Laptop cloning help needed, please!

I just bought a Dell D531 laptop. I tried cloning the drive to an external USB drive. Here are the problems I encountered, using True Image 10.0. with Windows XP.

1. The screen goes blank as soon as I start True Image and click Clone and Reboot. When it reboots I can't see anything. I read something on the forum that this isn't unusual because Acronis uses Linux, and Linux might regquire different video drivers. Also, someone said they overcame the blank screen problem by attaching a CRT monitor. I updated my video driver (not using a linux driver) to the latest ATI driver available. It didn't help. I attached a Sony CRT monitor ran the Clone software and that monitor didn't show anything on the screen. And yes, I did try using Fn f8, which is the D531 monitor toggling switch. Nothing worked. Result--blank screen.

2. Nevertheless, having used True Image 10 on my desktop machine very successfully over the last number of months, I knew what happens when True Image reboots and starts to clone the drive. As far as I can tell, even though there was nothing on the monitor to guide me, I successfully cloned the internal drive onto the USB drive. But...read on.

3. Of course, when I bought into Windows XP, the boot process stops and I get an error NTLR not found (or someting like that), because Windows is trying to boot from the USB drive. So, I tried taking my True Image rescue disk--with the USB drivers on them--to boot with USB drive attached. It does boot, and goes into the True Image software. And then click on Clone and it tells me it only sees my C: drive, not the USB drive.

4. When I shut down the computer and disconnect the USB drive, and then boot into Windows XP, and the plug in the USB drive, I can see that drive, and I can see the contents. It appears to contain all the files on my cloned C: drive. But...

5. Since I can't clone my C drive, since I've had to boot from that drive, I can't clone the USB drive to the C drive. Talk about vicious cycles.

6. One more frustrating thing. I attempted, quite logically I thought, to remove the laptop drive and clone it using my desktop machine. Both use SATA drives. However, the desktop machine will not recognize the internal laptop drive. Now that is really weird. I would gladly remove the internal laptop drive and attach it to the desktop machine as a way of cloning it, but as you can say, that approach isn't working.

7. Surely, someone out there has figured out a realtively simple, hopefully foolproof way, to clone a laptop drive to an external drive. And please don't see I have to install Linux. As you can appreciate, my lilfe is complicated enough as it is

Anyone out there who can give me help solving what appears to be a simple problem?

Thanks.

 

This may not be the same type drive but the link discusses several way to get the Rescue CD to see the external drive.

Western Digital My Book External Hard Drive & Acronis True Image
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=144460

 

Unless you're going to replace the laptop drive with the one in the external case, I wouldn't use Cloning. Instead use the Backup feature which makes an Image of the laptop drive on to the external drive.
And for the least amount of trouble, use the Rescue CD to do all operations.

 

Thanks to both of you. I can't use the boot rescue CD because my laptop screen goes black when I use the CD--so I'm flying blind. Aslo, when I try to use the external USB drive, True Image Home 10.0 doesn't see the USB drive--even though I'm using the full version that supports USB.

Yesterday, for 8 hours, I tried to create a bartpe CD. Forget about it Despite great directions, which led to sub directions, which led to sub directions, I just didn't work. I kept getting all kinds of error messages no matter what I tried. Each time I fixed an error, more errors popped up.

If anyone has successfully cloned a drive (which is what I definitely want to do, because of my success doing it with my desktop machine), I'll wait with baited breath.

Your help is appreciated.

 

Is this the same with any other bootable CD - not a True Image one?

 

I am not certain, but I think you may have other problems. I have a 3 year old HP zv5330 with the ATI 9000/9100 video chip. Using ATI 10 from within Windows, not only do I never lose the video, but it clones normally from C: to a laptop HD in a USB enclosure and also (as an experiment) to an older WD passport USB drive.

I will try to see what happens when I boot from the original disc (boxed set no download).