SUCCESSFUL Image Cloning using Acronis 9

Ok people i write this because i like to help people who have problems in cloning.

My Goal: Create exact image of my Hard drive using Image with DVD.

After few trial and errors , i found out that acronis do not record directly to DVD+R. It might do with UDF formatted DVD+RW.

1. Anyway what i did is I booted to my c: drive which i am going to make image of.

2. Started my acronis , created back up image to another Hard disk (d. I am using NTFS partiition so it will split to max (4.5gb).

3. Once the .tlb file created i burnt it to DVD using Nero.

4. Using Acronis , created boot cd.

5. Booted with acronis CD.

6. Restore option gives two line option. VERY VERY IMPORTANT*****
It is two step process. You have to select the drive you restore and it will ask you again. This time you select MBR , Track 0.
Then restore process begins. Once it is complete , reboot.
7. Boot with Bootitng Boot diskette. Do not install the software but go to maintenece and partition , view MBR , click clear sig button and apply to both
Hard drive.
8. reboot the system with new hard drive.

Voila your new clone XP working.


II) DRIVE TO DRIVE clone

Ensure that drive you are cloning has to be c: drive. I have sata. So i changed the cable to make my clone drive is c: drive.

Booted with acronis , did clone drive to drive.

Rebooted with Bootitng and clear sig.

Restart with cloned hard drive.

Working great.


My only complainst so far is it is not creating image directly into DVD rom.

Hope it helps.

 

One more most imporatnt thing. Read this carefully.

Edit boot.ini to only boot os in that hard drive. Do not boot OS of another hard drive from your Master hard drive(c. It will mess up everything.

I keep only one OS per hard drive. And each boot.ini refer only to same hard drive. There is no two boot lines.

I don't keep two O/s in same hard drive. It will create nightmare. Believe me. Spend extra cash , get new hard drive and keep a clone as a back up.

 

Alex, you might just have the answer to why so many people are not successfull with Cloning. I swore I wasn't going to do anymore "testing" on TI - I already use another software for cloning - but this one has piqued my interest.

 

Very Interesting. With your "SATA" and changing cable, it is not clear what this accomplished. Any of my sata drives don't care if I change the cable. Maybe it's a MB thing..

I haven't come accross the clear-sig option. What is its purpose?

 

According to Alex, that option is in another piece of software called BootIt Next Generation. I've heard of it but never used it myself. And I believe it is free.

 

Bootit NG is about $40 but they do have some freebie software on the site.

I looked for clear sig and I found a reference to substantiate what I guessed it was - clear signature. A way of getting around the unplug the old drive prior to the first successful boot method after cloning, I would say.

 

Hello Alex,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please take a look at my reply in this thread. Sharing your experience is very much appreciated.

If you have any further experience to share, please feel free to post it on this forum.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

"Clear sig" is equivalent to fdisk /mbr

 

Which is also known as <Method #3 ("Kawecki's Trick")>.

Regards

 

My statement is not 100% true. From the BootIt pdf....

In BootIt there are two buttons, "Std MBR" and "Clear Sig". In practice they both seem to perform the same function but there must be subtle differences.

 

Apparently the Fdisk /MBR from Win98 writes a few more bytes than necessary and this has the accidental benefit of clearing the partition signatures.

 

I've been making clones today that I deliberately wanted to fail to boot. fdisk /mbr and Clear Sig enabled these clones to boot. I just tried "Std MBR", several times, and it failed to allow the OS to boot. I then tried fdisk /mbr and the OS booted. Clear Sig earlier in the day worked too. So my original statement is probably true.

Certainly the following is inaccurate.

 

Yesterday I made about 15 "clones". Only one was made by Acronis True Image and it booted normally. For this TI clone, I copied into Unallocated Space.

For the other clones I used Ghost 9, Ghost 10 and Partition Magic. Cloning into Unallocated Space was always successful. Cloning into a partition always resulted in a non-booting clone. But this was easily fixed by clearing the DiskID with fdisk /mbr (or Clear Sig).

One trick that does enable successful cloning into a partition is to delete the Partition Signatures from the Win XP Registry immediately before cloning. Delete all entries except the default subkey from [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices].

See Method #2

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method2

 

I just made a "clone" using the TI CD. The destination HD was partitioned. The cloned drive booted normally. I'm not sure how this correlates with the clone failures from Windows when copying to a partition. I was cloning directly to a partition. If that partition was deleted 5 seconds before stating the cloning software then the clone booted successfully.

In any event, TI cloning worked for me, both from Windows and from the boot CD.