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"Unable to lock the disk. Boot your computer from a Linux-based bootable media, and then try again."

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I find myself in a real quandary. I'm trying to use an Acronis bootable USB drive to clone 7200 RPM HDD to a Samsung SSD. I’ve created bootable media with ATI 2019, 2020 and Cyber Home Protect. I get the same result when I boot from the flash drive. "Unable to lock the disk. Boot your computer from a Linux-based bootable media, and then try again." It’s been several years since I’ve had to restore an HDD or clone a drive. It could have been with ATI 2017. I’ve never had a problem before. I’ve put the 7200 HDD back in the Toshiba laptop. I’m in the process of cloning the 7200 HDD by using the installed ATI 2019 on Toshiba PC. The old PC is 4th GEN Intel i5, it’s slow, it’s been running 2hours and only 50% done.  Which is why I wanted to use my DELL AIO with 11th Gen Intel i7. I see on the forum I’m not the only one having this problem.  The video on using ATI 2021 had no sound or CC, no help! Any direction would be appreciated.

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Neuges, welcome to these public User Forums.

Some initial comments:

The 'unable to lock the disk' error can be caused by not having performed a full shutdown prior to entering the Acronis rescue media environment, i.e. having Windows Fast Start enabled and doing a normal shutdown which puts the PC into a hybrid sleep state akin to hibernation.

There are several methods of resolving this error.

You can force a full shutdown by holding down a Shift key when clicking on Shutdown, or else do a Windows Restart to launch the rescue environment.

One of the best methods is to remove the original HDD from the PC and replace it by a raw new drive / SSD so that there is no formatting present on the new drive to signal a locked flag!

If you are using cloning, then the golden rule is to ensure that you have made a full disk backup before attempting the clone!  A backup is your safety net in case of issues arising!

The original HDD should be connected externally via a USB cable / adapter or dock and the PC booted from the rescue media using the same BIOS boot mode as used by Windows - this should be UEFI boot for most modern PC's.  You can check this while still in Windows by running the msinfo32 command and looking at the BIOS mode shown in the right panel of the report shown.

The clone should be done from the external original HDD to the new internal SSD drive, and ideally this should be on the original PC where both are intended to be used, this is to prevent any additional or changed device drivers being installed during or after the process!

Personally, I prefer to use Backup followed by Recovery instead of using Cloning!

A Backup should always be created anyway, and the subsequent Recovery does not require the original HDD to be connected, so it can be stored safely in a cupboard away from harm!

The Recovery process just requires the same boot from rescue media along with the backup storage drive connected for the image to be recovered from.

Note: if you are cloning to or recovering to a new drive / SSD that has already got any partitions present, then you may still see the lock disk issue, so you will need to use the Tools > Add new disk option to prepare that new drive and wipe all current data from it, then set the correct partition scheme to match the BIOS boot mode being used by the OS, i.e. GPT for UEFI, or MBR for Legacy boot.

Hi,  I am getting the same "unable to lock disk" message.  I am trying to clone a 1GB HDD to a 500GB Crucial SSD on a Win10 laptop.  I have turned off Fast Boot in Win10 and have tried the HDD externally and internally but the message remains and I can't make any progress.  I am booting from an Acronis rescue USB drive.

This is so frustrating as other SSD clones have been very straightforward.

What do I try next?

 

Roy, welcome to these public User Forums.

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.

Please see my earlier response to the original user who posted this topic.

Hi Steve, thanks for the welcome and reply. I am happy to report that my clone has eventually been successful and the 'cannot lock drive' message was avoided.

I had tried several times with the target SSD in the machine but could not progress because of the message about locking the HDD source connected by SATA bridge cable. I followed the advice about turning off Win10 fast boot but that made no difference.

The solution for me was to boot from an Acronis rescue USB stick without the SATA bridge connected. I connected the source HDD with the SATA bridge after Acronis was up and running at the first screen. Cloning then went smoothly.

Regards

Roy, thanks for sharing your resolution.  When you say a SATA bridge, do you mean a USB to SATA adapter cable or are you using an eSATA connector to the HDD?

Steve, the laptop is a few years old and doesn't have an e-SATA port. I connected the HDD with a USB to SATA cable.

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Dear Roy Parrott,
Thank you for the update. Can you please specify what product version are you talking about?

Hi Daria, I'm not sure of the version number. I was using Acronis True Image for Crucial downloaded from Crucial site about two weeks ago. Crucial stated it was the 2021 version compatible with Win11, 10 and 8. I was using Win 10.

Roy, sometimes OEM's have ancient builds - a few weeks back I downloaded the one for Kingston and it 19.0.0.5128 (the last set of digits is the build number) and the digital certificate was dated in 2016. In explorer, right click on the installation file, select properties: the Details Tab File Version gives the build, and you can get the date from the Digital signature tab.

About the same time, I downloaded the WD version, and it was dated 2021 and the build number was 39320

Ian

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Dear Roy Parrott,
Thank you for clarification. You can learn more in the article: Support for OEM Versions of Acronis Products | Knowledge Base