Cloning laptop drive to replacement larger drive

Geeze if the USB Adapter was good you would have been through in an hour or so.

The computer Gods are mad at you for some reason today.

Tomorrow will be a good day!

Mike

 

My only experience is with Acronis Home versions 9 and 11.
Below are my 3 computers and how they interact with Acronis Home - Image / Restore processes.

Creating a image in windows / Acronis Home 9 on my old 1800 MHz/ 1GB took 20 minutes with validate on same drive, data partition. To restore that image using external / Acronis Home 9 Rescue CD took 4 Hours (in a Linux environment) (9GB image file) from external drive.

Creating a image in windows / Acronis Home 9 on kids HP
2.2 MHz / 2GB took 13 minutes with validate on same drive, data partition. (7GB image file).
Creating the same image using Acronis 11 Rescue CD (now in Linux environment) took 4 Hours and 10 minutes with NO validate onto a external. I've never had to restore this computer from image.

My new computer - See my sig.
Using Acronis Home 11
Create a new image within widows - 2 minutes/No validate. (5.25GB image).
Restoring same image using Rescue CD (Linux environment) takes 7 minutes. Image is stored on data partition of the SAME drive. I've restored this computer about 5 times.

Possible area's which can affect speed of process.

My Acronis Home 11 Rescue CD was NOT created by the program. It does create them, but for new computer would not work. Acronis sent me ISO's which I burned to CD. POSSIBLE this custom made (Acronis staff determine driver load during boot rescue load / Linux environment) allows my new computer to process faster??
Definitely hardware muscle is going to have impact.
Using an external seems to slow the process down.
When in Rescue CD mode, how successful is Linux environment when interfacing with your hardware.

A whole lot of " could be / what if " for variables.
But the common denominator, software used was from the same company... just different computers.

 

Hi Pete and Dennis

Dennis if the adapter worked it would have been a copy operation.

DriveImage XML would have copied the Live Windows to the new HD. After it was formated of course. Pretty much a 1 step operation.

After using DriveImage Ghost and Acronis for years, with this adapter I will chose this way every time to clone a Drive. So much faster.

With the Adapter you would not image, DriveImage XML has a drive to drive copy function. Which is what Pete could have used if the Adapter worked.

Really about an hour I would think based on my own results.

To image with any program you have to image to one location and then back to the desired location. Two long steps.

Imaging for backup is one thing but Pete was cloning 1 drive to another.

Sorry Pete I thought you knew. You can DriveImage XML a live system using either the disk to disk copy function or actually creating an image. But you can not restore to a live system, to restore from DriveImage XML you must boot a WinPe boot cd and run the restore. This is mentioned on the DriveImage XML site.

I usually use UBCD4Win to do this. Not much harder to build than a Slipsteamed Windows CD.

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

Don't give up on DriveImage XML if you had used a WinPe boot disk it would have restored the backup to the drive.

Another thing about DriveImage XML is that it has Compression but even compressed the image can be browsed just like a file system and you can restore individual files or folders.

Mike

 

Hi Pete, haven’t got the time now tonight to fully study this whole thread, but in general any drive letter problems with a moved XP install can indeed usually be cured by clearing the list in MountedDevices. As long as XP is on the boot hard drive and is both the System and Boot partition and sees itself as the C: drive, then you can even delete the whole MonutedDevices key and it will be recreated on reboot and drive letters reassigned in the default order. You can then rearrange everything but C: in Disk Management to your preferred letters.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

If you are not 100% sure then you can leave the line for \DosDevices\:C and of course the very first "(Default)" line and this should ensure you don’t have a problem with XP’s drive letter changing. So delete ALL the other lines except those two and reboot. (Note for 2K users - don’t mess in MountedDevices unless you really know what you are doing).

 

Good job Pete, glad everything worked out.

When one jumps into this image/clone/restore process, can be some very tense moments spread over a number of hours. My first restore (a couple of years ago), a "birth by fire" was delivered to me be "Windows can not read drive ", crash and burn, your drive is hosed. Had been imaging for over a year, but now that dreaded day had come. I had all the tools on hand, a new Seagate 250GB/16MB picked up from Newegg a few months previous on a weekend fire sale. When it arrived, I opened the box, read the instructions. My head started to hurt reading IDE drive must be jumpered to "Master or Slave channel" and connect to IDE header on motherboard with provided 80 pin cable prior to installing / using drive. I gentle slide drive back into box.
I had Acronis Image, which I had used numerous time, but never in a restore. I had Acronis Disk Director (a HDD management utility), but had never used it (the failed drive was partitioned by local tech when my Roxio "GoBack" went south a year earlier and I started to image backup). So there I sat, a scrambled OS, a new drive in a box, clueless how to set it up or run these new Acronis programs in a environment (Linux) that was as familiar to me as a walk on Mars. Things could only get better.
When it was all said and done, it went flawless. I had to do the restore twice, but when my local power grid suffered a momentary "Blackout" during first restore. Can't blamed that on anyone but the local who took out a power pole / transformer. When you bootup after your very first restore and everything works .... you start to breath and a smile returns to your face, a priceless moment.

What was my most important advantage to the above? I had current image backups. Without that I would have been back to ground zero, installing OS, installing all my programs and wondering if I lost any valuable data stored on OS partition. Imaging and Cloning drives are technically different (leave that for a different discussion). For this thread, PeteC was in a controlled situation. He had a good / working primary OS drive. Most new drives come with software to clone from good old drive to good new drive. A few of us might do this once during owning that computer. What most of us will experience, a bad program install/update, a drive that just decides to crash and burn and now you will be grinning ear to ear when you come computer comes back to life from your first restored imaged. Cloning only works if you have a functional working source drive. Images can be stored on your main drive / non OS partition, but should be created, stored on a different drive / DVD when your OS/programs partition have a number of changes.

Just a side note.
Acronis has a plugin which allows you to image and/or restore via BartPE. You choose which to use, DriveImage XML, Ghost, or Acronis. All are good programs. Just like security / malware programs, you must keep them updated to be effective. With image backups, they must be current to serve you with a smile.

So my word of advice now folks, just learn how to create a image backup. Use mflynn's FREE suggestion, DriveImage XML. I've used it, it is no-brainer easy. Just create the image ... literary just push a few buttons and it is done. Do this once a week, once a month or once a year, just do it. If you ever need to "Restore ". Just let someone on the forums know you need some help / it will happen. With a working image, you'll be good to go.

PeteC, I apologize for hijacking your thread, but I have a passion when it comes to backup / imaging OS info.... as if you couldn't tell.

 

Pete
Just a couple of "user" memo's - When you use Acronis for image / store, choose "Normal" compress. You have an option for high / max compression, but you only gain a few points and dramatically increase the process time. Per "Acronis Schedule" use ... keep an eye on it. It has been a sore stop for Acronis / user's per "why did my auto-schedule stop working "? I've never tried auto schedule, let me know how you like it after a couple of months.
Also in the "Tools / Options" interface, you can set up your "default" settings for Create and Restore... from password protect the file, system performance commitment, compression and numerous others. The one thing I have changed the past month from what I did the past two years is "Validate" to "No Validate" (I only create Full Images). By dropping the this out, reduce process time almost in half ... but with some measured risk. I generally have a dozen images stored (various ages), some on different drives. Acronis forums will frequently discuss / posted threads " my Validated image will not load ".... who knows why. Nothing is perfect in life, except my wife, she reminds me all the time .... and I agree with her.

 

Most likely then Pete that HP have deliberately set XP not to show the E: drive. There are a few ways to do this either with a reg tweak or Diskpart, but the easiest way is with Microsoft’s own TweakUI for XP - which I would be surprised if you don’t already have installed. www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Expand "My Computer" and highlight "Drives" and make sure there is a tick in the box for the E: drive.

 

Good post Dennis!

