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Michael, welcome to these user forums.

A clone by definition is an identical copy of the source drive written to the target drive, bit for bit, sector for sector.  So making a clone of your PC hard drive will wipe out the entire contents of the target drive that you point it at.  This is exactly the way that cloning works.

If you wanted to make a backup image of your PC hard drive and store that on your external hard drive then this would have coexisted with any data already stored on the target drive, the backup image would be stored in a special container file with the .TIB file extension and would not have wiped the drive or overwritten any of your data.

No-one in these user forums, or at Acronis will be able to restore all the files that you caused to be deleted by using the clone function of the software.  Your only means of recovery of those files would be if you have a full backup of the external hard drive made before this accidental wiping of the data.

The ATIH 2017 User Guide: Disk cloning utility has the following very clear statement regarding the use of this tool.

• 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 Backing up partitions and disks. After creating the backup, make sure that you validate it.

Further, in the User Guide: Clone Disk wizard it has the statement:

On the Destination Disk step, select the destination disk for the cloned data.

If the selected destination disk contains partitions, you will need to confirm deletion of the partitions. Note that the real data destruction will be performed only when you click Proceed on the last step of the wizard.

Thank you for your help Steve. So if I use a disk restore program it will not recover the files that Acronis deleted?

There was no warning on the 2017 version that I was wiping out the target drive, and I was trying to do the same steps as in the earlier versions. The instructions on the 2017 version were not very precise. I am very unhappy with this product and after being a user since 2012. I will highly recomment that all users avoid Acronis for any of the alternatives out there. And now there is no company support to talk to like there used to be. The last time I had a problem it was moved up the support chain until someone remote accessed my PC and restored everything. This whole experience is very bad now. 

Michael, you can try a disk restore program but your chances of success are pretty low as the drive has been first cleaned, then repartitioned and then data written back sector by sector.

The clone operation in ATIH 2017 is no different to that used in previous versions in terms of how this is performed and what happens to the target disk drive.  I would suspect that other software products that do cloning would do exactly the same too.

In terms of Acronis Support, with the introduction of ATIH 2017, Acronis changed the support model from only offering 30 days of support from date of purchase, to providing up to 2 years of support for customers with both ATIH 2017 and 2016 products.

The method of obtaining support remains consistent - visit http://www.acronis.com/support/contact-us.html then choose your product etc, then take the option for Live Chat.
See post: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/126714#comment-394644 for an example with screen shots.

Finally, please see post: 128231: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!!

Thank you again Steve. I will post if I have any luck with the restore program. It seems as with most software development, more new features are added rather than doing usability testing. It becomes a circle of experts talking in a language that is common to them but not the casual user. This is usually the difference between a good and a great product. Unfortunately Acronis is no longer a great product.   

Michael, good luck with the restore / recovery program.

On the subject of usability testing versus new features, I am sure that many of the MVP's would agree with you and we have made this point to Acronis when we have had opportunity to do so.  We would prefer that they ensure that the core functionality of the product is rock solid and have requested time and again that they put back some of the usability features that have been removed from the latest versions since 2015, i.e. ability to look at Log data and backup schedules from within the application as was present in earlier product versions.

The issue about protecting users from making wrong or misinformed decisions is a difficult one - how many times would you or other users like being asked: "Are you sure (Y/N)?" followed by "Are you really sure (Y/N)?" etc.  

Acronis wants users to use the product for the purpose it was released, i.e. backup, cloning, recovery etc.  All of these actions have potential risks and putting up large RED WARNING panels to show every such risk would either drive customers away or be treated much like the License Agreement panels you see when installing software, accepted as a necessary evil and ignored in order to continue the install!

I have a 640GB drive that Acronis true image 2017 had divided into two 297GB partitions, one of them being an unallocated recovery partition. When I try to merge the two, I first give the recovery partition a new drive letter then try to merge them, but I get a message that it can't be converted to dynamic because it is a boot or system drive. Can anyone tell me how to merge these. My backups are done on an external drive.  Thank you.      

I have a 640GB drive that Acronis true image 2017 had divided into two 297GB partitions, one of them being an unallocated recovery partition. When I try to merge the two, I first give the recovery partition a new drive letter then try to merge them, but I get a message that it can't be converted to dynamic because it is a boot or system drive. Can anyone tell me how to merge these. My backups are done on an external drive.  Thank you.