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Acronis True Image 2014-How to move from Small to Larger SSD (C OS win7 Drive)

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I on Win 7 (Acronis rue Image 2014)

 

My C drive with my Win7  OS of 120GB SSD is running out of space and need to move to the 512GB SSD.

Was searching for how to clone and I saw this 

 

" I would
- boot up the computer on the Acorns recovery USB stick or CD
- create a full backup of your 120GB SSD to a USB disk for safekeeping,
- disconnect the D: and E: disks for the time being
- disconnect the 120GB SSD and put the 250 GB SSD instead
- connect the 120GB to the connectors of the D: disk
- boot the computer on the recovery CD and clone the 120GB to the 250GB
- disconnect the 120GB
- boot the computer on the 250GB. If everything works fine, then you can reconnect the other disks. If not, let us know."

Somewhere else I saw a post where it said the clone disk may not work properly if there are more than 1 partition in the C Drive.

Its true.. Although I thought I had only one parition for my the C drive (120GB), I noticed that there is a small 100MB parition.

 

Q1. Does the instruciton above about Clone disk still apply? 

Q2. If not, what is the new procedure for what I want to do? I not only want  to replace my 120GB to a larger SSD, I want the new additional space to be available as well.

 

Please advice or refer me to a pdf that gives me enough information for me to do what I am trying to acccomplish.

 

Manny

 

 

 

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Hello Manny,

The procedure you have outlined should be fine - cloning will produce a duplicate copy of the contents of your 120GB SSD written to your new larger SSD (250GB or 512GB).

The hidden 100MB partition is the Microsoft System Reserved partition and will either be copied or created new by the Acronis software.

The one key factor that you have not mentioned is the need to boot the Acronis bootable rescue media (USB stick or CD / DVD) in the same mode as your current Windows OS boots, i.e. either as MBR / Legacy or as UEFI.

See webpage: BIOS Mode - See if Windows Boot in UEFI or Legacy Mode for details of how to check this.

See also KB document: 56634: Acronis True Image 2016: Cloning Disks which is still relevant for earlier versions of ATIH and includes a video demonstration of cloning.

Hi Steve

 

I think Its installed in legacy BIOS.. I only see two partitions. I do not see the EFI Parition.

 

What does that mean and what should I do.. what additional step should I do in that first steo by step insturuction? or What should I do differently between UEFI vs Legay BIOS?

 

 I would
- boot up the computer on the Acorns recovery USB stick or CD
- create a full backup of your 120GB SSD to a USB disk for safekeeping,
- disconnect the D: and E: disks for the time being
- disconnect the 120GB SSD and put the 250 GB SSD instead
- connect the 120GB to the connectors of the D: disk
- boot the computer on the recovery CD and clone the 120GB to the 250GB
- disconnect the 120GB
- boot the computer on the 250GB. If everything works fine, then you can reconnect the other disks. If not, let us know."

 

Imaage of disk2 partition

 

 

 

 

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Hello Manny,

If you have a legacy BIOS system then you are all set to go ahead as that is the only option for booting the rescue media that you will be shown.  If you had a UEFI BIOS system then you can be given a choice to boot in either UEFI or Legacy modes, depending on how the BIOS is configured, but that is not the case here.

Thanks Steve.

Its very strange.. My MB is UEFI ... When hit F8/Del on boot,..it takes me to the ASUS UEFI for Bios setting I get a nice friendly menus.. not the old BIOS... But here when I look into the HD Disk manage  is says legacy

 

this is what I see when I boot and dit the Del or F8 key

http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/motherboards/P8P67-E…

 

Does that change anything?

 

One more Q.. if soemthing goes wrong.. Would  I be able to hook my old SSD the 120GB disk and start my PC? and then retry at a later time?

 

 

 

Hello Manny,

If you are in any doubt about whether you should be using UEFI or Legacy to boot, then perhaps you should consider doing an alternative method of upgrading to the larger SSD drive instead of using cloning.

You can do this from within Windows using your ATIH 2014 application as follows:

With the system as it is now, create a full disk backup image of your Windows 7 OS boot drive (120GB SSD) and store the backup on a different drive or partition.

