Disk Cloning Question

hello,

This is my first posting to the forum. I just bought Acronis True Image 9 after reading several reviews for cloning / backup software. It was bought to clone a 40 GB hard drive to a 160 GB hard drive. So far the process seems to have been very easy. The question I have regards my original 40 GB drive - it does not show up now in My Computer.

Once the Clone process was finished I changed jumper setting making the 40 GB drive a slave to the 160 GB and presumed I would be able to see the files on the old drive. (Both drives are Western Digital). I took the 40 GB out and put it in a USB enclosure - XP found it but again it does not show up in My Computer.

Eventually I do plan to make the 40 GB a back up drive but until I am satisfied the process has gone OK just wanted to be able to see the old drive data.

Regards

 

Hello Richard48,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post?

Please keep both hard drives connected while creating Acronis Report.

Please create an account, then log in and submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
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Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

I don't know all the particulars but the follwing is true for windows. If you clone one drive to another, the second drive will be seen as the same size as the original (in effect all the files on the original drive are copied onto the clone).

Windows won't accept two drives on one PC as both claiming to be boot and system drives, so when windows first boots with both drives attached, after the cloneing, it picks one and marks the other as not a system drive. The one marked as not a system drive cannot be used to boot windows anymore unless a new image is put on it. Sometimes windows gets confused and treats one drive as the boot drive and the other as the system drive, which can make things very messy. If you clone a drive and leave the original and the clone on the PC, and the one that windows treast as the system drive fails, you won't be able to boot up into windows with the other drive -- it's already been marked by windows as not a system drive. So leaving a clone attached pretty much defeats the value of a clone as an emergency backup.

When you clone a windows drive, as soon as the coning is done, you need to shut down the pc, remove one drive and then reboot with the other drive still installed. The removed drive can be installed and used as a boot and system drive if the other drive is removed (for example if the other drive fails, you remove it and install the clone you had been storing and, voila, you're instantly back in business). Infact, you can remove either drive and replace it with the other, and boot up into windows, swapping them as often as you like -- although presumably you would only swap when one of them failed.
sh

If you just want to copy the image of drive to a large file, so that you can restore the image from that large backup file to another drive, you can do an image backup and do this as many times as you want. The backup image will be single file and you can put such image files on the backup disk until the disk is full.

How each can work for you:
Let's say you clone and store a drive and your original hardrive fails. You remove it and replace it with the clone you were storing, and you can instantly boot up--although the files on the clone will be no more recent than when you made the clone. And the clone captures just that one point in time.

Let's say instead you do backup images and you original harddrive fails. You get another hard to replace the failed drive and restore one of the backup images to the new drive and then you can boot from the new drive -- the files will be no more recent than when you made the image file. You can resotre form any of the image files, so you can pick images from several points in time.

I hope that is relevent and helpful,
good luck,
sh

 

Nice, Shieber ... very nice indeed!

 

I just purchased True Image and was able to clone my operating system disk to another, larger sized disk. The operation went smoothly and I had no problem booting from the new disk. However, using Partition Expert, I tried to create a separate partition on some of the free space on the new disk. That operation will not work.

Since True Image will not clone an OS disk to a partitioned disk, how can I create a new partition after completing the clone process?

Thanks,
Ron

 

Hello Ron,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We recommend you to use special partition and disk managing software such as Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 for such purposes.

First of all, please make sure that you use the latest build (292) of Acronis Partition Expert 2003 which is available at: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

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.

If the problem still persists with the latest build (292) of Acronis Partition Expert 2003 then please 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.

Please also download the latest version of Acronis drivers, install it with disabled logging and see if the problem still persists.

If the problem still persists then enable logging by running the Acronis drivers installation package once again, reproduce the problem and collect the c:\snapapi.log file.

Please also provide us with the following information:

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

- Let us know if you receive any error messages? What exact messages? When exactly do you receive them?

- Download and install the free trial version of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0, try to create a new partition utilizing the unallocated space on your hard drive once more (the current trial version allows you to create a small partition) and inform us about the results;

- 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.
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Alexey Popov

 

Hi

This is a problem I have from time to time when I clone as a back up process.

Whilst I am a beginner in things IT the solution that works for me is to go
settings
Control panel
Admin tools
Computer management
Disk management
I some times find only one drive has been assigned a letter so click on the one with no letter and assign a letter - or it will suggest one.

Despite what Acronis recommend - I run two identical Hard drives both the same size and manf. the hard wired slave is my cloned back up of the primary drive.

On boot up it always goes to the primary drive unless I intercept the boot process and select the slave. The slave has a different opening screen so I can tel which is which.

Hope this helps