2009 sorely disappointing

So, I'm a happy user of 9.0, but I'm using a machine with Vista and XP Pro now. It's time to upgrade. Happily, I see I can get a 15 day trial. If 2009 works like 9.0, it's an easy sell.

2009 is useless.

I've just spent the better part of 3 hours researching how to get 2009 to clone my hard drives. The first hard drive is 160GB, partitioned into 3 sections. After running all night, my laptop is hung in the morning, brain dead, still trying to backup something. Screen is dark, so hell if I know what it's doing. Cycling power allows me to boot, and off to work I go.

This evening, I try something simpler. An XP, single partition to another drive. That yields a cloned drive that blue screens. And is now 10% of it's native size. Not very useful.

Acronis, I do not have the time to debug your product. I wished it worked.

 

To my knowledge the cloning utility has not altered. Are you cloning via the Rescue CD or via Windows?

 

based on what I saw through the UI, I expected no changes either.

I am following the same procedure as in 9.0:

- launch the app from the desktop;
- select cloning; wizard starts;
- select automatic, yes it's ok to delete the partitions on the 2nd disk;
- at this point, ATI wants to reboot the system to obtain access to all files;

So far so good. At this point, things just come off the rails. The Vista clone cratered terribly (never completed, black screen), and the XP clone yielded a useless hard drive.

 

Hello CharlieG,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image Home 2009

Have you tried to use Acronis True Image 9.0 Home to clone the drive? Do you receive the same result? I may recommend you to check the source hard drive for errors before cloning it looks like there are some file system errors or bad blocks. Could you please check the disks for errors?

- Go to the Command Prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd)
- Enter the command: "chkdsk DISK: /r" (where DISK is the partition letter you need to check) for every partition that is visible in My Computer. Please note, that checking the C: drive may require you to reboot the machine.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

Try a reverse clone and do this using the Rescue CD.

 

Dmitry,

All good suggestions. I will try cloning using the 9.0 version; however, I am still trying to recover the drive space (2009 took my 320GB drive down to 32GB, and I don't have it back yet - just busy at work).

I'm still hopeful.

DwnNdrty - I'll have to research this. Frankly, I was hoping to just drop 2009 onto my Vista partition and thunder along. Time to learn something new.

Thanks for the feedback.

cg

 

As I work through this, I'll post updates as I resolve issues.

As noted, my pressing concern was restoring the sanity of the hard drive after the clone operation (see note below). Having attempted a clone from a 32GB to a 320GB drive, the larger drive developed a fatal attraction to 32GB. I tracked down a tool (HDD Capacity Restore) to help me out.

HDD Capacity Restore resolved the size issue; however, it would not work for me with the drive in the USB to SATA enclosure. I happened to have a system with SATA interfaces available, so I moved the SATA drive to it, and restored the original size. Interestingly, the instructions clearly said to power down the system before checking the drive size. I rebooted, and did not pick up the correct size.

Okay, so, now the system is formatting my 320GB drive back to it's original state. Next up, the proper way to clone drives (I'm going to read some documentation ).

Charlie

Clone Note: for the past 4 years, I have used 9.0 flawlessly to clone my hard drive, always yielding a bootable drive. In beginning my use of ATI 9.0, I had a 60GB drive and I matched it to a 60GB drive. So, my whining about differences in behavior are premature.

 

For the apparent loss of size when cloning to a larger drive, try the Secure Zone Trick outlined here:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1044452&postcount=2
The notice to reallocate the space may be a little different in ver 2009, but look carefully right after you delete the SZ.

Try the Image/Restore way instead of Clone on those Sata drives.

 

DwnNdrty,

I understand your suggestion and why. I'm not overly concerned with the size issue. However, I am concened with the BSOD once it completed the clone . That's next on the list.

cg

 

Clone or Restore using Resize comparison
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1299861&postcount=9

Inside the link above is my suggested cloning guide--if you insist on cloning.
The guide relates to prior versions but the procedures are the same. Your best chance of a cloning success is to use the reverse clone (as mentioned in earlier postings) and to remove the source drive(and/or any docking unit) before booting first boot following the clone.