Moving current SATA HDD1 (Vista) over to additional SATA HDD2; Problematic?

I have a SATA 500GB HD that currently has Vista pre-installed as part of a new system purchased with NTFS C: and a smaller FAT32 E: recovery partition -- The drive is quite noisy and therefore will be adding a second quieter drive to the unit for general operations. I would like to be able to move over the contents of C: (at the very least, and both partitions at best) so this then becomes the default ‘bootable’ drive; but remain unsure of complexities of then having two C: and E: .. and the confusion of getting Vista to boot into the correct one.

I have been using TI 11 for general file backups and would like some information if the above would be possible with this tool and what my best course of action would be to get the job performed with as little risk as possible.

Would I be looking to duplicate/clone the drive(s) to a USB external drive and this image to be placed on the new drive; and then changing the BIOS settings so the new drive becomes the first bootable HDD.. along with (maybe) erasing (at worst) the old drive once this copy has been performed (sounds worrying.. in case it all goes wrong) ..

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

Good luck. that's exactly what I've been trying to accomplish for the last two days. No luck so far despite hours spent pouring through the various forum postings, reading and reviewing the users manual time and time again, and various and assorted emails sent to the "tech support' departmant. At this point, I'm beginning to think that the money spent on this prog was pretty much a waste.
It certainly doesn't live up to the claims that the company makes about it.

Jeff Appleton

p.s. Mods- please don't send me a post to "please review Aleksanders post". There's absolutley NOTHING in that post that helps me deal with the rather simiple task of cloning and moving all the info on on HD to another.

 

In the True Image world, clone and image are two different processes.

Since you have an external drive, I would use the Backup feature to make an Image of your entire system drive using the external as the destination for this Image.

Then make the bootable True Image Rescue CD if you have not already done so.

Next remove the original drive, and connect the new drive in place.

Then boot with the Rescue CD and use the Recovery feature to restore the Image from the external drive to the new drive.

After the restore is done, your new drive should boot just like the original. You can then re-connect your new drive and do what you will with it.

 

Well,
Here's my update so far. Yesterday, sent a message to the tech support department requesting assistance since every attempt I'd made to restore a harddrive image resulted in Windows being unable to boot.

Here's my current message to the tech support dept after recieving their generic response:

"It's been over 24 hours since I made a request for tech support. It's now Friday afternoon, at the end of the work week. This slow response is not acceptable. When will I receive a detailed procedure for making your software perform as it's advertised? If it's unable to perform as stated please provide information on the process to refund the purchase price."


I'm not a computer genius, but I'm also not a bonehead and can usually sort out windows based problems given the opportunity. However, after spending countless hours searching this forum it appears that the issues I"m experiencing are a pretty regular occurrence. the tech support response usually directs users to another post, or offers generic "non-specific" solutions.

Hate to say it, but at this point I'm ready to call this program a bust. I would definately recommend that ANYBODY WHO IS LOOKING FOR A "HASSLE FREE" BACKUP PROGRAM AVOID ACRONIS PRODUCTS. I spent $50 on it, so it's not really a money issue, but it's more the principle behind it. The ad's for TI make claims that the software fails to perform. on top of that, it appears that if you don't want to wait (literally days) for any type of tech support, you have to pay on a "per incident" basis. Most of the other software I've purchased at least offer a 30 day tech support program so the user can at least get the software up and running. Seems as if Acronis is more interested in generating income via tech support than they are with making sure the product is actually usuable by the consumer.

To sum it all up:

CAVEAT EMPTOR
THIS PROGRAM IS APPEARS TO BE WORTHLESS FOR A LARGE MAJORITY OF USERS.

Jeff Appleton

 

I feel very similar -- inasmuch as that there seemed so much good will towards this program over what I felt was its nearest rival, norton ghost (of which I have no experience of..) -- and I am now wondering if I would have been better going down that route instead of wasting a great deal of my time attempting to get a program to do what it should have no problems doing..

It really is quite frustrating..

 

I am coming in late, but I can tell you my experience. It worked GREAT!

I tried the software before I purchased it. I basically wanted to do the same thing you did. My C Drive, with Vista Ultimate installed on it was only 320 GB, I wanted a larger drive, so I purchased a 750 GB SATA II drive. I used the 15 day free trial.

I did not bother doing backups and restores, I went the simple way. I installed the new drive. I then ran True Image and cloned the primary drive to the 750 GB drive. It asked me all the questions as it did the clone. It made a clone of the drive, then set the new drive as the C drive and everything worked great. I didn't have to do bios changes or anything, True Image set up everything automatically.

I was really concerned since Vista sometimes causes problems, and I am using Vista in 64-bit mode, which is even more problematic. Someone in a Vista chat room said use TI 11, so I did and was very happy with the results.

One thing I had to do, and I'm sure you will, no matter what system you use for the backup, you have to re-activate Vista. It is a simple process, but I had to call in, because the automated system assumed it was a new computer, since the drive had changed.

Anyway - try the clone method - it does work GREAT.

Regards,
Richard

 

elysium and Jeff,

Did you follow DwnNdrty's instructions? That approach is the most foolproof way to upgrade to another HD.

If it's not working I'd lay money on user error.

 

I agree that this does sound like a method that would work - and I will not be able to test it out until my new drive is shipped towards the end of december .. ; now I have the "method" the problem I have run into is getting the rescue-disk to actually boot .. and would obviously prove to be a big stumbling block!

I understand the VistaPE method that has been mentioned for those suffering from this problem - but I believe that Acronis should be able to create a boot disk that works for everyone, surely.. without the need to play around with botch-job methods..

 

elysium,

Now that is a major problem. Hopefully Acronis will be able to provide a CD that works.

 

Hello elysium,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

If you experience problems using Acronis Bootable Rescue Media, please make sure you use the latest build (8053) of Acronis True Image 11 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software. Don't forget to recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media after updating.

If updating doesn't solve the problem, please try booting with "acpi=off noapic" parameter as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

If the issue persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

Please create Acronis Report, Windows system information and Linux system information (sysinfo26.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

If you are not able to create Linux system information (sysinfo26.txt) then please do the following:

- Boot your computer from Acronis Bootable Rescue Media and press F11 key when the selection screen advising you to select either "Full", "Safe" or "Boot into Windows" option appears.
- After you get the "Linux kernel command line" prompt, remove the word "quiet", click on the OK button and choose "Full Version".

When the screen stop scrolling please write down the output information you receive (last 5-10 lines), or use a digital camera to make shots of the output screen. You can use Shift+PgUp and Shift+PgDn keys to scroll the screen manually.

Then 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 a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov