Swapping Hard Disks....

I've read several of excelent threads about changing disks but there appears , to me anyway, to be several views.

Basically I have a 120gb drive which I want to copy to a 400gb drive...so I don't have to go through the pain of a complete fresh install. Its Visat as well so the driver calypso would drive me to distraction

Two optios

1. Image copy but I get the impression that I would end up with a 120gb partition on my new drive, which I don't want

2. backup/restore approach which allows me to keep my full sized new drive ?? Question is where do I store the backup image ?

Sorry for being a bit "light" but I still cannot install my software, subject of another thread and I am still awaiting a reply from support, so I can't see any "screen shots" so to speak.

Any advice appreciated...

 

1. Item one is referred to as Cloning and will make an exact copy of your disk. Cloning is the Acronis TI process for moving your operating system to a new larger disk. During the cloning process you can choose "Manual" and distribute the contents of your current drive proportionally on the new drive. You end up with a 400GB drive properly utilized.
2. The Backup/restore approach also allows you to distribute the image proportionally. You can store the backup image on either a second drive in the machine or on an external drive.

See this link for restoring to a new hard drive https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=157096. GroverH has some excellent beginners guides in his signature https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=168165. you may also want to read the user guide http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage10.0_ug.en.pdf.

Either process Cloning or Backup and restore will accomplish what you want.

 

Thats nice and clear...many thanks.

If I can only install the product I could give it a go....

 

Product installed Ok and I tried a Clone of disk following the manual path.

Image on new drive looks the same as the old disk but it won't boot. Vista tries to repair it via the install menu but it still refuses to boot my old d rive looks like this in disk management

c: healthy (boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

My new drive

G: (or c: if its on its own in the PC) Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)

It seems some key boot files are missing so I may have mis selected a step in the cloning. If I force Repair to keep trying it seems it can't see an operating system on the new drive. Should I try again and if so I shall list what I did but any ideas appreciated

 

Vista and True Image don't seem to like each other too much. Try making the bootable True Image CD media, boot with it and re-do the Clone procedure from its menu.

 

Can I redo the clone over the new disk cloning or do I have to do, a very very long format again ? Oh, I can...!

Can't do a clone from boot CD as I only have the trial version. Once I have learnt how do use it I will buy the "kosher" version.

Still don't know why the MBR, I assume, wasn't created on my new drive ?

About to try again..."I may be gone some time"

OK, did another clone but still no bootable hard disk. It doesn't say that it won't copy MBR in trial version but it certainly seems that it hasn't ? I thought it was a hard disk driver for the new drive as Vista would need to load to load any "missing" drivers..and if windows can't load...

If I boot from Vista disk it asks me for a HDD driver but that wouldn't matter to the bios and would only matter when windows boots up?

 

After cloning, the procedure calls for booting...

before taking that step, you must physically replace the old HDD with the new one, then boot. Did you do the above?

 

Yes I did and on power up it went into the windows problem page suggesting I try repair, which doen't work.

I can't help thinking I am missing something here but for the life of me can't see what. I have a cloned disk but apparently no boot from it.

I am cloning a 120gb Maxtor IDE to a 400gb Hitachi SATA but I can't see that as an issue....

This is driving me nuts and although Vista Ultimate has a full backup and restore feature I don't trust it...and Acronis is so highly rated

 

I assume that before booting the new SATA drive, you went into the BIOS and changed the boot HDD from one to the other...

 

Thats a good point, not sure if I did. I just rebooted and with no other drive in the system I assumed this would, in affect, be the same thing. Worth running clone again and "eliminating" that possible issue ?

 

I would think so. For example if the BIOS is set to boot an IDE drive and it's not there... there will be no boot. If you want a SATA drive to boot, then the BIOS must be configured accordingly.

Most clonings involve drives to be installed in lieu of the old one but with the same connection type. By changing not only the drive but also the type of connection requires a change in the BIOS. It takes a few seconds to do.

 

Trying it now.

I don't want to detract from the subject of the thread but...one thing that bothers me is the 2nd level support people with trial versions get. I understand the need to support paid up customers as a priority but if someone is having trouble with a trial copy the risk is they will not buy the product if support is slow.

Clone at 40%...more later

 

All done but still no joy..ran through bios and it shows new drive as boot drive but even if I just leave the new drive in, format it using Vista install Vista tells me it can't find a volume that meets its criteria...so something has screwed up somewhere...I'll investigate more

 

Managed to recover the disk and reformatted and loaded Vista so I know the disk is OK. Thought I would try a restore from a saved .tib on my external drive. it said it would take 7 hours, then 3, then 2 then after 40 minutes it went back to 3 hours...so I aborted. Disk said the partition was unallocated after that which was interesting. I am trying clone one more time then if that fails I'll call it quits forever. Too many bugs, not impressed, too much time wasted I'll just do a rebuild and say goodbye.....

 

After cloning be sure you disconnect the original boot drive before booting with the new one.

 

It failed...

I'm cinvinced that something in Vista is stopping Acronis copying some basic Vista boot files...or Arcronis is missing them. The clone disk looks fine in explorer until you try and boot it, and yes on its own in the PC old drive removed. Vista fails on boot and claims that a file is missing. Repair fails. See my other posts here to see the difference between the old drive and new one in sys admin.

Boot,Page file and crash dump are missing from the new drives description.

 

Interesting development.

In trying to do a fresh install, rather than use Acronis, I could not get Vista to see the new disk as usuable with Vista. Although Vista install could format, change partition in the new drive it just refused to install any files to it. I think I tried this before but I'm not sure, I removed the remaining IDE drive (slave , no OS on it) from the PC and Vista allowed me to install. In install it showed both drives, the IDE was a Dynamic drive so Vista just wasn't interested in it so I couldn't see why it was a problem.

Now I'm guessing that others have cloned from IDE to SATA before but have they in Vista ? I did try one more time and key Boot files, not MBR, were still missing..I didn't retry with IDE removed as I'd had enough...in any case I needed the Master IDE to clone.

I could have tried backup/restore to/from an external drive but that was taking hours before and after a full day on this I really have had enough. Is this a bug in TI, I suspect so, and possibly combined with a Vista bug in install. Software such as TI should recognise the various interfaces at play and work round them.

 

True Image cannot handle Dynamic Drives.

 

Thats right and I didn't try that but I wonder if Vista and or TI struggled because I had two different type of drive, IDE and SATA, in the PC with one of them being dynamic. On the face of it they didn't but I certainly couldn't get Vista to install on the Vista formatted SATA drive with the slave, dynamic IDE drive (my old D drive) in the PC.

Maybe I should have tried a clone with the original IDE C drive to the new SATA drive with the D drive removed. the lack of any warnings/messages from both products over any potential issues....is a concern. If indeed they saw any until it was too late or at all

 

Hello topgazza,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please take a look at this article for details on transferring your operating system from IDE to SATA hard drives.

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov