Does Acronis 11 Allow USB External Hard Drive Cloning?

I have Acronis Home 9 and believe that it is not advisable to clone directly to a USB external hard drive. May I ask if the latest version of Acronis 11 allows direct cloning to a USB external-cased hard drive without going through the reverse backup procedure? Also, how much would it cost to update from my Acronis Home 9 to the new Acronis 11?

 

Sure ver 11 allows Cloning to an external drive - all versions do. But it is inadvisable to do so for the same reason. In some instances it will work in others it doesn't.

 

I too must ask-what is the best way to use an external drive enclusure (Rocketfish RF-HD35). I have succeessfully used TI-8 to clone a drive set as Slave on the same IDE cable as the Master system drive. I have gotten perfect clones this way. However, I am unable to use the external case mounted HDD and get a message saying the Clone is completed (but not really done at all).
At first I thought I needed to install the Rocketfish software, but they say that XP should recognize the drive without that being done. Indeed the drive is seen and from XP I can format and manually put files on the external. I bought version TI-11 thinking it was time for an upgrade-not needed actually-and that failed to do the job.

How do we get this done, with minimal added work?

 

Unless you plan to remove the drive from the enclosure and use it as your booting drive internally, then making a Backup Image is better than making a Clone. And depending on the size of your external drive you can put more than one Backup Image on the external if you so desire. With Clones, it is one per drive.

You should also make the bootable TI Rescue cd, boot with it and make sure it sees your external drive.

 

Thanks for the reply. I assume that the Rescue CD will allow me to Clone. I will be swapping drives from time to time, btw. Oh, I do have a spare bay to keep a drive in-just a pain to set up <G>

 

The Rescue CD has what I refer to as all the basic True Image features. It just doesn't do scheduled automatic backups.

To ease the "pain" of setting up internal drives, use what is know as Mobile Rack/Tray devices as shown here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Description=rack and tray&bop=And&Order=PRICE

They are invaluable if you have drives that you would like to swap in and out. It is also good to have extra trays (the inserts) so you don't have to keep removing the drive out of a tray to use another drive in it.

 

Acronis 11 Should Allow USB External Hard Drive Cloning?

Being able to clone to an isolated external hard drive that omits the hassle of a reverse back up would be an appreciated feature. Please, Acronis developers take note.

People keep saying that it is better to do a backup than to clone, as far as securing one's files, but I believe there is a strong demand for acronis to do both for security purposes. Files are now so valuable (giving people an incentive to have a second secure backup as well as a first) and formating a new disk so time consuming (Windows Security Updates) that I think many people would like to have both backup and cloning available as a plan a and b. Both processes take exactly the same time on my computer. I think that the best, easiest way to clone as a backup choice would be to make it so Acronis can clone to an external HD, (all the time, not just hit or miss). Thus the user could use the BIOS to chose which drive to boot from, check the success of the clone and then disconnect the external HD to safely isolate the drive for storage.

Perhaps it is not feasible, technologically, for Acronis to do this. Then it would be better to say this outright rather than saying that a back up is better when people are asking for a cloning-backup alternative.

 

Windows is designed so that it cannot boot from an external USB hard disk.

 

Re: Acronis 11 Should Allow USB External Hard Drive Cloning?

Using Rack/Tray devices as shown by DwnNdrty above can do exactly what you want. I have had the best of both worlds for well over two years .
I have a rotation of three main hard drives,though two would do. TI creates backup images on a seperate drive, this could be USB or internal.
All one has to do is swap over main drives after an image has been created and then run a restore from the backup image drive.
This way of producing "clones" is 100% safe as the source drive is not even in the computer when the older generation drive is overwritten.

Xpilot

 

I recently sold a machine I had built that had 2 removable trays. Am well aware that TI-8 works great with that setup. However the new machine (one of my customs) does not really have the room to add them. Maybe I will just add one bay and do the suggested idea of cloning and removing for storage, which is what I was doing. I will try using the Rescue CD to do the clone to my USB connected drive and see how that goes.
I agree that it would be very useful to be able to do both a Clone and Backup method regardless of where the target drive is physically located. The new machines I am servicing are coming with only SATA drives installed. This is an issue unto itself. It is sad that Acronis does not respond as quickly to our needs as we feel reasonable. For that matter you cannot call them and actually talk to someone about concerns of this sort.