cloning clarification

This is a "newbie" question, apparently.

I purchased the Acronis full version, and using the "cloning wizard" to help create an image of my "C:\" drive.

There's a section one comes to, where it shows you are going to clone from the "old" ("C") drive to the new drive (external HD)

Except both, the "OLD" and the "NEW" drive show up as "c:\"

I thought the "new" drive was supposed to be given a "different" drive letter?

so I didnt go thru with the procedure yet and I cant find anything that tells me my hunch is either correct or not.

I do seem to have some problems getting the USB to recognize my external HD (no driver necessary, its the "plug and play" type)

My objective?
I wanted to save all my stuff and settings to th external HD and then do a destructive full reformat of my "c" drive, in an attempt to restore any lost or corrupted "DLL" drivers and whatnots.

My machine is a HP A1120N, using win-MCE 2005.

I know that a special partition exists on the HP hard drive so a destructive restore will bring this back to the day I received it... and then transfer my preferred softwares back from the external HD to the C:\ hard drive.

Is there a special procedure to keep in mind? Save the "TIB" files onto a CD or what?

advice sought, and if there's a "sticky" direct me there too, please?

Thanks so much......

 

Although there is nothing wrong with doing this via cloning, I would try using the Windows system file checker first (sfc /scannow) from the Run command line (Start>Run...).

If you do go the router of clone, I would verify a working clone before doing anything else (do a physical drive swap to verify fidelity/useability of the drive).

Blue

 

From my experience (I only use acronis clone facility) you are cloning an exact image of one drive to another ie "c" will stay "c" in its cloned form!

You then need to set a new letter for the cloned drive - I seem to recall you have to do this from the cloned drive. not from the master.

I believe there are some threads on this subject.

Try it you will not harm the primary drive.

 

Make the clone.
Set the new cloned drive as Master on your IDE cable if necessary.
Remove the original source drive!!!!
Boot your system from the new drive.
After the first successful boot you can put your original back into the system as a slave if you wish.

You want to remove the original before the first successful boot because the new drive is an identical copy with the same partition signatures and assigned drive letters and this will confuse Windows.

 

Hello Ray Willingham,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please be aware that there are two approaches available:

Clone Disk - migrates/copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another;

Backup - creates a special archive file for backup and disaster recovery purposes;

Also this previous post of mine explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches may be usefull.

As profitxchange mentioned Clone Disk tool of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home creates the exact copy of the source drive on the destination, therefore, the drive letters will be the same and this is the reason why we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives right after the disk cloning process has been finished. Since keeping both original and cloned hard drives connected might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

Please note that most likely the applications transferred this way either from the cloned hard drive (made with Acronis True Image) or restored from the image archive of the external hard drive will not work or will not work correctly. The reason is that most applications right the information about themselves in Windows registry. Acronis True Image does not allows you to restore only certain applications from the image archive. You will need to restore them along with the operating system.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Hello
I also have an HP with 2 partitions on the hard drive. A "C" partition and a "D" partition called HP Recovery.
I want to fit a new larger drive. Can I clone BOTH partitions to the new larger Hard drive. Then fit it and if all ok format the old one as a second hard drive.
I know I have to change the links from slave to master etc

Thanks
Bumpyneck