Ghosting
Hello. I need to ghost my laptop's internal drive to a new SSD. The SSD is currently attached as an external drive. I'll swap the drives after ghosting. I just purchased True Image 2012 and I'm not quite sure what steps I should follow to carry this out.
Thanx!
Sorry for sounding dumb, but I don't understand all your instructions.
Should I be backing up to the SSD drive (which is on a USB port right now) or a separate USB drive (which I don't have)?
I did the full backup to the SSD drive anyway and created a file called W520_Full_Backup12011-12-26.tib). Now how do I "validate my backup" without actually restoring from it?
When I rebooted into Windows and clicked on the backup file (W520_Full_Backup12011-12-26.tib) I got an "Archive Open Error"..."Cannot continue the operation because the backup is corrupted, or it is being used by another process, or you do not have enough permissions to perform the operation".
Is this normal if I don't open it with Acronis?
Thanx,
Darrell
If you don't have a USB disk to store your backup to, my instructions are worthless.
You have to go down the clone route.
Remove your current SSD, put the new SSD at its place, put the old SSD in the USB enclosure.
Boot on the recovery CD. Remember, the recovery CD might show you some drive letters that are different from Windows. Pay extra attention to the disk labels!
Clone from your OLD disk to the new DISK. Choose the manual method so that you can inspect how ATI will place the partitions on the new SSD. Make sure it leaves a 1MB space before the first partition. Don't let it resize any partition except the C:\system partition and/or any partition you created yourself.
Before rebooting on the new SSD, unplug the USB with the old SSD in it.
I have Acronis 2012 Home Image. I am using Lenovo ThinkPad X220 with Windows 7 and solid state drive. Can I clone the hard drive without removing the internal drive? I want to be able to create a duplicate of the installed drive which includes the software, so if i have to have my original drive wiped clean or it crashes, i will not have to reload all the software on a new drive. I tried cloning using Acronis 2012 and Windows XP on a ThinkPad T42 and ended up destroying my original hard drive, losing all my data, and was told at that time that Aronis cloning does not work well with laptops, particular Lenovo. I don't want to duplicate that situation again! If I can't use Acronis, any other suggestions for how to handle this question?
thanks
shirah
You should consult the User Guide and Grover's set of guides.
Sorry for sounding dumb, but I don't understand all your instructions.
Should I be backing up to the SSD drive (which is on a USB port right now) or a separate USB drive (which I don't have)?I did the full backup to the SSD drive anyway and created a file called W520_Full_Backup12011-12-26.tib). Now how do I "validate my backup" without actually restoring from it?
When I rebooted into Windows and clicked on the backup file (W520_Full_Backup12011-12-26.tib) I got an "Archive Open Error"..."Cannot continue the operation because the backup is corrupted, or it is being used by another process, or you do not have enough permissions to perform the operation".
Is this normal if I don't open it with Acronis?
Thanx,
Darrell
If you haven't already, make a boot cd before you do anything else.
Cloning can sound like an easy way to go but generally you get much better protectin by making a backup of the entire disk instead of cloning. Yu can save multiple backups on one hdisk if you backup. If you clone, you only get the image once, which is riskier than having more copies. If yo clone, you don't have to do a restore to get up and running again but restore is something you do very infrequently, so being able to have more than one copy saved is generally worth the rare ocassion of extra time restoring. Clonging won't write anything tothe source disk, so it shouldn't be harmful in any way EXCEPT if you accidentally clone in the wrong direction, you end up losing everything on your origianl drive and have nothing saved to enable a restore. it sounds like this has already happened to you once. Don't use disk letters when restoring or clonging, use disk size, disk ID, volumen labels anyting else to distinguish wihich drive is which. The restore will use a different OS and won't necessarily assign drive letters the same way -- this is no big deal except that you have to know that this is the case and besure you are cloning in the right direction.
You can clone with the system disk in place but better to swap the new drive in and clone from the (now external) drive to the new drive.
Thank you for replying! I am stuck on what you and several others have said - "much better protectin by making a backup of the entire disk instead of cloning." What about the programs, will they be backuped too? I thought the only way to do that was to clone. Much appreciation!
You can backup up selected files. But yo can also backup up partitons or entire harddisks -- that would include hidden partitions, programs, OS, the whole nine yards.
All cloning does for you is copy the image of one harddisk onto another. And if yo go in the worng direction you end up with only empty harddisks You can backup up the entire harddisk into a file and have many of those on one storage harddisk. And a backup won't destory the target disk contents.
You should take a look at the userguide for more compreshensive info.
Shirah Bell,
To be clear, you had to create a disk and partition backup. A file backup will not work. Your backup will need to include all partitions on your system disk (some partitions are hidden, but you can see it when you right click on the computer icon on your desktop, choose manage, storage, disk management). In particular, the active partition needs to be included in the backup.
After you have created your first complete backup, create a recovery CD using ATI (or use the installation CD if you have one). Boot your laptop on it and try to restore a couple of files (not any disk or partition) to your disk. You will notice that ATI running on the recovery CD will show up drive letters that are different from the ones Windows shows you. Look at the disk label. For example, C:\System can become D:\System. This is just an artefact of Linux not a bug.
Nomenclature with regard to clone vs backup is used differently in different circles. In the Acronis circle:
clone = Backup from one hard drive directly to a second hard drive; the second hard drive will have the same information on it as the first hard drive. This backup copies sectors directly, not files, so it copies all data directly.
backup = Back up from one hard drive (or partition) to an image (.tib) file. This image file contains all the data on the disk (or parition) from which it was created. This image file can then be restored, in a separate "transaction," to a second hard drive; the second hard drive will have the same information on it as the first hard drive had on it at the time the backup. AND JUST THE SAME AS IN A CLONE, this backup copies sectors directly, not files, so it copies all data directly.
There is a third type of backup that ATI makes, and that is called, oddly enough, "file backup." This backup operates on the file system level and doesn't back up sectors directly - it backs up files. Nobody in this thread has been referring to this type of back up.
There are many reasons that it is better advised to use a "backup" & restore over actually "cloning" the data, and I think this is why people try to steer users in that direction whenever possible.
thank you all for your replies. I appreciate how much effort you put into clarifying. The fog has lifted and I am clear. Now I can rest easy, doing a daily disk backup.