how I would go about restoring an image to a new hard drive. That's why I have been doing the cloning.

 

No it is one of the tasks available from True Image and is the opposite of backup.

F.

 

ginky4 Did you make a rescue disk ?
If you can't boot to your hard drive you can recover your operating system and all data using the "rescue" disk and the backup/image that you have created ( hopefully on another "external" usb hard drive). If it turns out that your drive is no longer able to function you can install a new hard drive and recover your image to this drive and get back up and running. Without installing windows.
You will of course have to set your bios to boot to the "CD/DVD" drive.
By backing up your "entire" drive including MBR, you are making an "image" or a "snapshot" of everything including the operating system, registry, data and master boot record.

 

I have not made a rescue disc but sounds like something that would be prudent to do. I have only been using Acronis 9.0 for cloning so I have not really explored everything else it can do. I basically wanted to have a mirrored backup of my hard drive just in case it would die so I have been cloning it to another drive. Maybe this isn't the correct way to do things.

As far doing an image of the hard drive I wasn't clear how that would do me any good if my main hard drive was to die. From what it sounds like I guess you can boot up from a hard drive that has the saved image even if it doesn't have an operating system. This happens to be what I have. A second empty hard drive that I am now going to try to save an image to.

 

Saving an image of your OS to another hard drive does not automatically give you a bootable drive. You will need the rescue cd to restore the image to a new hard drive and then it will be bootable. This could be a larger replacement drive.
Read the user guide http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage9.0_ug.en.pdf to understand the differences. If you haven't' built a Rescue CD do so now before you need it for an emergency.

 

I did finally create a Rescue Media CD even though I think my original Acronis 9.0 cd will do the same thing. Also, my cloning to the smaller hard drive is working again.

The only thing that I have done to fix the cloning to the smaller hard drive issue is shut my computer completely down. Once that was done and the computer restarted the cloning started working again. I am still going to read the manual and figure out how to do incremental and full image backups.