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Can't select target disk at clone

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Hello,

I bought PNY transfer kit with Acronis true image included. I want to clone my hard drive to my new SSD (ScanDisk SSD plus). (desktop computer, intern drives)

When I want to clone, all target disks are gray.

Even after initialized the SSD under windows (not formated tho).

The new SSD is 240Go, the old drive is 500Go (2 partitions, 50 and 400), but only 125Go are used (50 and 75). I'm on win7.

Is it normal?

Best

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Welcome to these user forums.

Please be aware that your PNY version of Acronis True Image may be an older version with some limitations over the full Acronis product.

See KB document: 2201: Support for OEM Versions of Acronis Products

Next see KB document: 56634: Acronis True Image 2016: Cloning Disks for the correct procedure for performing a clone operation.

The key points of cloning are as follows:

  1. Do not attempt to clone from within Windows!  Always use the Acronis bootable Rescue Media to do this.  This can be created on DVD or USB stick, plus can be made either with the standard, linux based OS media, or with Windows PE media.  Using a USB stick is the recommended method but do not use a USB stick larger than 32GB in size - an old 1GB stick will do fine!
  2. Remove the source drive from your computer and replace it with the new target drive that you want to clone to.
  3. Connect the removed source drive via USB or in a second drive position.
  4. Boot the Rescue Media in the same mode as your Windows OS boots, i.e. if Windows boots in UEFI mode then the Rescue media must be booted the same, other if Legacy then that mode.  
    See webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS to check which way your OS boots.  
  5. Once the Rescue Media has booted, check that you can see both your source (now second/external drive) and your target (now internal drive) and Acronis will allow you to select these.  If all is OK, then go ahead and perform the clone operation.

Note: I would recommend making a full disk backup of your current source disk drive to an external backup drive before embarking on the above, to give you a recovery option if anything goes wrong, i.e. incorrect drive selection! 

In addition to Steve's great advice..

Clone is more limited than a backup and restore - particularly if drives have different sector size (older drives less than 2TB usually use 512kb sectors and new drives over 2TB OR any SSD,usually uses 4K sector size).  Clone may also not be possible if the original drive has data larger than the new one.  Keep in mind that in addition to the C: drive, there may be other recovery partitons on the drive too, eating up space (sometimes as much as 20GB because it contains the original manufacturers image and bloatware so that you can reset to factory defaults).  As a result, clone may not be possible in some cases.  

When you have a new disk, sometimes it helps to initialize it in Windows first (if the original drive is MBR - initialize the new one as MBR.. if GPT then make it GPT).  Then you can try to clone again.

If size is not a problem and the clone is just not happening, then doing a full disk backup of the original drive, saving the backup elsewhere (a third drive) and restoring that backup to the new one should result the same, but with less hassle (although perhaps a bit longer) and you'll have a nice backup of the original drive as a safety net too.  

Regardless of the method though, please heed Steve's advice to start this process using the offline recovery media and to not boot the system with both drives installed once the process is complete.  Please be sure to remove the original and replace the new drive there and only boot with the new drive to test the recovery/clone when it's all said and done. 

 

Also be advised that most if not all of these Manufacturer offerings are limited to their brand so unless the device you are cloning to is a PNY branded drive it probably will not work.