Help! Newbie with disk cloning questions....

Ok, I just bought Acronis True Image 8. I am new to this stuff, but from talking with a salesperson he says I can make a clone of a smaller drive (OS, Programs, files , etc) and then clone it onto a larger drive....and then adjust the partition so that the new larger drive makes full use of it's full capacity on a single partition. I guess you can drag the slider over on the new drive....

Well, I went through this procedure to see what it looks like and I canceled out just prior to "actually cloning" my main hard drive because I had a couple concerns/questions....here they are:

1.)I noticed that my "slave" hard drive which is the destination drive of the cloning process was assigned a drive letter of C: just before the cloning process...so I cancelled for fear that my "master" hard drive which I just set up with a new OS and all programs, preferences, etc, would lose it's definition as the C: drive or somehow have it's contents erased. I made sure that I selected the option to leave the main drives contents unchanged.

So, does the fact that the destination drive show a "C" during this process cause me any reason for concern? Should I just continue on and clone the "master" drive?

2.) Is it reliable to do a disk to disk clone right through windows? When I installed the program they had me make a rescue boot disk. What is that for?

Some people have told me that the only reliable way to make a disk to disk clone is through a "boot disk"...but I have no idea of the process to do this or even if it's necessary.

I have Norton Ghost 9 and tried making a disk to disk copy and was successful through windows on one drive....but wasn't able to duplicate my results on another instance...as the drive wouldn't boot up.

What's the recommended disk to disk clone procedure that will get me an exact copy of a good OS install along with all my programs, etc so that I can save it aside for a complete system (including os) restore in the even of a hard drive failure?

Thanks.

 

Hello Todd,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

To clone the disk it is usually necessary either to boot from Acronis Bootable CD or select that you want to reboot the computer. It doesn't matter which letter is assigned to your partitions. Acronis True Image creates an exact copy of the disk. Please read the User's Guide (chapter 7 page 41) and if you still have any questions please feel free to ask here or via e-mail support@acronis.com.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Thank you for your response Ilya....just curious though, why there is a windows based icon labeled "Disk Clone" under the heading of "New Disk Deploment" in a windows environment then? Thanks.

 

Hello Todd,

The reason for this is that you can clone you drive under Windows. You may organize the whole process indicating how you want to modify the partition layout (if you want to) and after you reboot the computer it will load Windows native mode and perform the cloning.

However you may clone the disk after booting from Acronis Bootable CD as well but in this case you will need to remove your old drive so that Windows could work properly.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman