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Looking for step by step instructions on cloning (upgrading to larger HDD in laptop)

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I have been doing some searching for a good step by step process to effectively upgrade my HDD in my laptop.
Here is what I have:
- Acronis TI 2015
- HP laptop with Toshiba 320GB 2.5" HDD
- Western Digital 750 GB 2.5" HDD
- External enclosure for a 2.5" HDD
- Other external drives to hold a back up

I see this warning: When you want to clone your system to a higher-capacity hard disk, we recommend that you install the target (new) drive where you plan to use it and the source drive in another location, e.g. in an external USB enclosure. This is especially important for laptops. Warning! If you clone a disk with Windows to an external USB hard drive, you will not be able to boot from it. Windows does not support booting from external USB hard drives. Please clone to internal SSD or HDD instead.

For a laptop with only 1 drive, I think this means that "cloning" will not work for me. I certainly do not understand how you can install a blank HDD in the laptop, and boot up to do the clone.
If anyone can educate me on this, I am all ears.

So, it seems that the Back up the 320GB drive, then recover to the 750GB drive is the best method.

I am not sure I understand this warning: Warning! Your old and new hard drives must work in the same controller mode (for example, IDE or AHCI).
Both drives are SATA, not IDE. So, am I OK?

I see the step by step instructions in the help section for this process.
- Create a full back up....files and partitions, OR image back up???? Not clear
- Create the bootable CD/DVD media
- Get the BIOS to look at CD drive first.
- Load the CD
- Power down the laptop with the CD in it.
- Install new, blank HDD
- Attach HDD which has the back up data created in first step above
- Power up and the laptop should boot from the CD
- Follow the instructions to recover.
- Do I need the old bootable HDD (320GB) drive in this process (after the back up is created)?

Any "gotchas"...things to look out for?

Thanks in advance for your insight!

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You seem to have a grasp on the processes of cloning and backup creation which is a big plus. Reading the documentation goes a long ways in understanding how the app works.

The part you are missing in cloning is that the booting of the machine setup as recommended is done using the bootable CD/DVD or USB media.

In the backup creation part a full backup refers to an entire disk image backup which includes all disk partitions including hidden ones. TI allows thw user to simply choose the entire disk which automatically includes all disk partitions for a backup creation.

If you choose to clone it is strongly recommended that you create an entire full disk image prior to the clone attempt so that you can recover your system if need be for some reason.

Thanks Enchantech!!!
Do you have a recommendation if I should choose cloning, or recovering from backup?
Is one riskier than the other? Should something go wrong, is one easier to recover from?

Thanks again!

A full or entire disk backup and restore is considered safer than a clone. Theoretically they both produce the same result. The clone process is faster however as I previously stated an entire disk backup is recommended before you clone in case things go wrong and you need to recover the system.

After your backup is complete run a validation on the backup. An additional step is to use Windows File Explorer to navigate to the backup file and attempt to open the .tib archive, if that is successful it is a good indication that your backup is fully recoverable.