True Image 2014 (Bundle with Crucial HD) made my laptop unbootable (MBR error)
I am not sure which version I have, I swear my screen said 2015 when I started the applcation but Acronis account says I have 2014.
Anyway, my copy came with my Crucial SSD purchase, and I was trying to use it to close my existing drive to the larger drive. I dowdnloaded and install the Acronis True Image application and proceed to select the clone option, closing my existing drive as source and the USB conencted new drive as destination.
The laptop reboot before anything appear to happen. After that at boot my screen would only MBR error 1, MBR error 2 and looking for a boot disk, and MBR error 3 looking for a boot disk. It is then stuck there forever.
I googled around, tried to use a Win7 disk to repair. I went to the command prompt and used both
Bootrec.exe /FixMbr
Bootrec.exe /FixBoot
However upon reboot instead of the same MBR errors I am getting "a symbol that looks like a cross - 5 - the same symbol that look like a cross"
I really need help to make my laptop bootable again. Thank you very much.
P.S. It wasn't until my laptop is hosed that I read on KB I am supposed to swap the physical drives first and create a boot media also.


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I didn't see any instruction on how to use it as I was trying to use the application, it's not until afterward that I found the KB on how to use it.
I went back to reinstall True Image on a different computer so I can look at all the screens again. There are ZERO warning about I need to use a bootable media and not on the drsk I am trying to clone. No instructions whatsoever.
Windows repair doesn't work. TestDisk doesn't work.
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Abi, did you check that your BIOS settings are correct for the boot device / boot priority? This should either be set to your first internal disk drive, or be set to the Windows Boot Manager.
Did you look at webpage: Windows won’t start – Guide for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and try the solutions offered there?
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Boot sequence is not the problem. Yes I tried to restore MBR following those steps.
At this point a different computer can't even recognize anything on this busted drive and just want to format it.
I am quite angry at Acronis for complete lack of in step instructions on how to clone a drive. (I re step through the cloning steps again on a differernt PC to confirm there is no warning or instructions). If I needed to create a boot drive the software NEED to tell me before cloning attempt begins. While I have done plenty of PC building and installing of drives, I had never try to clone a drive before so I didn't know I am supposed to boot off something else.
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Abi, I am sorry that we have not been able to help you recover your drive - it sounds like something more has gone on here than just the boot sector of the drive or the bootloader being corrupted, if another computer doesn't recognise the drive as being validly formatted.
Unfortunately, though you are using Acronis software, this is the OEM version provided by Crucial with the new drive you purchased, and as advised in my initial post, is supported by Crucial, not by Acronis.
Please see the ATIH 2014 User Guide which should have been provided by Crucial with the Acronis software, and which has a complete section devoted to the topic of Cloning a hard disk where, in the General section it clearly states:
We strongly recommend that you create a backup of the entire original disk as a safety precaution. It could be your data saver if something goes wrong with your original hard disk during cloning. For information on how to create such a backup see see Backing up partitions and disks. After creating the backup, make sure that you validate it.
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The slip of paper provided by Crucial just says "Follow on-screen instruction". That's it.
Still you'd think some sort of warning message in the UI would be a good design. Most applications would give a warning if it is about to mess with our disk irreversibly.
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Abi, I agree that there should be some form of warning given to advise of the potential consequences of cloning including the need to make a full backup before starting etc. This is only a user forum without direct access to Acronis development, so I can only advise that you submit feedback to Acronis with these valid concerns. I will also raise a topic in the private MVP Forum to request the same, though I would expect that this would only be applied to the current versions of the product, but still worth asking for.
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