My Cloning Scenario & Questions

Good questions, I so hate the Dell recovery partition !!

If I understand correctly you want to know whether to continue to use your current disk with W7 and the Dell recovery partition or to clone it and use a new drive - and then if the new drive, how to partition it?

Depending on use your current drive might last another two years or more so I would definitely clone it to a new drive - you can carry on using the old drive as a backup or something in which case it may last a lot longer.

When cloning, Acronis will ask you which partitions you want to include and will allow you to choose the new sizes; you can choose to use all of the space available or leave a chunk unallocated for use later. I don't know how much data the Dell partion takes up but it will only be a few GB and it doesn't need to be any bigger than it already is. As you have moved on from Vista you could make a backup of the Dell partion and keep that for old times sake and forget about it altogether, since you have Acronis backups to fall back on anyway.

Partitioning the destination drive before cloning is not necessary as this will be done when cloning regardless what you did.

After cloning and booting using your new drive you can use your second new drive as you wish, you won't need to clone anything to a data drive.

Hope that covers most things you needed to know, if not then ask away!

Hi, Jerry
Guess I'm looking for an answer to a similar situation? Don't know if my info will help you at all most of my experience has been with Norton Ghost however I have gotten very weary of there changes in policy and practices anyway I have always used Norton Ghost in the past to Back up my OS's due to Windows Non-stability. After years of crashes and freeze ups due to various programs or windows faults I tried many (God kill me now) options to back-up my system OS's, I even created numerous OS's on separate drives for different uses ie. one for burning one for games etc. to avoid program conflicts and other programs slowing down the system, that I could swap in and out of my tower which I had installed 3 swap bays into. This worked great the best part was that I cloned my OS's every couple of months regardless of there size. The nice thing was that I was able to clone them to one large drive that I had partitioned, so that I could clone several OS's to one large drive as back-ups. I did this on a consistent bases regardless of original drive size I found this not to be a problem.
Example: I would have a 180G drive partitioned 3 ways 100G/40G/20G and ghost My main operating system to the 100G partition from a 180G drive (90G used space)/ My Game drive from a 120G drive (30G used space) to the 40G partition/ My burn drive (10G used space) to the 20G partition from a 80G drive.
I have found this to be the greatest way to back-up not only my data but everything so I no longer needed to reinstall programs or settings when a new program or whatever crashed the system (or I overcooked a processor) I did this on a consistent basis and never had a problem with a cloned OS. it should be noted that whenever I cloned an OS I made sure I did all maintenance and Defraging before cloning. regardless of what system or drive size I used it always worked without fail.
I just recently purchased Acronis and find it's pretty much the same and have as yet had no problems cloning however I have run into one problem and that's what I'm seeking help for, I have tried partitioning a large drive to back-up multiple OS's to one drive and I cant seem to accomplish this every time I try to create a second partition to clone a second OS to it wants to wipe the previous partition I'm thinking I'm missing something and hope someone can help. Or will Aronis not allow me to clone multiple OS's to one drive?
Oh yea one more fantastic thing about Acronis which has as much to do with the newer OS's, is the use of USB rather than physically having to swap everything around.
Anyway I may not have helped but if you or someone else can help me with my partitioning problem it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Kong

@bin: I'm actually thinking about booting from the original and using it until it just gives out even though that drive is inferior to the new drives. Figured I'd just use it up and get it out of the circulation upon it's death. That may be a bit odd I suppose.

The second new drive is merely a data drive so as to take some wear and tear off whatever OS drive I am using since I have & use so much music. The DVR is also quite well used so I figured this data drive will be take some significant wear that I want to keep off of whatever OS drive I am using at the time. Although previously unmentioned, I will also have another entirely different external usb HD for back-up of that data drive. So I feel pretty set in that regard.

Based on your helpful information, I guess my question becomes more specific in this regard. Since my Clone HD is twice the size (640 GB) of the OS drive I am cloning (320 GB), could I split it into two partitions. Thereby maybe putting an original and first OS clone on that and also another OS clone that may be overwritten any time I chose as a sort of incremental & updated clone. I know that may be a somewhat oddly redundant but is it possible? In other words, the most recent clone based on my chose regularity would be the second partition on my new Clone drive...always leaving my original/first clone on the other partition of that same drive. Again that may be odd I suppose...I don't know. I fear I may be over complicating a more simpler process or practice.

In this scenario, when my old and original OS HD (from Dell that I want to use until it goes bad) finally goes bad, then I'll simply chose which partition off my clone drive I want to boot from...?? This is where I think I may have over-complicated the situation...maybe. In the scenario I mentioned, I'd have two different OS clones on that Clone HD (an older OS clone and an more recent clone), how do I specify which one would boot from that one HD. I guess maybe I'm overlooking the fact that the partitioning 'makes' it a 'different' drive (with a different letter designation) I guess so I could chose either of the two..if I wanted. Which may beg the question, why would I put 2 different OS clones on one HD? I guess to make some use of the extra space and also because of paranoid noobness. I'm probably innately missing something or over-doing it. Which one? I don't know.

