clone windows NT hard drive

i have a laptop that is running windows nt, i need to clone the drive to replace a hard drive that is too small with a larger one. the program i am running on NT will only run on NT and is an automotive diagnostic type software, what i have is an external 2.5" hard drive enclosure, i want to insert the drive fron the NT laptop in it and make an image to my desktop computer, then copy the image from the desktop to the new hard drive using the harddrive enclosure. will this work? i have a spare hard drive on my desktop to receive the image, but when i have tried a "test" run acronis removes the extra hard drive and replaces it with the external drive. please help!! the single hard drive also has to have partitions, C:, D:, E: and F:

 

Hello carson356,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Firstly, we recommend that you make make sure that you use the latest build (3633) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home which is available in the Product Updates section of your account at Acronis web site.

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

To get access to updates you should create an account then log in and use your serial number to register the software.

Please uninstall any previously installed build by following Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Acronis True Image, prior to installing build 3633.

Note that you should create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.

Please be aware that the current Acronis True Image version allows you transfer the system from one hard drive to another in two different ways:

I. Clone Disk approach:

Connect both source and destination hard drives to one machine and perform the disk cloning process either using the latest build (3633) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home from under Windows or by booting this computer from Bootable Rescue CD created using the latest build (3633) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home. You can find the detailed instructions on how to perform the disk cloning process in Chapter 12 of Acronis True Image 9.0 User's Guide.

II. Disk Imaging approach:

- Create an image of the entire source hard drive saving it to any type of the supported media, i.e. any internal, external or networked drive, CD, DVD, ZIP, etc.

- Install destination hard drive in the computer, boot this computer from Bootable Rescue CD created using the latest build (3633) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home and restore the beforehand created image.

Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the difference between 'Clone Disk' and 'Disk Imaging' approaches in more details.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to create and restore disk\partition images in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 of the User's Guide mentioned above.

Please be aware that you should unplug one of the hard drives prior to booting into Windows for the first time, since keeping two identical hard drives might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

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.
--
Alexey Popov

 

it worked! i initially tried to do a clone without any luck, same ntldr missing error.
i was able to do it very quickly with the disk image feature after updating and getting a second drive.
thanks for your help.