True Image 2015 clone completely broken...
Wow, last time I used Acronis it was amazing, so I decided to give it another try years later, as I needed to clone one SSD to another on Windows...
My first disappointment was when the disk numbers reported by Acronis were "off by one" from the ones reported by Disk Management. OK, I can live with that...
Then I tried to clone the root disk on W8, and it asked me to reboot. The Acronis Loader started, prepared to copy for a few minutes, and then the screen blinked, and then rebooted into BIOS. Fortunately, I could still get back to the OS.
So I figured I'd try booting in a completely different W7 system and cloning non-root disks... So I put both SSDs into the W7 system, and started again (luckily I bought three licenses, not that I need any now).
So I get thru the clone tool, and eventually click "Proceed", and the window just disappears. The main UI window is up, but there is no indication any kind that any operation is going on!
A while later, the disks start blinking a bit, so I check resource monitor and I'm doing maybe 50 *k* bytes/second to the SSDs. OK, I don't have a few years to wait for 500GB to clone from SSD to SSD -- I figure whatever is going on, it can't possibly be a data copy.
Besides, there is no UI at all. Of course, with no UI, there was no place to see that the operation stopped (if it did).
I've started many clones from Windows, which then proceeds to reboot and successfully completes. That was with ATI 2014 and earlier mind you, not sure about 2015.
Well, I'm thinking if the clone from Windows and clone from the reboot to the Acronis Loader don't work, or aren't the "right way" to do a clone, then maybe they shouldn't be in the UI?
I wasn't trying to do a backup, so I don't have recovery media -- I was only trying to do a clone... Macrium Reflect seems able to do it (though I'll know for sure in an hour -- at least the window is still around and I have a progress bar!!!).
BTW, Macrium uses VSS to gather a consistent image, rather than a reboot to a private loader with the image offline, which seems a *much* better architectural decision... (If VSS is good enough for a backup, clearly it is good enough for a clone!)
@Hashy,
This is great that the product is working as intended and working for you.
@Rich,
The product works as intended for many users you don't see on this forum. For those who come with cloning issues, a large portion of the cases are solved by using the recovery medium. Doing so takes several parameters that could go wrong during the reboot setup process, in particular with UEFI/GPT setups. Then, you can make sure the pre-Windows Linux environment works well on your computer. If it doesn't you'd have to create a WinPE based recovery CD, or try some other backup software.
Many users are reporting being very happy with Macrium, including me on certain computers. Hard to beat free.
Can you share with us the source of the information you use to determine that VSS is a better architecture decision for imaging software?
Double posted when I edited...
@Hashy,
This is great that the product is working as intended and working for you.2014 is on another machine and works great. 2015 is a disaster which I have told others to avoid on more than one occasion. On my main machines I have since moved on, but I am curious on the continual goings on here and helping others. Waiting to see ATI 2016, hoping they will revert back to a formula that is pleasing to the greater masses.
Hashy,
I suspect that this new degree of difficulty in moving to a new disk is mostly related to this new degree of hardware completity which has arrived.
First, there was the new AF (Advanced Format) disks which started a year or so ago which enables larger capacity disks so now there is mismatch among users as to disk types.
With the later releases of Window 7 and probably most all of Windows 8, there is the new GPT style partitioning of disk (older disks are mostly MBR style partitioning). The GPT introduces much greater degree of difficulty as well as some GPT partiitions are not displayed in Windows Disk Management (but viewable via Windows command DISKPART) so many users not aware of their existence. Some vendors put the Microsoft Reserved partition in different partition locations as compared to a user install of Windows, so restoring or cloning can place these special partitions in the wrong sequence. The learning curve has begun again.
@Pat
I'm not using UEFI/GPT -- this is a very vanilla MBR setup. It shouldn't present unusual challenges, especially when I loaded the disks into a separate W7 box for the clone. Having the UI window just disappear seems like a pretty basic failure. (Admittedly, I do have a third partition on the disk, following the System Reserved and OS partitions, and the disk had previously been bitlocker protected, which I turned completely off for the clone, but that can't be *that* unusual!)
And my clone was between two nearly identical SSDs -- just upgrading from 500GB Samsung 840 to 512GB Samsung 850 -- no format changes or anything.
> Can you share with us the source of the information you use to determine that VSS is a better architecture decision for imaging software?
Sure, we're already trusting VSS for taking consistent snapshots for backups, so why not use it for clones (like Macrium does) as well, and then we avoid rebooting into a special loader. Rebooting into a special loader is fraught with huge numbers of risks (and assumptions) related to low level stuff that disk cloning should not care about. It also has the potential to leave you with an unbootable system, since you're modifying loader parameters on the primary disk. With all the dual-boot systems out there, it's impossible to test all the loader combinations to validate your assumptions, and we all know that any combination that was not explicitly tested doesn't work. VSS has no such issues, since we're playing above the stack (and above things like bitlocker), rather than below it (assuming we understand all the things above us).
The proof is in the pudding -- clearly Macrium doesn't even *care* about my loader configuration (and clearly True Image never tested with it).