Cloning for a new HD

I have a WDC SATA 36GB Drive that is about to go down (according to the WDC utility). I have a new identical one on the way. The drive that is failing is my boot drive. I also have a 2nd drive. The second drive has several partitions on it.
It appears that that in Acronis when you do a clone from one drive to another the second drive is wiped out - all partitions. I don't want to do that because I have information I want to keep on the 2nd drive.

I am able to perform a drive image backup of my "C" drive - the one I have to replace.
Should I run Acronis from a CD and rebuild my primary drive from the image? Will that make the new drive "bootable" and ready to go?

If I try cloning I'm not sure how to go about installing the new drive so I don't have to clone and wipe out my second drive. Can I hang my new drive off the primary drive (slave mode), clone and then set my new drive to be the master drive? I really don't want to lose the information on the "C" drive as I will need to do quite a bit of re-installing of apps. I've read a lot of the posts but I'm still not sure what the correct sequence of steps should be. Any advice? Thanks.

 

I should add my current primary drive is partitioned into a "C" and an "E" drive. I don't know if that will make a difference. I have no data in the "E" partition so no big deal if I lose that partition.

 

Hello share98,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

I am sorry for the delayed response.

Yes, you are right. During the "Clone Disk" procedure all the existing partitions on the destination hard drive will be deleted and all their data will be lost. Clone disk tool of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home creates the exact copy of the source hard drive and to copies all the data, including partitions, folders and files, to a newer disk, making it bootable if the original disk was bootable.

In your case, since you do not have the second hard drove to clone to right now you can use Backup approache to move the system from one hard drive to another one. Basically, all you will need to do is to create the image of your system (entire hard drive or system partition only. I would recommend that you image the entire source disk) and store this image to the second hard drive you have right now. In this case the date stored on this second hard drive will not be deleted. Acronis True Image 9.0 Home just creates the image archive (file) on that hard drive.

Then when the new drive will arrive you can boot your computer from Acronis True Image Bootable CD and restore the system from the image you have created.

I would also recommend thart you find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 Home in the respective User's Guide.

Thank you.
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Aleksandr Isakov