Creating bootable media

So I am trying to upgrade my laptop HDD. The external enclosure I bought won't spin up the 160gb HDD via 2-usb plugs. I was going to clone first, then swap. Thats not really an option any more though.

So now I am wondering if I can swap first? Thats where I am thinking the bootable media comes in? I'm not quite sure I understand how it works though and thus I'm afraid I am making a wrong assumption.

So I'm hoping that I create the bootable media. Swap the HDD's. Boot up the new drive (which has nothing on it, it is partitioned already) and put in the bootable media. Now this is where I get a little lost. I believe this just allows acronis to run without an OS present correct? Am I then correct in assuming that it allows you to clone from the external which will be the drive that was previously internal, thus containing the OS to the internal? At which point I'm good go? Is it that easy? I'm afraid its just too simple.

Just to be clear, in case anyone was wondering, my hope is the external enclosure will spin up the presently 80gb internal I am using. My understanding is perhaps the 160gb requires too much power and thus doesn't spin? I was able to partition it by connecting it to my desktop via esata AND usb.

So anyway hoping this all makes sense, I'm kinda new to this.

 

Sorry, should have included

Acronis True Image version 10.0 (build 4,942)

Dell e1505 running windows xp

 

Hi, pcu

Welcome to Wilders Forums.

No it should be the same.

Is it a 2.5 Caddy. [external enclosure], sound as it it might be faulty with no spin up or the USB ports on the laptop are faulty.

If the USB ports are ok why do you not connect the esata to the laptop and use that.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

It is a 2.5 external, this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817392009

Well laptop's only 5 months old so I don't think its the usb ports on it. It didn't work when using just the usb ports on the desktop either.

My desktop has an esata port, my laptop does not. With this external, you plug in the esata first, the the usb for power. This got the hitachi 160gb in the external to spin up and I was able to initialize and partition the disk. I was able to open it then in windows explorer. But alas, when hooked up to the laptop via only the 2 usb cables it would not spin.

Thanks for the help, this can get overwhelming when doing it for the first time.

 

Hi, pcu

It can be a bit, but stay on it.

Is there a jumper on the 160GB HDD [if there it is very small and hard to see, clear type material jumper] take it off then try it back it the 2.5 caddy without the jumper.

Take Care.
TheQuest

 

Not sure I know what a jumper is. From looking around a bit it is part of the pin connector? How would I know what sectioon to pull out?

 

OK, I don't think it incluldes one as I bought the drive OEM. I was reading a post from someone with a hitachi travelstar that they bought OEM and they mentioned it didn't include a jumper.

 

OK, i started the process of backing up to DVD. I hope I did it right.

I backed up my computer, selected the entire disk and then finished the wizard.

Said it would take about 3 hours. I never did see a prompt telling me how many dvd's it would take.

So after this is done I assume there is a way for me to verify that the disks aren't corrupt or something?

edit: Must be going faster then it thought it would as its already down to 1hour 40minutes

 

Not gonna be that easy apparently. Computer froze on the 4th DVD, about a 1/4 of the way through the process according to the status bar. I think I had read that backing up to DVD is prone to fail and that CD may work better? I guess I'll try it on CD's? Could that make a difference?

Also, I already have all my music backed up on an external so I am gonna delete the 27gb's I have on the laptop. That would reduce the size being used on the HDD to about 30gb and I imagine that means significantly less CD's to burn?

 

You will be far better off backing up to a external hard drive in DVD sized chunks and then burning them to DVD later. Or better yet just do a complete image of your drive to an external hard drive, no muss no fuss. You may want to return your external drive for replacement.

 

OK, perhaps this is what I'll do then.

I have an external HDD that works, its a 150gb. Currently its being used to back up my music. I just have it copied and pasted their. So perhaps I should burn that to DVD, delete it off that drive, then I will have space for the cloning process? Does that sound like a reasonable plan?

 

You can clone but beware that "Cloning" will totally erase the contents of that drive. If you create an "Image", that is use the "Backup" selection. You will be able to restore the image to a new hard drive by following the Restoring to a replacement hard drive directions. Is there space to accommodate an image of the 150GB drive?

 

Well I went ahead and did this.

Purchased 160gb 3.5" external HDD. Performed a clone of the laptop to the 160gb ext. Thats where I stand right now. 1 area of concern is the way the automatic mode partitioned to the new drive. I understand it adjust them proportionally but I wonder if my backup only took up 16.73gb on the laptop does it really require 34.10gb on the new external? The usable space on the external C: is only 104.42gb which seems like a large proportion of space to lose on a 160gb drive.

Not really sure where to go from here yet either. If I need to clone in manual mode to adjust the usable C: space then I will reclone in manual.

Basically I'm not quite sure whats gonna happen after I swap the HDD. I'm not really familiar with BIOS and all that which I assume I will have to deal with since the new HDD in the laptop will ahve nothing on it.

My understanding is as follows, please correct me if I am wrong. Swap the new, blank drive into the laptop. Turn it on. Load acronis. I understand acronis runs without an OS. So at that point I really don't know what to do. Does acronis just run a wizard that will allow me to migrate the clone over to the new HDD?