It needed to be pointed out how prepared and well planned Petes upgrade was.

He was backed up and in control at all times.

Mike

 

Pete, I have had that problem before and found an answer as provided by Acronis Support.

Apparently, under certain circumstances, the True Image drivers do not work properly in a new environment. It is better explained HERE.

Apparently, merely running the referenced SnapAPI_s_e.exe file, that you can download from Acronis, reinstalls the drivers and makes it good to go.

With some digging, I found that the problem was due to me having GoBack installed on the source drive and deploying the image onto a drive that had never had GoBack installed. There is a difference in the extended MBR code on the first sector when GoBack is installed. If you tell me you also use GoBack, I think we may have found a common thread.

 

Dennis--
When you created your image on the external HD using Acronis, how did you do it? Did you boot the computer with the Acronis CD and then image the original HD, which is still in the computer, or did you use Acronis through windows to create the image on the external HD?

 

Hi ackerberg
You have a number of options with Acronis, but their is one rule. During the "create image" process, you can not "create AND write/store" the image file of the partition being imaged onto the SAME partition (not sure if same requirement with all imaging tools).

What you can do.
This can be done within windows OR using Acronis Rescue CD (latter is run under Linux).
When creating an image file of the OS partition, you can output the file to ....
Same drive, different partition (my preferred, but frequently create copies of image file and store on external).
To an attached external drive. External does not have to be partition, but if is, any partition.
To an memory card or Flash drive.
To any internal or attached optical writer (CD or DVD).
If on network, image output file can be written to any drive it can access as long as it has write permissions to said drive. This includes any optical writer.

Restoring OS image file to OS partition.
ONE RULE - Computer must be run using Acronis Rescue CD/DVD.

Pretest - do before any of the above.
To be able to restore, you must be able to READ the source image file. Before you create your first image file, boot computer up using Acronis Rescue CD/DVD. Using the "Explorer type view ", travel to where you would have your image file stored. It would be very helpful if you had (as example) an text file. If you can load and read the file, you are good to go.

Another tool Acronis offers is being able to "Open, Read, and copy" files from an stored image file. Example, say you accidentally deleted some WORD files stored on your C:\ drive. With your normal windows load, you can open the image file (Acronis automatically creates a virtual drive and assigns a drive letter). Using Explorer, you would drill down to your WORD file location and copy them back on to your C:\ drive.


Many more options - suggestions - considerations.
Another option Acronis offers, is BartPE plugin. I have not used this option. If I understand it correctly, you boot up using CD/DVD and run your computer in WINDOWS, but in virtual mode ... a Windows LiveCD. This could offer many advantages, since all the drivers could be fine tuned for your hardware configuration. Also additional utility tools could be included in the Bart. This is something I will be exploring over the next couple of months.

Ackerberg, I don't mean to upset you with all the additional information. Just wanted to list the numerous options Acronis or other image programs offer. They are there to use, and allow a "on going image backup regime" many advantages. What I want EVERYONE reading this thread to consider ....
Just CREATE your first image file.
If you do that much, when you need to restore that image for any reason (drive fails or virus dripping out from your current drive) just ask for help on the forums, it will happen.

 

Dennis,
You have not upset me in any way and I appreciate your help. I am a technical person and have used Ghost several times, but the last time I used it I mistakenly wiped out the hard drive. Fortunately it was a new computer so nothing was really lost but I came to appreciate how unfortunate this could have been if it was a HD in use for many years.
So I turned to Acronis and I have v.10 on my computer. I was thinking of replacing the HD not because it is full but because it is old and I always worry about a breakdown and not being able to recover important data, even though I do back it up on a second internal HD.
Here is my question. I have looked at my Acronis 10 and do not see an option for creating a complete image of my HD which contains 2 partitions, the boot partition and a HP backup partition. I did backup the whole drive onto the 2nd HD when I first got Acronis but that was called a backup. Where do you find the option for an image?
OK, I found the image production under the backup. Thanks.