Why won't TI 10 clone my HD ?

Hi all

Apologies in advance but I am a newbie to True Image and to also Windows (I am a Mac man!). However, my daughter has a PC laptop with a full HD which I am trying to clone onto a new bigger unit (she is running Vista Home). I have True Image 10 (not sure of the build - how do I tell?) and the new HD is in an external USB2 caddy. Yesterday (a day from hell) I set about cloning (automatically) to the new HD. The source and destination disk were recognised automatically as the instructions suggest, and everything was going very well. After an hour or so it was ~50% complete. I came back 30 minutes later to a blank screen and to my horror realised that I hadn't switched on the power to the charger and the battery had run flat. I thought that all I would need to do is repeat the operation. However, when I now try to do it, the two disks are not recognised automagically and TI says the destination HD has partitions and data that must be wiped to continue. So I agree to that and after the reboot Acronis starts to do it's stuff for all of 1 minute and then says congratulations "your disk is now cloned, press a key to close down" - which it clearly isn't!

I have reinstalled TI10 (twice) reformatted the disk (albeit only a "quick" reformat) but still it doesn't do the cloning.

Could anyone offer any advice on what to do next and rescue me from this suffering. I was planning to do the long reformat of the new HD next but I still can't be sure that that will fix it - it looks as if the new disk is one big file and NTFS formatted already. So, I don't know if it is a TI problem or a disk one !

Regards

John

 

If the laptop still boots up correctly, that's very good news. So make the bootable True Image Rescue CD, boot with it and run the Clone operation from its menu. The build number for pc software is usually under Help>About

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes the laptop is fine (phew!) but I need a bit of clarification on what you suggest. I have never used this software package before and really only bought it just so I could clone the HD's of my kids Windows laptops.

So are you saying... Boot up the laptop. Fire up TI 10. Make a "rescue CD". Then boot up the laptop from that and then try and clone the disk from the laptop via the menu instructions? Will this clone all of the system as well as the programmes/data ? Is this a normal way of fixing such issues in the Windows world ? Seems odd to my mac eyes

John

 

Yes, the Rescue CD has the basic Backup, Recover, and Clone functions on it. When you run the Clone operation, be sure to put the check mark against Disk 1. This will copy everything from the original to the external. I use the CD for everything since you never know what Windows may have left running in the background when you run TI from within Windows. There are some users here though, who run TI very successfully from within Windows.

I know it is tough trying to come from the Mac world to the PC world , my wife uses a Mac, so I understand what you're going through.

You will get lots of good help here.

PS. AFter the cloning operation is done, do not boot the laptop with both drives connected. Shutdown and switch the drives first. After you do a first boot with the new drive and it is successful, then you can reconnect the old drive via the ext. enclosure.

 

Thanks - that has sorted the cloning problem out. However, the new HD won't boot in the laptop - get what i'm told is not an uncommon error, the 0xc0000425 one - need to repair with Vista install disc etc - which of course I don't have because it's an Acer and they don't supply them. Only options I can see are to borrow a Vista disk and run repair or dump TI 10 and try Paragon.

I'm a bit worried though as some are saying that it is a feature of Microsoft that they wont let you clone Vista to another HD.

Thank God for Apple and sanity.

John

 

John,

Since the new hard disk is larger than the old one, you should be able to avoid needing to do a repair by creating an Entire Disk Image (check the Disk # checkbox) of the original hard disk and saving it to a USB hard drive or network share.

Then install the new hard disk in the laptop, boot from the TI CD and restore the Entire Disk Image to the new drive (again, check the Disk # checkbox). If it boots into Vista okay and recognizes the additional hard disk space as unallocated, then you should be able to use Vista's Disk Management to extend the Vista partition to make use of it (assuming the Vista partition is located next to the unallocated space).

 

Thanks - worth a try. Not sure I follow the partition/space comment. My old drive has 3 partitions - 1 with the system for recovery (5Gb), 2 has the c drive (25Gb) and 3 is data drive (25Gb). New HD is 120Gb. So what will "image" and how will it "restore"?

Thanks John

 

I think the first thing I would do is just restore the Entire Disk Image (check the Disk # checkbox) and see if it boots okay without needing a repair. Your partitions on the new drive should be the same size as on the old drive.

Assuming your drive is configured like this:
[Recovery 5GB][Vista 25GB][Data 25GB]

If the Entire Disk Restore works, then you should be able to resize the Vista partition as follows:
1) Start Vista Disk Management
2) Delete the #3 Data partition (the partition after the Vista partition)
3) Extend the Vista partition to the size you want
4) Use TI to restore just the #3 Data partition from the Entire Disk Image into the unallocated space that remains on the drive

 

Hello JohnBrennand,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

In addition to the instructions provided by DwnNdrty and MudCrab, please see Acronis True Image 10.0 Home User's Guide for the detailed instructions on operations with Acronis True Image.

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window. Please make sure you use the latest build (4942) of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software. Don't forget to recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media after updating.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov