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Is Acronis 2016 missing the "Clone drive signature" now?

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Hi, Acronis has made many changes in the GUI in 2016. e have been using 2014 alot and when you restore a .tib image to a new drive, it used to have a "restore the drive signature" check box underneath the destination drive. We dont seem to have that option in 2016 anymore? Why is that? We have tried twice to restore a drive yesterday without success and had to revert back to the computer with 2014 installed to complete the job.

Can anyone advise? It used to be as asy as select your drive, do a full backup. put your new drive in, check the drive signature checkbox and you were all set... Am I missing a new step?

P.S. side note, I've tried to contact someone from the chat and the form is mentionning a mandatory field for Company Size which is inexistant and for that reason I wasnt able to initiate the chat session and get instant support....

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When performing a backup select the Options button at bottom left of the main GUI window.  Select the Exclusions tab and remove the System Volume Information from the lists as well as any other items you see there that you do not wish to exclude from the backup. You can remove/add entries here by click selecting and then click the minus button at the bottom of the screen to remove items or the plus if you wish to add items to the list.

Your restore should now bring with it the disk signature.

To add to Enchantec's post, here's the user guide reference:

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2016/#13778.html

Disk cloning and signatures is also explained here:

Selecting target disk for MBR recovery

In this window you should select a hard disk for recovering the Master Boot Record (MBR) along with track 0.

Recover disk signature check box

If you have selected MBR recovery at the Content selection step, the Recover disk signature check box will be in the bottom left corner. Disk signature is a part of a hard disk MBR. It is used for uniquely identifying the disk media.

We recommend that you select the Recover disk signature check box due to the following reasons:

  • Acronis True Image 2016 creates scheduled tasks using the signature of the source hard disk. If you recover the same disk signature, you don't need to re-create or edit the tasks created previously.
  • Some installed applications use a disk signature for licensing and other purposes.
  • If you use Windows Restore Points, they will be lost when the disk signature is not recovered.
  • Recovering a disk signature allows recovering VSS snapshots used by Windows Vista and Windows 7's "Previous Versions" feature.

We recommend that you clear the Recover disk signature check box when:

  • You use an image backup not for disaster recovery but for cloning your Windows hard drive to another one.

In this case, Acronis True Image 2016 generates a new disk signature for the recovered hard drive, even if you recover to the same drive.

 

Having selected a hard disk drive and specified whether to recover the disk signature, click Next to continue.

Thank you both for your replies...

We have always been selecting the disk signature recovery and that has always worked for us.. However I simply cannot find that "Content selection" step so I guess that's what Im missing and why i can't select the signature recovery option.... I've looked everywhere.... Can you help me find that option?

 

Thank you

The disk signature option is only available when using the boot recovery media.  The option no longer is available in the Windows application.

Enchantech wrote:

The disk signature option is only available when using the boot recovery media.  The option no longer is available in the Windows application.

So if your hard drive goes out and you are recovering from a backup file; is the disk signature there if you unckeck exclusions when making the backup in windows?

Dave,

The disk signature as I mentioned above is somewhat misleading reading it again.  I shold have said the disk signature OPTION is only available when using the recovery media.

Although it is not recommended by the MVP's here to attempt recovery of a Windows system disk using the Windows installed app if you did attempt recovery this way the app will require a reboot of your machine.  This reboot will attempt to boot into a Linux environment, the same as the recovery media and therefore the disk signature option will be available.

Best practice for Windows system disk recovery is to boot your machine using recovery media and the recover the disk.