Again thanks bin for the info that has already proven helpful and enlightening.

@Kong Very helpful and thanks! You have hit upon the very important reasons for my questions. The freezes and crashes and instability due to a variety of programs have led me to this. Clean re-installs have drove me abso-friggin-lutely nuts and now with my WIN 7 being an upgrade disc for Vista...the very thought of another clean install from factory Vista back up to my current WIN 7 makes me shudder & ill in the stomach. The proprietary software for my Sony HD handycam was the most recent culprit in a long line of similar or related events. I just don't have the stomach anymore for working at length crippled or for taking the time and effort for a clean, working install. So you see my want to do this right to at least make this a more viable alternative. I'm trying to glean some wisdom to find out what not to do and what may not work as I hope based on me missing any important 'to-dos'.

I have already taken all the data off my OS drive that is to be cloned, updated all progs & definition, double-checked windows updates, used the Disk Clean Up, deleted all my system restore points except for the last one, ran FULL anti-virus & malware scans, deleted and rebuilt indexing (trimmed down to minimum/defaults), used CCleaner pretty thoroughly (including Wipe free space), defragged & optimized using Auslogics Disk Defrag, THEN added one more restore point (entitled 'before cloning') and a few other things I escape my mind at the moment and all in such a way that they should logically follow so as to not defeat a previous procedure...at least as much as possible. I have the new HD to clone plugged into the USB dock and just have to open Acronis again when I feel comfortable...lol. I'm not adding the data drive and nor it's files back to that until I get through this first and test to make sure the clone works.

Your question:

"...I have tried partitioning a large drive to back-up multiple OS's to one drive and I cant seem to accomplish this every time I try to create a second partition to clone a second OS to it wants to wipe the previous partition I'm thinking I'm missing something and hope someone can help. Or will Aronis not allow me to clone multiple OS's to one drive?"

is one that I'm definitely interested in and exactly what I don't want to encounter. I mean if that be the case then, I shouldn't even bother with the scenario I previously mentioned. If I would be stuck with that same problem, then I'd have another question. Could I just use the rest of that OS Clone HD for other types of Acronis backups or would that encounter the same problems you mention? Heck the more I think of it though, maybe I should just put one OS clone on my clone hd and just up re-clone it every so often if I am going to encounter the problems to which you refer. Trying to save time and not learn the hard way leads me to lean that way.

Thanks Kong for the help and maybe better or more specifically defining a question with your question.

Hi, ok well you do have a few options but firstly you can only clone from one disk to another, you can't clone two systems onto one disk even into two partitions. To make that clearer, I bought a new drive a while back and installed it as a second drive and simply cloned the existing one to the new one and then swapped them over (i still have XP and IDE drives so had to alter the jumpers on the drive to make the new one the master and the other a slave). I had several partitions all of which I simply made bigger to utilize the space on the new drive. Once I swapped the drives the system booted as if nothing had changed but obviously I had more room for everything and I simply reformated my old drive and use it for backups.

You could do similar in that you clone your existing drive and keep it the way it is and during cloning to the new drive simply keep the partition sizes the same - you would end up with the system booting to the same drive you have without changing anything. With XP your new drive would be visible but the drive letters will be changed when you 'see' the new drive in explorer. Plus you would have 340GB of unallocated space which you could use as you wish. With Win7, it may be clever enough to tell you you have unallocated space, I don't know. Whatever, you would be able to creat one or more partitions in it to use as you wish. The cloned partitions i.e. your cloned system and Dell partitions will be accessible as any other partition so if you wanted to keep them as is and be able to boot from it at a later date then you could. Again, Win7 may tell you that you have a second 'bootable system' and again I don't know if this would cause any problems but I wouldn't think so - others can tell you more about that.

Some extremely useful software is Acronis Disk Director which makes disk and partion management very easy and has OS selection as part of it, so may be of help to you too,

Just in addition - If you want to keep the ability to boot from another disk if needs be then be aware that nothing that you update or install will be reflected on the old system. It is far better to make system backups and use those to restore.

Some choose to have a disk that they clone to on a regular basis so that if necessary that disk can be used as the boot disk at any time. So that is another option, remembering that you can clone all the partitions on it, not just the system. Remember that cloning a disk is different from making a backup - you restore backups to the same disk, a clone is so that you can use a seperate disk as if it were the original.

