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Starting Acronis Loader problem

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I'm cloning a Windows 7 machine. The target drive is connected via USB. Both target and source are 1T SSD's. The target is a clone of my Windows 10 machine which I wish to now use as a clone for the Windows 7 computer. When Acronis 2018 prompts me to restart, I accept. When the machine begins booting there is the message Starting Acronis Loader, which then stalls and remains on the screen. I need to know what to do in order to get past this and clone the disk. Does anyone have an answer? Thanks.

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Gregg, the fact that Acronis is prompting you to restart tells me that you are attempting this clone operation by starting from within Windows using ATI 2018.  Doing this will restart the computer in to a temporary Linux based OS environment which is known to have a number of limitations that can prevent correct operation.

KB 58006: Acronis software: NVMe drives in RAID mode are not detected by Linux-based bootable media and Acronis startup recovery manager

KB 46250: Acronis Linux-based Bootable Media: Troubleshooting USB HID Devices Detection Issues

KB 45330: Acronis Bootable Media Does Not Detect HDD, RAID or NIC

KB 45331: Acronis Bootable Media(Linux-based): Troubleshooting NIC Detection

KB 59947: Acronis True Image Linux-based bootable media boots into black screen after selecting any option in the option menu

The recommendation here is to create the Acronis 'Simple' version of bootable rescue media which uses Windows PE files and drivers from the Windows Recovery Environment, then to boot your computer using that media using the BIOS mode used by the source Windows 7 machine.

The latter point is important because if Windows 7 is a Legacy boot machine and you perform the clone on a different computer that is UEFI boot, then the clone will convert the drive from MBR to GPT during the process!

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

Note: it is highly recommended to make a full disk backup of any source drive being cloned - this is your safety net in case any mistakes are made etc.

Thank you.

I hope you can answer a quick question without starting a new post.

So the disk I cloned from Windows on my desktop (with the target on usb), which went seamlessly, will function as a bootable disk?

 

Gregg Kuljian wrote:

Thank you.

I hope you can answer a quick question without starting a new post.

So the disk I cloned from Windows on my desktop (with the target on usb), which went seamlessly, will function as a bootable disk?

It will only be bootable if it is installed into your desktop and replaces the current (source) OS disk.  Microsoft do not support booting Windows from an external USB drive unless using their special Windows 2 Go method of creating the USB drive.

Oh, thank you, I actually meant exactly as you described. So I can install the disk, and then expect it to be bootable.

 

I had forgotten that laptop cloning is different from desktop cloning. It has been several years since I did this.

Well again, I am most grateful for your replies.

I have a question after reading this from the instructions-  Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB.

My goal is to clone my existing drive to  the new drive, and have both disks bootable. Is this possible? It sounds like after the source drive is connected externally via USB, it is altered and may not be bootable once I put it into another laptop.

If this is the case, is there a way to boot to the source drive once it's installed internally?

Gregg Kuljian wrote:

I have a question after reading this from the instructions-  Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB.

My goal is to clone my existing drive to  the new drive, and have both disks bootable. Is this possible? It sounds like after the source drive is connected externally via USB, it is altered and may not be bootable once I put it into another laptop.

If this is the case, is there a way to boot to the source drive once it's installed internally?

The source drive should not be 'touched'  / changed by the clone operation but the only way to guarantee this is to forget about using cloning and to use Backup & Recovery instead as that way you can remove the source drive and store it in a cupboard safely while booting from Acronis rescue media and restoring the backup image to the new drive installed internally in its intended usage location.

I have mainly been using laptops for some years and very rarely, if ever, use cloning.  This is more so since my latest laptop has a PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD (card drive) which I have upgraded several times since I got it.  See forum topic: Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I have documented (with images) the process that I have used multiple times for my own laptops using Backup & Recovery.