Attach the new 250GB SSD drive and restore the backup image to that drive selecting to restore the entire disk.

See the ATIH 2014 User Guide for restoring disks where it states:

If you backed up an entire disk, you can choose to recover the entire disk at once by clicking Switch to disk mode. 

Once the restore is complete, you can then shutdown and remove the 120GB SSD and replace it with the new SSD knowing that the original SSD is unchanged should any issues arise.

Thank you Steve... I'am going to do this next weekend..and I'll let you know how that goes.

 

:)

 

Manny

Hi Steve

 

I messed up. 

 

1) When I recovered, Even though I selected the 250GB SSD that I wanted to recover to, it actually recovered into my primary C: Drive. when I rebooted after the recover, I saw the my OS has gone back to 7 days old (the day I took a complete backup). Not such a big deal.

2) The 250GB SSD still has the old files (I wanted the recovered OS into this SSD so I can swap this SSD )

The real problem is this.. I had another 1TB SSD (on Disk 0) that had some file..this is not the OS Disk.. But now this disk is not visible.. In Disk manager it is showing as Foreign/Dynamic. 

How do I recover this foregin/dynamic disk to a basic without data loss? I googled and found that EaseUS freeware could convert this to basic without data lss.

So I pulled the 1TB out from my PC and used an USB connected to another laptop to view it vua the Ease US... when I clicked conver to basic, it gave me a message "" EFI/MSR partition will be lost if they are existed on the GPT disk". I backed out. I didnt want to contine

What do I do? now my priority is to recover my data in this 1TB. Since my original PC c drive is bootable.. I can look into seeing why it did not recover into my 250SSD after I fix this 1TB mess.

Manny

Hello Manny,

According to information that I have read you should be able to right-click on the Foreign/Dynamic disk on your Windows 7 system from Disk Management and take an option to Import Foreign Disk from the menu shown.

See: Windows 7: Foreign (Dynamic) disk in Windows 7 Home for one of the hits I found.

You could try making a full disk backup using your Acronis software of the 1TB drive if you have somewhere to write the image to.

Note: Do not take the options in Windows Disk Management to Convert the Foreign/Dynamic disk to Basic as this will wipe all the data on the drive!

When I attempt to do Disk and partion back up..it selects the C drive and partions(system reserved and win7_64 (C:)

I then delect those two and then select the (I) (which is my 1TB SSD with data that I want to backup. I get a error popup (Acronis True Image 2014 Premium)

 

"Am error has occured while obtaining the location information."

 

Hmm...

OK..I just imported the foreign disk. :) (without the backup)

and that seems to have worked.. Phew! 

 

Now let me do the recovery to the 250SSD after I pull out all the other disks... and see what is going on.

why it recoved to my C drive instead of to the 250GB SSD

 

Glad the import worked OK Manny, and wish you luck with the next actions.

I think we have a success! Now I have a bigger C: Drive. Ooohooo.

I did a little bit of a hick up.

I had 3 partition on my C: os drive (120GB) which I was trying to replace ...so my Backup  had 3 partitions... 1) C: drive, 2) MBR and 3) System reserved

When I selected all 3 it would not proceed past the last step. It wanted to know where to put the system reserved and it would not let me choose my disk with 250GB SSD (that I was trying to recover to)

 

I watched this Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vftHkqjl318

And that had onky two drives the c: drive and the  MBR and there was no system reserved space

so I unchecked and retried and it went on gave me the proceed at the end which I did. I had removed the old C drive anyway so I was confident that I had the old C Disk and the backups.

When I booted it all looked good..the the OS was the C: Drive.. (While recovering, it was showing my backup was in C Drive and the recvoering disks was D. I was worried about that)

And the same old 1TB disk on Drive 0 went back to Foreign disk..but then I knew how to restore that... 

Alls well that ends well.  Now you a have new found confident Acronis recoverer. LOL :P

Thanks Steve for your help. I so appreciate it!

Manny

I have this 26GB unallocated in my C drive.. I think when I initally formated that SSD 3 years ago I kept that thinking SSD needs it. I just enlarged the extended vlume ussing disk manager to get even more space