@bin You bring up some good points which brings me to another question that I can't quite get a grip on. I just cloned the OS onto the new HD and the boot time is noticeably better. I did however manually clone it so that took up only the space that was needed for the clone. That leaves me with 298.o8 GBs of unallocated space on that drive. In light of the better boot time, unallocated space left, and your advice to take advantage of system backups...which I now see the viability of...my question is comes from this fact: I notice that I can use the "Manage Acronis Secure Zone" to use all or whatever increment of that 298.08 GBs of unallocated space to store backups via Acronis. (I appreciate your advice in that regard!) My question is this: The Secure Zone manger allocates that as an FAT file for whatever I'm going to pick as the Secure Zone size. BUT is it possible or better for me to partition the rest of that space so it will be NTFS...AND if so would the Secure Zone manager allow me to use that partition that I manually make of the current unallocated space to store Secure Zone backups there. I mean, my intuition would lead me to believe that it is probably best to let the Secure Zone manager to allocate that unallocated space (for backups) the way it wants to even if it is FAT in the unallocated space. Which also begs the question, if I manually partitioned the remaining space (thinking for some reason that it should be NTFS rather than FAT) would I even be able to use that for Secure Zone backups and how would I get it to do so. I feel fairly certain I can find my way through all the information, varied options, and types of system backups when I get to that point. So the crux of my question is it more advantageous to just let The Secure Zone Manager do it's job on the unallocated space OR should I partition the unallocated space first & then after doing so would the Secure Zone manager allow me to then allocate that partition for Acronis system backups?

After thinking all of this through, I see now maybe I should have avoided that question by just letting it have cloned the HD and used up the entire disk space. If that be so I'd much prefer to catch that mistake now and re-clone so that it takes up the entire hard drive and bypass this question altogether as I would assume the Secure Zone back up manager may possibly do this quite easily. I'm guessing...because the entire bigger HD clone would be entirely allocated. choices...choices! Just trying to do the best and easiest. Not scared to re-do it however should it be more advantageous.

Again, many thanks for the help.

Jerry

BUT then again I fear that I'd loose some speed due to the fact that my OS might slow to at least some degree or possibly at some future time due to the fact that the OS allocated drive space would then be twice as big it was originally should I undertake what I refer to in the last paragraph of my previous post...especially in light of the fact that I will be using a separate data drive. Would the actual seek or read/write times increase because the partition (OS) is bigger. I'm trying to maintain the performance gains of the new faster clone HD while also maintaining ease of use for Acronis backups and their management.

Well the Acronis Secure Zone if you decide to use one is designed to be managed by True Image and nothing else. I would read some of the articles in GroverH's links which you can find at the top of this forum to help you decide whether or not to use it and how your backups can be managed. I don't use an ASZ mainly because I manage all backups manually. The ASZ does not need to be on your boot drive either - if you suffer some fatal crash on that disk then all your backups will be gone to - its better to use the space you have to create NTFS partitions for your own use.

I tend to keep partition sizes down to fairly small sizes unless the majority of data is fairly static such as photos, videos, or music. Static data does not need to be backed up so often and you can use differential or incremental backups for it. For more volatile data I tend to do full backups of whole partitions but those backups can easily be put on removable media if needs be. It is purely down to you how you want to do things, I just find it quicker and less hassle to do full partition backups and limit the backup split sizes to DVD size chunks.

You don't have to decide right away about an ASZ zone or what size you want it to be. It can be created at any time and resized whenever you like. You can use unallocated space or take space from other partitions you already have.

MscTch wrote:

BUT then again I fear that I'd loose some speed due to the fact that my OS might slow to at least some degree or possibly at some future time due to the fact that the OS allocated drive space would then be twice as big it was originally should I undertake what I refer to in the last paragraph of my previous post...especially in light of the fact that I will be using a separate data drive. Would the actual seek or read/write times increase because the partition (OS) is bigger. I'm trying to maintain the performance gains of the new faster clone HD while also maintaining ease of use for Acronis backups and their management.

The speed gains you have experience will not be altered by increasing or decreasing the system partition size, they will be due to a faster data transfer rate of the new drive or the fact that your system data isn't so fragmented as it was. The general rule is to make sure you have about twice as much free space in your system partition as it is currently using. This is not a hard and fast rule because it depends on quite a few things, mostly on how much your system is likely to grow by application installations, and what you use it for already.

My C partition contains no user data files at all apart from those that Windows requires - my documents and picture and music and all that are held elswehere, so i know for certain that the system will not 'grow' unless I install more software.

Thanks bin for taking the time to respond so helpfully to this Acronis newbie! The information contained in the next to last post is proving quite useful moving forward with the use ASZ and my cloning scenario in general. I have indeed done (and had desired beforehand) to do what you did...have all my docs, pics, music, vids, dvr and etc. to be held exclusively on my second new hard drive....apart from my OS drive. I found this link quite helpful in that regard (WIN 7): http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-…

As far as the unallocated space on my new C drive (that is a clone of the factory original), I am still considering how I will finally use ASZ in the future. But your advice on not necessarily having to decide upon that right away is some good advice as it allowed to properly make, use and test the clone OS drive right away and get a bit more familiar what is going on before deciding on those other items you mention. You have given me something to think on in that regard.

Finally, I am very grateful for the patience, knowledge and time that you shared on get me up and running with the OS cloning process...and also some bearings in regard to my use of the ASZ (unallocated vs allocated) in the future. I was relieved to finally make practical use of this software I'd purchased quite some time ago. Kudos to you!

Jerry