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Cloning on USB Drive Problems

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I just got the Home 2012 version. My goal is to create a bootable external USB drive in case my hard drive crashes. I did a "clone disk" from the "tool and utilities" tab. I followed the instructions and seemed to start out okay. The Windows XP Dell GX520 desktop rebooted and it appeared to create all the data on the USB drive.

I then rebooted the PC using the USB drive to boot from. The Windows XP sequence started and about 15 seconds in, I got the blue screen of death. Anybody else encounter this? Did I do something wrong here?

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I don't think this will work, as you copy the boot loader and drivers of an ide / sata drive . If you want to boot from a USB connected drive you have to set up this separately.
Cloning typically works this way:
Get your spare drive mounted as second drive in your pc and run the cloning process.
Switch over your spare drive to the original connector and test operability.
Take your spare aside and reconnect your original drive.

To be onest, I have not yet seen a installation working as you described it here...........

Larry,

It is virtually impossible to boot windows from a USB disk. If you clone your system disk to a USB disk, you would have to uninstall the physical from the USB enclose and put in the system...
Users who want to have a hard disk on the ready for replacement buy the replacement disk, put it in a USB enclosure, clone to it and keep it.

Duplicate

Hi,
Similar issue with 2012 and XP SP3. Clone disk selection - to identically sized SATA but in USB housing - gets BSOD at the 'select target disk' move. I have previously successfully used exactly this method to generate C drive backups, which worked fine using the (limited) WD version of Acronis. Never tried to boot from the USB status, understand why that would have issues. I guess before uninstalling 2012 I should try putting the target disk into a SATA connection in the system, but that's a real kluge compared with routinely cloning it the way I used to.

Any ideas or testing sequences welcomed.
Thanks,
Craig

Craig,

The BSOD is surprising and seems to come from a driver issue.

What happens if you clone from the recovery CD?