How do I replace faulty harddrive ?

My PCs C: drive is cracking up and I plan to replace it with another of a similar type, maybe a bit bigger.

I've been using Acronis True Image 8.0 to backup to an external harddrive - successfully it seems, although I've not needed to Restore yet !

Can I just remove the bad C: drive and fix a new one in its place, and THEN use the Restore from the external HD to reinstall the entire drive ?

If so, will the new drive need formatting ?

I've tried creating a Clone, but the program assumes that I have a new drive installed as well as the old (bad) one. Or that if I want to save it to my external HD then everything will be deleted from there.

I can see how simple a clone would be if both drives are on the machine together but I'm not happy with the thought of installing "slaves" and all that that entails.

I'm not too bright about this, so is there any other relatively full-proof way that I can go ?

All help gratefully received.

Kind regards, Ron Luxton

 

You have nailed the process perfectly in your third sentence above. That is all that you have to do. It is the simplest of all the TI processes.

Xpilot

 

XPilot,

Many thanks for your interest.

My third sentence: Is it really as simple as that ?

Ron Luxton

 

Yes, as long as you have created a TI Recovery CD. Pull the old drive, install the new one, boot from the TI CD, restore the image to the new drive. Remover the TI CD and reboot. All done.

 

Many thanks for your interest and help.

A new hard drive is on order for the task.

I will keep you posted about this great new adventure !!!



Kind regards,

Ron Luxton

 

I'm planning to install a new harddrive which will be the master boot drive. Since my HP machine has a hidden partition from the old drive where the OS is located...and from where its booted, just wanted to know if Acronis will also create the same hidden partition onto the new drive which then I can hit the F10 key....and restore the original OS onto the new harddrive.

 

You don't detail what you have on your master drive but whatever it is will be lost if you do what you have suggested. All you will have on your new master drive will be the recovery partition and the operating system with none of your existing settings or programs installed.
In fact it is to avoid the nightmare scenario of having to reinstall everything that I chose TI in the first place!

Far better IMHO that you image the whole of your existing master drive and restore it to the new one. This will automatically include the hidden partition if you think you may need it.

Xpilot

 

I think its a good suggestion, especially when considering that the new harddrive is 160 GB....and may not function properly if booted from an OS without the latest service packs. Looks like imaging is the way to go.

 

Following the interest and help in this forum, I have at last removed the faulty 160GB harddrive from my PC and replace it with a new, later version of 300GB capacity.

After changing the drives (I needed a Sata adaptor for the power lead) with much fear and trepidation I loaded the Acronis Bottable Rescue disk and with no problems at all I was able to access full backup files on my freestanding backup drive and to download them to the unformated new drive !

A quick re-boot and I was up and running as though there had been no change ! Unbelieveable !

I was then able to add a new partition to the disk using the Windows XP software with no trouble.

Great program ! I've just upgraded to v 9.0.

Great forum and many thanks for your help and encouragement.

Ron Luxton

 

Another suggestion before making a cloning attempt with TI, is to MAKE SURE, you have all your software's registrations keys, serials, and licenses ready. I've already had to re-enter the activation data on several of them afterwards.

 

Ron,
Congratulations on your success. Since you have added a new partition, you should create a new backup and be sure and choose the full disk option. This will prepare you for another disk replacement or upgrade.

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