Cloning a new drive

My old hard drive has not given up the ghost yet but I'm still having problems with it so I bought a new hard drive.
My question is, can I clone this new drive then just put it aside until my old drive bites the dust then just install the new one?

Thanks,

Bud Z

 

Sure you can, but I would test out the new one after you do the clone to make sure it works.

 

Thanks, appreciate it!

Bud Z

 

Hello Bud Z,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives right after the disk cloning process has been finished, since keeping both original and cloned hard drives connected might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

You can find more detailed information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 in the respective User's Guide.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Just a question:

I read in an magazin-article (unfortunataly forgot which one), that after cloning to a new (mostly bigger) harddisk, Xp will not start up because Xp will not recognize the new harddisk id-number or something like that. I forgot the exact words in the article. But it had something to do with writing down the " registerednumber" of your old harddisk and use the same (copy) on your new harddisk.
I understand that this information is not clear, but may be somebodey else knows the whole story.
Anyway reading that article prevented me (because it was a lot of pre-work to do) to clone to a new disk.
Rob van IJzerloo

 

Sorry but I gave up and installed a new hd and re-installed the software.

Thanks,
budz

 

What problems did you run into?

 

I see someone gave up on cloning maybe because of a possible misunderstanding that I am having. An above post states that we should "unplug the new hard drive immediately after data tranfer because there may be some drive letter assignment problems."

Is there a way of making sure that the old drive does not lose its c: assignment after transfer? Dose the True Image dialogue warn of losing the assignement, or mention that the new drive must be "immediately" unplugged?

 

The quote from above was “we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives”; it doesn’t specify which one, the old or the new; that’s up to you.

The problem, as I understand it, is that Windows can get real cranky if it starts up and sees 2 identical system drives. That’s why you need to unplug either the old or the new drive before Windows starts up again.

“Is there a way of making sure that the old drive does not lose its c: assignment after transfer?”
Yes, unplug the new drive right after cloning and before re-booting.

“Dose the True Image dialogue warn of losing the assignement, or mention that the new drive must be "immediately" unplugged?”
I believe it’s in the Users Guide. I’ve never cloned, so I don’t know if it’s in the dialog. It's really a Windows issue, not so much a TI one.

 

Thanks again. I am getting more confortable about proceeding with this cloning which I have not done since windows 98. Ghost was not reliable, so I would use xcopy in win 98 with switches c/e/h/k/r/s and I got flawless clones.

Finally, a previous poster asked somehting I would like to know the answer to:

"I read in an magazin-article (unfortunataly forgot which one), that after cloning to a new (mostly bigger) harddisk, Xp will not start up because Xp will not recognize the new harddisk id-number or something like that. I forgot the exact words in the article. But it had something to do with writing down the " registerednumber" of your old harddisk and use the same (copy) on your new harddisk.
I understand that this information is not clear, but may be somebodey else knows the whole story.
Anyway reading that article prevented me (because it was a lot of pre-work to do) to clone to a new disk."

 

I am still using TI-8. When you disk clone you make an exact copy of the drive you have. This means op sy.( windows xp etc) . Each drive when finished will think and look the same after cloning. it should not matter which you plug and unplug on the jumpers to the hardrive as long as bios is set to recognize it. If you do happen to leave both in when you finish and then reboot again, Sure, which ever drive starts the computer(assuming one will and sometimes one will) will have a hard time naming the other drive since it looks like itself. If it appears unnamed as happened to mine this past sept.I went thru disk management and gave it a letter higher than c not in use by the system and I was able to access the other drive then. motherboards will vvary and some will and some will not allow this. The changes I am making are only affecting that one drive. If I rename within my drive that booted the system the other drive as z. That drive is now z only when the first drive is in use. If I switch jumpers and unplug this and leave the z drive to start the computer, it starts it as the c drive because i never really changed the designation within this drive, i changed the 1st drives view of this drive. Most people suggest only using one identical drive per computer to prevent this. However if your system does start and the other drive is visible, you could probably go thru computer management and disk management and have the drive with the op sys running the computer to change its designation of the other drive to another letter so you browse it etc. As long as you disk clone and keep the orig. drive contents from being errased, there is no problem in allowing your system to reboot. It must reboot to allow the acronis program to take control of this drive and clone (copy} the windows op. syst. It will not harm the original drive. If you do not like the results, you have lost nothing but about 35minutes of time.

 

I just used Xcopy32 last night on a W98 system that had a bad disk so it was a matter of getting what we could. Drive Image wouldn't make an image because of the disk problems. Works but sure is slow!

About the article. I am not sure if this is the same thing or not but I was told the following. Take all of this with a grain of salt.

The number in question is sometimes called the Drive serial number but it is not the physical serial number printed on the drive. It is a number that is placed on the drive when it is formatted I believe, and I think it also may be called Volume ID. My friend had a utility that would display this number and permit it to be put onto a different drive supposedly because XP would not see the drive as a different device and perhaps may want reactivation. This doesn't really seem to be a problem with cloning but maybe if some other HW in the system had changed this number being different might trigger a reactivation request. Like I say this is what I was told and remember. My personal memory certainly would not survive a 2 hour bout with Memtest86+ !!!!