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Bootable backup hard drive?

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Hi All,

I'm using Win 10. I'm thinking of getting Acronis True Image. I used to use Casper but it doesn't work on Win 10. With Casper I could make a full and complete backup to an external hard drive. The Casper backup was fully bootable and swappable with my main internal drive. One time my old internal hard drive got full. So I just took the larger external drive with the Casper backup, removed the case and put it in my laptop and started using it. It was great. I didn't have to go thru any kind of restore process.

Can this be done with Acronis? Or not? Do I have to go thru a restore process with Acronis if I want to upgrade my internal hard drive to a larger hard drive?

Please provide details if possible.

If Acronis True Image 2016 goes on sale I'm thinking of purchasing.

Thanks

 

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Hello Advait, I am not familiar with Casper unless this is some relation to the Norton Ghost product (which I did use many years ago).

With ATIH you can make a full and complete backup to an external hard drive but this will not be bootable unless the backup is made to be as a clone of the source drive, that is, an identical copy of the drive in every respect, including having the same drive signature.

If this is what Casper was able to do, then ATIH 2016 can do the same and produce a bootable clone of your existing hard drive which can be swapped in / out of your system to replace the original source drive used to create the clone.

ATIH can do a lot more than just create a clone of your system drive - you can make full, incremental and differential backup images of your system that can be stored on local, external, network or cloud storage drives.

I would suggest looking at the User Guide for ATIH 2016 to get a fuller picture of the capabilities of this software product.  You can also search on YouTube to find videos that demonstrate the software in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFHHRvZF16s is one such video.

Hello Steve Smith,

Thanks. Looks like ATI can do what I need. I want to make a clone of my laptop HHD to an external USB HDD. Then if I want to swap out my old HDD, I can just remove the external drive from the case and put it into the same laptop. I was able to do this with Casper which is made by fssdev.com.

So it looks like Acronis can do the same. Good news. Also looks like Acronis can do both differential and incremental clones? This true?

Can the Acronis Clone process run in the background while I keep using my PC? Please let me know.

To the Acronis Sales Team: Please let me know when ATI-16 goes on sale. Thanks,

Advait, when using ATIH to clone drives, the recommended process is to insert the target drive in place of the original (source) drive and attach the source externally by USB - this has to be done offline from Windows, i.e. booted from the Acronis bootable rescue media - cloning cannot be done from within Windows using ATIH.

Also please note that ATIH 2016 has been available for purchase from Acronis for some while and the next version, ATIH 2017 may be expected to be released on sale at some time around September onwards if Acronis proceeds as they have in previous years.;

 

Hello Steve,

Thanks for the info. Very interesting. With fssdev Casper I could create a swappable cloned drive while staying within Windows. The target drive was an external USB drive. So you're saying Acronis Clone cannot do this. That's less than ideal. I'd have to swap out drives and not use Windows while the clone job is running. I have that right? Want to make sure I understand correctly. Thanks,

Advait,

Yes, you are correct, the Acronis clone process only happens while the machine is not booted into Windows.  Full disk backups images can occur from within windows though, but that creates an Acronis proprietary compressed .tib file that would have to be restored outside of Windows as well.  

Acronis can clone to an external USB drive, but the recommendation from Acronis is to move the main drive to the external case or dock and the new drive to where the original was and then clone.  This is only recommended because Acronis assumes you are cloning to a new drive that you immediately plan to boot to after the clone prcoess complets, and because Windows does not support booting of Windows from USB (natively).  Think they're just trying to avoid having users attempt to clone to a USB drive and boot from it since they know it's not going to work.