Cloning USB drive to USB drive

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Hi!

Over the Christmas break I had the unfortunate experience of a full glass of beer flowing through the internals of my laptop (I was pretty much able to pour beer back out the heat port and into the glass again!) Fortunately the beer appears to have stayed on one side of the machine, where the CPU is, and left the SSD alone. After drying the machine for a few days, it has powered back on which is a relief. Ironically at the time I was looking through the documentation for transferring the disk contents to my new Mac! What I would like to do is take a clone of the SSD, if I only get one chance to read the disk, at least then I will have a copy of all my data (at this stage I have not used the disk after removing it from the machine - i have just booted to the bios to verify the machine starts still). I have the SSD in an external USB case, and I wish to clone that disk entirely to a new USB drive - is this possible with Acronis?

I have done some reading, but haven't found much information, it seems as soon as you add the word "USB" to the search criteris all results are about cloing from internal to USB - what I need is source disk being USB and the target disk being USB, as I say, this will hopefully provide me with a disk that I can rely on to keep my data, while i try to recover from the original. Also, being an image, I can then duplicate the image so I have (1) original disk (2) a clone to work with and (3) a backup clone which will not be touched (incase i break the clone). The plan is then to convert the Acronis image to a VMWare image that can be booted in VMWare to recover application specific data which is not avialable via standard file system copy.

So, before I drop the cash on Acronis (which is likely to be a once off purchase, as this was my last Windows machine) I want to be 100% sure that it will do the job I need.

The VMWare converter I am referring to is: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/faqs.html

it states that it can convert from Acronis True Image, and create a Virtual Machine, even better the converter is free and apparently i can run the image in VMWare player, which is also free, so for the cost of Acronis I might just save my data!

seems acronis is half price at the moment, hopefully someone can help before the special runs out :)

Note to all the kids! Dont talk or prepare for a backup, take one now!

Mi, 01/02/2013 - 14:52
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Robert Colvin wrote:
Hi!
What I would like to do is take a clone of the SSD, if I only get one chance to read the disk, at least then I will have a copy of all my data (at this stage I have not used the disk after removing it from the machine - i have just booted to the bios to verify the machine starts still). I have the SSD in an external USB case, and I wish to clone that disk entirely to a new USB drive - is this possible with Acronis?

In ACronis True Image parlance, a cloning process produces a disk identical to the original one. An imaging process (ie a disk and partition backup) produces an archive file that can be restore to the same/another disk. Clone = image + restore
It seems you want to do a disk and partition backup. You can do a clone but if you clone to a USB disk; (a) all data on the USB will be lost, and you get a USB disk with the contents of the SSD, but you cannot boot on that USB disk because Windows makes it impossible to boot from USB drives.
The benefit of cloning in your case is that you will see the content directly with Windows explorer. The risk with cloning is that the process can alter/destroy the original disk because of power or human error.
Instead, create a disk and partition backup including all partitions of the SSD and store that image on the USB disk. Then you can plug this USB disk on another computer, install ATI and mount the image. At this point you will have a new virtual disk that you can use like a USB disk. The benefit here is that there is no risk to the source disk.

I have done some reading, but haven't found much information, it seems as soon as you add the word "USB" to the search criteris all results are about cloing from internal to USB - what I need is source disk being USB and the target disk being USB, as I say, this will hopefully provide me with a disk that I can rely on to keep my data, while i try to recover from the original. Also, being an image, I can then duplicate the image so I have (1) original disk (2) a clone to work with and (3) a backup clone which will not be touched (incase i break the clone). The plan is then to convert the Acronis image to a VMWare image that can be booted in VMWare to recover application specific data which is not avialable via standard file system copy.

A disk and partition backup (ie an image) will contain all information on the disk. There is no other information that a virtual image will make available to you.

So, before I drop the cash on Acronis (which is likely to be a once off purchase, as this was my last Windows machine) I want to be 100% sure that it will do the job I need.

You can purchase the software. You have 30 days to get your money back.

Mi, 01/02/2013 - 17:11
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Hi Pat,

thanks for your answer. If I understnad correctly, I can make an image of my SSD, and, for example store this on my wifes laptop. If something goes horribly wrong, I can then use True Image to take that image file, and restore it to another disk, and try again. If I restore to another disk, can I insert that into the damaged laptop and boot of it?

The reason why I wish to be able to boot off a clone/image is that at the time my laptop received its baptism in beer, I had a number of applications open, whose state will be preserved as the applications weren't shutdown. If I can boot the clone/image, then I can recover those sessions, and save the data. By merely viewing the disk in explorer etc, I won't be able to do this. However I have no faith that the laptop will run for any period of time long enough to recover anything, hence if I can open the image in VMWare, then I am not tied to having the original hardware working. So therefore my plan was to:

(1) Take an image, and save to my wifes laptop for emergency
(2) Clone the SSD to a new drive
(3) Convert the clone to a VMWare virtual machine, in case the laptop dies completely
(4) Insert the cloned drive into the laptop (keeping the original SSD in a safe location) and boot of that and attempt to recover/backup as much as possible.

Is this a good path/method or have I misunderstood?

Cheers
Rob

Fr, 01/04/2013 - 12:09
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Robert Colvin wrote:

Hi Pat,

thanks for your answer. If I understnad correctly, I can make an image of my SSD, and, for example store this on my wifes laptop. If something goes horribly wrong, I can then use True Image to take that image file, and restore it to another disk, and try again. If I restore to another disk, can I insert that into the damaged laptop and boot of it?

If you backup computer A, you have to restore on computer A or at least boot the restored disk on computer A: you could do the restore to a disk in computer B, take that disk back to computer A; all restores should be done from the recovery CD.

The reason why I wish to be able to boot off a clone/image is that at the time my laptop received its baptism in beer, I had a number of applications open, whose state will be preserved as the applications weren't shutdown. If I can boot the clone/image, then I can recover those sessions, and save the data. By merely viewing the disk in explorer etc, I won't be able to do this.

You won't be able to recover the sessions, unless the apps you had were saving temporary files to the disk, since the RAM will be empty at startup.

However I have no faith that the laptop will run for any period of time long enough to recover anything, hence if I can open the image in VMWare, then I am not tied to having the original hardware working.

OK. That makes sense. But you could do a disk and partition backup and mount this image in your computer's wife. Then access the files.

So therefore my plan was to:

(1) Take an image, and save to my wifes laptop for emergency
(2) Clone the SSD to a new drive
(3) Convert the clone to a VMWare virtual machine, in case the laptop dies completely
(4) Insert the cloned drive into the laptop (keeping the original SSD in a safe location) and boot of that and attempt to recover/backup as much as possible.

Is this a good path/method or have I misunderstood?

Yes that should work also.

Fr, 01/04/2013 - 15:15
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