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Can a mounted image be cloned?

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I have an old image from a circa 2004 era computer that I would like to restore.  When I attempt to recover it to a new SSD, Acronis reports that "Due to an internal error, only files can be recovered."  The image mounts fine as a separate drive.  Can this image be cloned or does it contain nothing about the partitions and the boot sector?

I created universal restore media but I thought I would create the boot drive from the Acronis image using a working computer before installing the drive.  I am also concerned that the image is damaged.  If it mounts, is it OK?

Suggestions?

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Francis, welcome to these public User Forums.

Your old backup image should contain more than one partition and if it is from an old / 2004 vintage computer, then this is from a Legacy boot system so should have a Microsoft System Reserved partition in addition to the Windows OS C: partition.

It is also possible that the backup image was created from a system using PATA / IDE disk drive(s) which uses different drive controller hardware than later / newer computer systems.

Trying to restore such an old image to an SSD is unlikely to result in a bootable drive, especially if you are doing this on a modern UEFI boot computer.

What are you trying to do with this old image?  Is it to put into an old computer of similar vintage to the original?  What version of Windows was used by the old computer?  2004 is likely to be Windows XP or maybe Vista?

Attempting to clone the mounted drive letter for this image is unlikely to change anything if it were possible to do, but you should be able to copy the content of the image to another drive if you need to access old documents, photos etc.