SSD Greyed Out Trying to Clone HDD using Sata-USB Adapter
I purchased a USB-SATA Adapter and a Crucial 512GB SSD to attempt to copy my installation of windows 7 64 bit from my laptop so I can swap the Hard drives. However no matter what software I use I can't get it to clone. The others said the partition sectors don't match, so I figured they couldn't handle the size difference (Original HDD is 300GB), but now I am using the Acronis that came with the USB-Sata adapter, so you would think it should be able to do this but when I get choosing a destination disk the disk options are greyed out and I can't figure out why. Both were selectable from the source disk menu, though the Crucial is listed as Empty and thus uncloneable.
Any Ideas on steps I'm missing?
I trust that you are trying to do this with the recovery CD, not within Windows.
If you can see both disks from the source selection, but you cannot select the SSD as a destination, there is some information about the source that prevents the cloning operation. Launch a command prompt windows, type diskpart, type list disk. Observe the output. Is your main disk GPT and dynamic?
If not, did you try to do a reverse clone. Put the source in the adapter, the SSD where it should be and boot on the recovery CD?
If this still doesn't work, try to do a full backup of your source disk, and then restore to the SSD. Still doing everything from the recovery CD.
I was trying to do from within the installed windows copy on the laptop. I wanted to clone the disk before swapping them out. It had not occurred to me it should not work as other software advertised no issue cloning from the active drive, so I assumed Acronis could do the same. regardless, I shall try from a recovery disk. I ask however did you mean a windows recovery disk or the Acronis? I only have the OEM Acronis, so I don't have access to its recovery disk maker.
You should be able to produce an Acronis recovery CD from the Windows application.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/45437
http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50193.aspx
Your cloning issue is caused by incompatible sector sizes. The old drive stores data in 512 byte sectors. Your new drive is an advanced format drive that stores data in 4096 byte sectors with 512 byte emulation. Cloning can only be used with disks that have the same physical sector sizes.
You will have to perform a disk mode backup of your original disk(this will require a third disk to store the disk image), and then recover that disk image onto the new drive.
You are spot on Joey, thanks for posting.
The OP may want to read my post here: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/57401
I had exactly the same problem with the greyed out drive, but I traced it to a faulty SATA adapter. I had read on another forum that some SATA-USB adapters can incorrectly report sector size to cloning programs like Acronis and that turned out to be exactly what my problem was. So just because the software believes you have incompatible sector sizes does not necessarily make it so.
Okay I have an oem version that came with my new SATA-USB adapter so it does not give me a recovery disk option. It says I need the full version. So I tried the Backup to a third drive and then recovery to the SSD. That backed up the data but I must have done it wrong it still does not work. I get MBR error upon switching the drives. So which back up option should I be using? And should I be absolute path when I restore the partition?
Thanks.