 

If you actually did a clone I'm not sure if you can restore a clone to the new laptop hard drive. A clone is an exact copy of the original drive. It may work by cloning the external to the new laptop drive. I suggest the that you create an IMAGE of the old drive onto the external drive. You will be able to boot from the rescue cd and restore the image to the new drive. Just select the Backup choice as I've shown in the image in my previous post and do a full disk backup. You will need to boot the rescue cd to be sure it can see your external drive.
Also be aware that if you have the Dell Media Direct feature it may not work properly after you are done. Look at this link for the details http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm.

 

Another new problem. I was using the trial version. I just bought the whole thing. So I download it and install it. But I still am getting the trial version. Its registered and everything.

edit: and I've run the repair (twice)

 

Uninstall the trial version and the install the registered version. You can't install over the trial version.

 

Well...lot of problems since my last post.

So I got rid of the clone I made (reformatted the external HDD). At that point I made a backup image of the laptop to the external HDD. I opened up the external HDD in windows explorer and viewed a few files. I thouught I was good to go then so I swapped the internal drives, booted up, inserted the acronis disk and tried to restore the image on the external HDD to the internal HDD.

It went throught the whole process but after it was done it wouldn't work. I think it restarted (can't recall the exact seuence now) and when it rebooted it just hanged and wouldn't load windows or anything.

Wasn't sure what to do at this point so I reswapped the internal HDD's and put the hitchi 160gb into an external and hooked it up to my desktop via the esata/usb so I could view it in disk manager. Just wanted to see if it was damaged or whatever. Said it was healthy, but it was showing its size as 80gb. I've read about something similar before i.e. the new drive being recognized as the same size as the old drive despite the new drive being bigger.

Essentially heres what I am seeing now.

when the Hitachi's in"
Dell BIOS starts up, I get option to hit f2 or f12, the I just get a blinking _ but nothing else happens.

When the Samsungs in:
I get the same sequence but after the _ blinks a few times there is a quick sequence of letters that pops up (...pb...) and then XP loads.

So here I am then, not sure what to do. I think Hitachi has a fix for the misrecognized HDD size (I think its something in BIOS) so I am not as concerned about that. I'm still just trying to figure out how to get my OS/files onto the new HDD.

Did I go wrong somewhere? Am I to just try recovering it again? Just kinda confused at this point.

 

I just reconnected the hitachi in the external again and hooked it up to the desktop.

It shows
Disk 1 as 73.12gb, G: 51.23gb NTFS, 21.89gb unallocated

My samsung internal on the laptop shows
Disk 0 is 73.12gb, 47mn FAT healthy eisa config, c: 51.22gb NTFS, backup d: 16.73bg NTFS, 5.12gb FAT32 healthy (Unkown partition)

Now what stirkes me is that the hitachi is only showing 2 partitions where the drive it was backed up from shows 4 partitions.

Could this be the source of the problem? I could just be reaching for straws I suppose.

 

Couple more things

I did not try to run acronis in windows, I just used the full version when prompted from the bootable rescue media. So when i do this again I'll try using windows.

Another area that was a source of confusion was selecting the archive disk. I was presented with 2 options

1-an NTFS option
2-MBR and Track 0

Wasn't really sure what to do. Checked the 1st option went through the wizard and then went back to the 2nd and ran through the wizard for that too. Was I supposed to restore both?

At 6.3.10 in the current user guide-was I supposed to keep restoring the NTSF drive for the # of partitions I have? For instance, I only restored it once and I only ended up with 2 parition. If I had done it 3 times would I have recreated the imaged 4 partitions? Perhaps I'm just barking up the wrong tree again?

Well thats my thoughts after reading through the manual again. I'll probably wait a while to see if I get a reply in case I am not on the right track otherwise I'll probably go ahead and try to re-backup my samsung to the external, swap internal HDD's, boot, run acronis in windows and modify some of what I did before with some of the brainstorming I listed above. Just taking stabs in the dark here pretty much.

 

Can you run windows disk management and report what partitions are shown on the original HD?
Right Click on My Computer. Click on manage then Disk Management. Post a picture like the one I have here. You can use MSPAINT to save the image. With Disk management open click on the window and hold the ALT key and hit the Prt Sc key. The open MSPAINT and paste the image. Save it as a jpg file to your desktop.

 

Well I'm happy to say I'm online with the new HDD in the laptop. Last time I didn't check the MBR and track 0. Also found instruction by another user, Beginners guids bu grover hatcher that were a little easier to read then acronis' instructions.

Thanks to all that helped. Proved to be a much more difficult task then I anticipated. Perhpas I didn't research it enough.

Now I have to figure out how to get xp/whatever to recognize the correct size of the HDD. Basically its displaying as if it were my 80gb samsung in there.

Speaking of that, what should I do with the samsung? Should I just use it as my backup? Put it in an external and just back it up incrementally or something?

Also, is there a way to shred the backup stored on the external I used i.e. the one I just bought? I really don't have a need for it and may try to return it.

And how about this, just put the samsung in the external case that wouldn't power up the 160gb, well it powers up the 80gb.

 

Glad you got it going. One way to get the proper size is to use the Acronis Secure Zone wizard and create a Secure Zone of some size. After the Secure zone has been created use the wizard to delete it and allocate the space to the unallocated space on your hard drive. If you search the forum you will find this trick in many posts.

 

Can't seem to find any posts referring to that.

Heres what disk manager currently shows. As you can see its showing an 80gb drive when in actuality its 160gb

 

See this thread Post #7.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&highlight=unallocated+space