To clone a HDD to an external USB connected SATA HDD

Hey All!
I’m running an “Acer Aspire 5610Z Laptop. Intel dual core 1,73GHZ, 3GB DDR2 Ram, SATA HDD 160 GB.
I have Win. XP Home and Vista Home Premium running in a dual boot.
I’m running out of space, and am wondering if I can buy a larger HDD (same type), connect it by this special equipment to convert a SATA connection to an USB connection, and then clone the original HDD on to this new one? And here after replace the original HDD with the new cloned one.
I’m using “Acronis True Image Home 11.0 (build 8.053).
I have seen, at other places in this forum, that some have trouble seeing SATA disks and USB devices In this edition, but on my computer I can see everything that is connected to it, even USB sticks. I have two times recovered my OS, from an external USB HDD, using this wonderful software.
I badly need this more space, as I want to make a new partition to thy the Windows 7 Beta.
I do hope I can get some help inhere, and thank you in advance.

 

Here's how I would procede:
1. Make the bootable True Image Rescue CD.
2. Boot with it and make a Backup Image of the entire drive - check mark against Disk 1 - to the external drive.
3. Remove the original drive, and install the new larger drive.
4. Boot with the Rescue CD again and do the Recovery to restore the Image from the external drive.

If it doesn't work, you still have the old working drive to use.

 

Thank you!
Let me see if I have got this right.
1. What you say indicates that a back up Image made your way (Windows not running) is different from the way I’m used to make back up Images (from inside Windows). Is that correct understood?
2. Will an image made from inside windows not be bootable?

 

No, not different ... just safer IMHO. And with True Image, it pays to play it safe. And even though it may take a little longer I prefer that, knowing that I stand a better chance of making a good image. A good Image made from within Windows will also be bootable when restored.

You just never know when something isn't going to "play nice" with True Image, whether it is a windows update, or an antivirus update or some other software install/update.

 

Johnbe38, the 1:1 drive image you created of your old drive might not be bootable off your new drive, because the drivers are off. If it boots, good. If it doesn't, ask me, and I'll tell you how to fix it.

PS. I was in your shoes for a while looking for a fix. (My new hard drive with the restored image wouldn't boot because of misaligned drivers. I finally found the fix after weeks of scourring the net, and I want to help the next person out).

 

I may have mislead you .... I thought you had a seperate external hard drive in addition to the new larger drive. In the case of a laptop, it would be a wise investment to get a large (at least 500Gb) external drive for storing Backup Images.

If you do not have a seperate external, then my proceedure will not work.

 

No you did not mislead me. I do have an external USB-HDD, on which I have my total Back Up’s: All my data stored separately, and one Image of my XP OS, and one Image of my Vista OS. I have 3 partitions on my HDD:
1. Win Vista,
2. Win XP, and
3. ALL data.
These Images are updated once a week, but from within Windows.
So, what you say is that I should make the total image of my entire HDD, from without Windows, and then replace the HDD with the larger one, then boot from the rescue Disk and restore from this image.
If this is the right way to do it (and as I can understand better than using the cloning tool in ATI), then just give me the go, please.

 

Hello johnbe38,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

The described actions are correct, the only thing I can suggest you is to validate the archive after its creation (or you can do it separately, just before the recovery operation). Please note that in this case it will be preferable to verify the archive under Acronis Booting Rescue Media.

Thank you.

--

Oleg Lee