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What to use for cloning hard drives?

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Since Acronis apparently doesn't clone Windows 8 GPT partitions, can anyone recommend software that will do this please...

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Well, no software will clone a single partition (unless you mean "imaging" when you say "cloning").
What happens when you try to clone the disk? Did you try to clone from the recovery CD?

Currently True Image cannot backup or even see the 128mb MSR partition on GPT disks. In Windows, it is only visible from the command line diskpart utility. Without this partition, a recovery or clone of a system to a different hard disk will result in an unbootable system. When you initialize the disk as GPT from the recovery media a new MSR is created but it is placed on the disk as the first partition.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825686.aspx

The link above shows the correct partition layout for a GPT system. Until True Image is capable of backing up the MSR partition and restoring it in the correct location on the disk, a bare metal recovery of a GPT system is impossible without third party tools.

You could try Macrium Reflect Free Edition. I've read that others have had success using it to clone GPT systems in other forums.

As I understand it 'cloning' is the action of making a complete and exact copy of the WHOLE of the hard disk drive. So yes, I'd want to copy ALL the partitions on the disk, otherwise the 'cloned' drive won't boot or will have some data missing. ATU 2011 achieves this aim satisfactorily for operating systems not having GPT partitions.

Pat L asks, 'What happens when you try cloning a Windows 8 disk with a GPT partition?' Precisely nothing. The GPT partition is greyed out, so it cannot be selected as the source. And yes, I'm using the Acronis recovery CD...

Joey has indicated that Acronis has not managed to achieve the cloning status that I require, so there is currently no point in me purchasing ATU 2014.

Thanks to all for your info.

Is your disk a basic GPT disk? COuld it be dynamic, or maybe managed with Windows 8 storage spaces?

It's not to hand right now, but I'm sure it'll be a basic GPT disk, not dynamic. Don't understand what you mean by "managed with Windows 8 storage spaces". Perhaps you could kindly explain that one...

Roger Powell wrote:

Don't understand what you mean by "managed with Windows 8 storage spaces".

Windows 8 and 8.1 have a new Microsoft proprietary multi disk RAID type system that works a bit like a dynamic disk (Windows Home Server) and a bit like a RAID system if enabled.

True Image does not support these at this time. I suspect Microsoft license fee to access this new format is somewhat hefty.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/storage-spaces-pools