cloning questions for a two hard drive pc

Running WinXP and have a custom two hard drive pc. One hard drive is 20gb, the other 160gb. I'm fixing to change the 20gb drive to an 80gb drive.

Using Acronis cloning feature:

1. Any problem cloning from a smaller to a bigger drive?

2. Any problem cloning from a bigger to a smaller drive, given the total smaller disk capacity is adequate?

3. I have drive C and drive D. Does the cloning redesignate or flip-flop drive designations?

4. Does the cloning process erase the destination disk ahead of the clone image being written to it?

5. Once I have a primary and clone image/drive in place, does the clone
drive/image stay static, or do both change together as something is written to one or the other?

6. By using the clone as a backup approach, would it be beneficial to use a boot loader program?

 

1. No
2. Should work
3. It can result in 2 C: drives unless you disconnect the drive that is the clone.
4. Yes. its completely overwritten.
5. Yes, it stays static.
6. I don't know.

I personally prefer to create an image backup by running a scheduled task each night. Some people use cloning for their backup process. Cloning is intended to migrate to a new hard drive. Each time you backup by cloning you will need to disconnect the cloned drive before rebooting or windows becomes confused. See this thread Multi-Booting with Windows in an Extended Partition.

 

Great info! Thanks. I read the multi-boot essay and appreciated the link to it.

Looks like the main safe way to use cloning is to do it to a USB drive and then immediately disconnect it once the clone is made, until/unless it is needed.

From everything I read, I think this would be the only way to avoid the possiblity of Windows drive designation confusions.

 

An external drive is the best solution if your going to use cloning as you backup approach.

 

rbig,

Acronis TI is the most foolproof cloning app that I've used. I deliberately broke both rules outlined in Dan Goodell's article and the cloned HD still booted normally. Unfortunately, others have had problems. Probably hardware related.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

 

Brian---I think what I'm hearing is that Acronis can keep me straight while I'm using two hard drives in one pc case (drives C and D), and cloning C to D every other day or so, and deleting the previous clone. I shouldn't have any drive identity confusion

 

rbig,

I agree with thomasjk. That's not a good way to run your backups. Use images instead. I don't even use clones to update to a larger HD. I use images as I find it easier.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1132968474;start=7#7

See Post #7

 

Hello rbig,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that there are two approaches available:

Clone Disk - migrates/copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another;

Backup - creates a special archive file for backup and disaster recovery purposes;

Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches in more detail.

Actually, Clone Disk approach is usually used to upgrade the hard drive (e.g. install a larger disk), while Backup approach is basically dedicated for the complete data backup and disaster recovery purposes. Since you are interested in backing up your hard drive for the disaster recovery purposes, we would recommend you to follow Backup approach.

Moreover, there are several advantages of creating an image over the disk cloning procedure such as: you can create an image without rebooting your PC, image creation can be scheduled for the particular point in time, Acronis True Image allows you to create incremental and differential images, image archive contains only the actual data and so it has a smaller size, images are ordinary files and so they can be stored on any type of the supported media, etc. However, the final choice is always up to your needs.

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

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

As I intend to use cloning as my means of recovery (my hd details do not
vary much) I am confused after reading comments in the forum and links to articles describing the best way to clone. Some of these confilct in the way to treat two internal hard drives after the cloning process is ended.

Which is the best procedure to adopt when you have cloned the destination
drive using two hd's in a pc?

Which hd do you take out before rebooting and how do you then test
if the destination drive has a clone which works?

Nice and simple please, what order do you change drives over after cloning,
and allowing for the testing of the new cloned drive?

Thank you.

 

To test the Cloned drive, as soon as the process is completed, shut off the computer, remove the original, and let the system boot with ONLY the Cloned drive installed. Most new motherboards will boot any bootable drive whether it is set as Slave or Master and whether it is in the Primary or Secondary channel.
If your system does not boot with the cloned drive you may have to set its jumper to Master and connect it to the cable that was connected to the original.
If you did the Cloning with the bootable TI cd, you will, of course, have to remove the cd before the system tries to boot it on startup.

 

Thank you, exactly what I needed. Nice and simple.

I have my hard drives (IDE) set to 'channel select'. The computer is approx 3 years old. I am 58 years older than my computer which is why I needed it
nice and simple.

The part of cloning that confused me was whether to leave the cloned drive
in it's original position (say the F drive) or move it immediately to the
C drive on taking C out.

When I know the clone is working, I assume it's ok to take it out and put the
C drive back in it's original position? Is it ok to then put the cloned drive back in the F drive?

 

Well, heck, I'm 62 years older than your computer. . To your last questions, yes to both. But I never use CS so I don't know if that will have an effect. If you want to make it easy to remove and reinstall your hard drives, use a removable rack/tray device for each drive like these:
http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm

 

Any advance on 66

 

I wrote a guide that explains quite a bit about cloning and multi-booting. Possibly not exactly what you were looking for, but you might find answers to other questions - its quite comprehensive.

http://www.defonso.com/clone