help Cloning Disk

I have a computer which has 2 identical 320g drives. I want to clone the spare (D) to use as a backup in the event my c drive fails. The cloning procedure (automatic not manual) says you have to remove the "old" drive (c) after cloning. Is this true & what happens if I don't remove it? Thanks

(I have done this on another older computer & don't recall a problem)

 

Is this xp or vista?, if it's vista it probably doesn't matter.

If it's xp, you don't want to bootup your computer with 2 c: drives at the same time. Usually will cause drive letter problems if you don't remove one drive first. Worst case scenario both drives won't boot.

 

Thanks for responding. My old computer was xp & if I remember correctly the cloning process wasn't complete until you rebooted (normal reboot on c drive) but also reboot the newly clone drive to "finalize" the clone - so if you didn't boot (make it the primary) it didn't care. Comments?

My new computer is vista home. Are you suggesting I can just go ahead & vista will take care of this (I am trying to clone my c drive to my e drive & leave my e drive running in the computer)?

Thanks

 

matinee,

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1132968474;start=7#7

Images are more suitable for backups.

 

Thanks for the link. If I understand this correctly, a image will give me a "cloned" disk (without coping a lot of "nothing") but I have to go thru the restore procedure to "get it". Also imaging is much more efficient as all I have to do is choose incremental update every once in a while to give me a complete up to date "clone" - done the most efficient way?

 

An image is a compressed file and doesn't copy free space. So if you had a 100 GB HD with 10 GB of data, a clone would be 100 GB and an image would be around 6 GB. You can use full images exclusively or full plus incremental images.

Yes.

Edit:... What partitions do you have on your primary HD. Size and used space in each?

 

Thanks

 

Hello matinee,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

The issue can take place if the original hard drive is not removed from the computer before the first boot from the target drive. This happens because Windows gets somehow "confused" while trying to mount the letter for the system partition because it is already associated with the original hard drive. In this case, please make sure you disconnect the original hard drive while performing the first boot from the target one.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev