After cloning will the old drive still work.

I am trying to clone my laptop drive using Acronis True Image 9 and in the instructions it says that after cloning I must remove the old drive and use the new clone drive. I am using a second external hard drive connected via USB to my Presario 2100 laptop. I do not want to replace the existing laptop built-in hard drive since physically it cannot be done anyways because the external drive is much bigger and cannot fit inside the laptop. All I would like to do is create a clone drive in case, the laptop drive ever goes bad. Then at that point I will replace the laptop drive with a small notebook size drive and then clone the external hard drive (which i had it cloned previously with Acronis) to the new notebook size drive.

But my question is, the instructions say "you must remove the old drive after cloning". Does that mean the laptop drive which I will be cloning will no longer be good after the cloning process? Again, all I want to do is to clone the laptop drive but keep using it. I don't plan to use the external drive to boot (I dont think it is even possible to boot from an external drive). I just want to have a clone in case of emergency. I would appreciate your feedback. Thanks.

 

After creating a clone of your system disk, you will have 2 bootable system disks attached, something the OS will probably NOT like. That’s why it tells you to remove the original; the assumption is being made that you are replacing it with the new clone. That’s the main purpose of cloning; drive replacement.
You’d be much better off (IMHO) to create images instead of cloning.

 

Then how can I go about creating an image? I thought image and cloning was the same thing? Can I do it with Acronis True Image 9 ? Also, if i create an image, in case the laptop system drive ever fails, can I replace it with the image drive (assuming I have used a notebook size drive) and expect it to boot and behave same as it was the original laptop drive?

I am just trying to avoid the tedious and long process of reinstalling all the programs. I don't just want to back up the data. My purpose would be if the system drive fails, i would simply replace it with a new identical drive, ready to go. Please, let me know how this would be possible with my configuration. I appreciate your response.

 

Select Backup instead of Cloning. As Weaz says you want to make a complete image of your entire drive. This gives you an image that you can restore to a new drive if your laptop drive ever fails. Read the help file.

 

So by creating an image of my laptop drive I will not need to reinstall the programs if my system drive ever fails. I will just use the image and apply it to the new system drive. I guess this is a better solution than cloning the system drive as suggested by Weaz.

Thank you so much.

 

You're welcome. Weaz suggested using an image also BTW. Cloning is usually used to move from a smaller drive to a larger replacement drive.

 

Hmm...I'm in the same boat, in a way.

I am going from a 160GB SATA drive (system OS drive), to a 250GB SATA drive (replacing the first drive).

When I did a clone, and then removed the 160GB drive, installed the 250GB drive in the SATA 1 connector, I got an "Error loading OS" message, just after POST.

So, then, I used the bootable CD, and cloned the drive again, thinking that it must have been that the OS was loaded, well, this ended up with the same result.

I then tried making an image of the 160GB drive, and restoring it to the 250GB drive, but guess what? When you do a restore, it appears to know which drive it came from, and only allows it to be installed on the 160GB drive. I can't remove the 160GB drive, since the image is stored on it, so unless I use a network to store the image, then physically remove the 160GB drive, there is no way to do it.

I'm using TI 8.0, if it makes a difference, with the latest release (937, I think).

Should I use the backup utility to do this? If so, how to I go about doing it?

Basically, I want to avoid having to do anything across the network, if at all possible.

This really stinks, because for about 8 months, I've been creating images as backups, not knowing that if one of my drives failed, I'd be screwed (of course, my image backups are over the network, but that's beside the point).

To summarize, this is what I want to do:

Take the new 250GB drive, install it, and copy both partitions from the 160GB drive to the 250GB drive (making the partitions bigger, of course). Then remove the 160GB drive, and have the 250GB drive as my system drive.

On a side note, I noticed that Windows XP Pro leaves about 7.844 MB of unallocated space on the system drive. I assume there is a point to this, so I was trying to duplicate this on the new system drive, and the manual mode in disk clone seem to be a bit buggy (have to try several times to let it let me leave that space there, without it zeroing it out when I click next).

** EDIT **
Just noticed that TI 8.0 does not have a backup feature... Is the only way this would work to create an image on the 160GB drive (of the 160GB drive), then power the system down, swap the SATA connectors so that the 250GB would now come up with C and D, then use the bootable CD and restore the image stored on the 160GB drive to the 250GB, or would this even work?

I just don't see why this is so difficult, seeing as how this is one of the main purposes of this software...

 

Hello geogecko,

As you found out, you can only restore a "whole disk" image (includes the MBR) to a Primary/Active partition. Therefore you would need to disconnect your existing 160MB Primary/Active drive prior to restoring because you can only have one occurance of a Primary/Active partition at a time. So, you need to either sort out what's going wrong with your "disk clone" method, create a "whole disk image" to an external drive or CDs/DVDs or use the procedure that you propose below.

You can ignore the 7.844MB of unallocated space left by Windows when it initially partitioned and NTFS formatted the hard drive. I subsequently merged mine into the C:\ partition via partitioning software (Acronis Disk Director Suite).

Pardon . There will be thousand of TI 8.0 users out there who would wish to disagree .

Yes, that should work (no need to repartition the new drive first) but you would be left with 90MB of unallocated space because TI will not automatically resize the partitions when restoring a "whole disk" image. However, you can overcome that by using <this workaround> that I posted in a previous thread.

To be honest, considering the nature of imaging software, it isn't normally that difficult if you understand and work within the constraints/procedures detailed in the User's Guide and Online FAQs.

Regards

 

Wow, thanks for going into such detail.

At this point, I've come to the conclusion, that I will need to have the disk cloning to work, because the drive in my HTPC (160GB) is nearly full, and the drive on my regular PC is only 80GB, and only has about 50GB remaining, which is not enough to store a full disk image of the 160GB drive.

Since the little ~8MB unpartitioned space is not needed, I will just try performing an automatic disk clone this time. (Unless you have a recommended proceedure?)

I just thought that I followed the instructions, and am still getting no where.

Oops, just realized that they changed the name of "Create Image" in TI 8.0 to "Backup" in TI 9.0...

Well, I'm going to document every choice that I make this time, and will report back here what my findings are, because I'm still not all that sure this is going to work.

I should be able to do this through the Windows interface, correct, and not have to use the bootable CD? I believe that is what the reboot is for on the second step of the script (to get it out of Windows).

Thanks for your help...

 

Yes, you can initiate the clone from within Windows (or from the boot rescue CD). Do not elect to wipe the original drive until you are happy with the clone. Once the clone operation has completed, you must disconnect the old drive and replace it with the newly cloned drive before booting into Windows for the first time. If you fail to do this Windows will fail to boot from the new drive.

Once you have successfully booted from the cloned drive you can connect the old drive as a primary slave or secondary master, reformat it and use it for image backups etc.

Regards

 

And another failed attempt. Here was my exact procedure, and what happened (read all of chapter 7 in the user's guide, from TI 8.0, which talks about cloning, and from what I can tell, followed it to a 'T').

Shutdown the PC.
160GB HD already connected on SATA 1.
Connected 250GB HD to SATA 2.
Started ATI.
Clicked 'Clone Disk,' and clicked 'Next.'
Clone Mode >> Automatic, clicked 'Next.'
Source >> 160GB HD, clicked 'Next.'
Destination >> 250GB HD, clicked 'Next.'
Selected 'Delete Partitions on Destination HD, clicked 'Next.'
Layout View (no options), clicked 'Next.'
Script View (no options), clicked 'Proceed.'

PC asks to 'Reboot,' clicked 'Reboot.'
Cloning takes place.
Press any key to shutdown, pressed 'Enter.'

Removed 160GB HD by disconnecting SATA cable and power.
Connected 250GB HD to SATA 1.

Booted PC.
After POST, 'Error Loading Operating System' is shown at the bottom of the screen.

I just don't get it. Should be a *fairly* simple procedure to follow, yet this happens every time.

Additional information that might be helpful?
Windows XP Professional, with NTFS. All references in the user's guide say FAT16 or FAT32, and make no reference to NTFS, but in some of the screen captures, NTFS file systems are shown, so I assume they are supported.

Edit: The only odd thing in my particular setup, is that the second partition (D: ) is formatted using 64Kbyte allocation unit size, but I wouldn't think that would be an issue. To even get that option, you have to go into administrative tools, and computer management, it's not available from the standard My Computer, Format menu.

 

you may need to boot with a recovery disk, and make the CLONED drive as an active primary partition.
I cannot say for sure; I do know that sometimes when I did backups/clones and had to recover the drive, this step was needed.

I'm not sure if, when TI clones the drive, it sets the cloned partition to active. BUT, all the data should be there.

Again, not 100% sure ( I currently use Disk Director, or Partition Magic, to edit partitions on my drive

Nick

 

Actually, I think the drive was DOA now. I just tried to do a fresh install of Windows, with the new drive as the only drive in the system. Everything was going fine, until the reboot, after the initial installation. After the reboot, I got the same "Error Loading Operating System."

I figure that's a bad sign, because I should at least be able to install a fresh version of Windows with no problems.

I also noticed that the drive seems to make a rather loud scraping noise when it spins down, after power is removed. My 160GB drive doesn't make this sound, and it's also a Samsung...

 

Hi again geogecko,

I see nothing wrong with the way you executed the clone procedure. Also, the fact that you use Win XP Pro and the D:\ partition has 64Kb clusters shouldn't make any difference.

Prior to carrying out a fresh install of Windows on the new drive did you fdisk and reformat it? However, that's probably an academic question as the scrapping noise sounds very ominous . I would definitely try another drive if I were you. Please let us know how you get on.

Regards

 

I used the Windows XP installation disk to wipe the drive. It saw the imaged install, but I tried a repair, and it still didn't work, so I started it again, wiped both C and D partitions, and started again from unpartitioned space. Made a C and D partition, and installed on C. It had to format, and then got all the way through installation, until the reboot. After the reboot, I got the same error I've been getting...

Thanks for the help. I will be sure to come back and post what happens with the new drive.

 

I used TI 9 to clone my Toshiba laptop HD to a new larger 7200 RPM HD. Used the manual clone function and did a complete clone. The clone was successful, but when I physically switched hard drives, Windows won't boot and gives me the "blue screen of death". Replacing the original HD cures the problem. I can see and manipulate the image using the USB enclosure, but can't swap out the drives. What am I doing wrong?

 

Yep, bad drive. Got the new drive, and cloning the original was easy as cake.

I have to admit though, the TI 8.0 (937) is very BUGGY in the manual mode. If you try to use the text boxes or arrows next to them to adjust partition sizes, sometimes they don't stick. It wasn't until 4-5 tries later, that I realized you could adjust sizes by grabbing the ends of the graphic, and moving them around...