Cloning hard drive help

Don't do your backup on the same drive you plan to use as the new source.  When you push the image to your new drive, it will wipe everything - don't think it will let you use the same drive where the image resides anyway.

Good idea making a backup before cloning - just in case.  You should still be able to fall back to your original drive anyway, but this is a good safeguard in case you push the image to the wrong disk.  Basically, backup your existing disk to some other medium - another free internal disk or a different external drive.  You can use Acronis' compression to help fit it if space is a little tight.  I use compression (even the highest) and it is fine (although maybe a little slower).  

FYI, sometimes, if this is a brand new disk you are installing or ugprading to, you should initialize it in Windows first - I've had problems with Acronis not detecting disks that have not been intiialized yet - and since you have an external dock and the capability to do this with current Windows, this should be easy.

Make sure you've created your offline bootable media and have it ready and have verified you can boot into it already.

Using the Clone Disk Option is the easiest way - see the Acronis KB article here for a full breakdown:  https://kb.acronis.com/content/56634

You should be good to go after that.  

Alternatively, if you took a full disk backup (as a precaution before starting), you can simply push the image to your new Blank Disk and it will restore it to the hardware.  99% of the time this works just fine too - as long as you backed up the entire / whole disk and not just some of the partitions. 

You might have issue with the esata connection being recognized by the boot media.  I have found what works best is a USB to SATA transfer cable.  There are quite a few out there, cheap ones from around $6 to best around $25 to $30.  I think the best ones are those that inlude a separate power supply to provide constant power to the drive during a long data transfer.  This helps prevent voltage drops to the drive during the process which could cause failure in the transfer.

Just curious, by why replace an SSD with a hybrid drive  - it's going to be significantly slower (even if you have an old SSD it should perfrom much better than your hybrid drive as an OS disk).  I've played with different hybrids and find that they quickly run out of cache memory (the SSD part of the disk as claimed - which is usually around 8MBf) and then they are even slower than most regular spinning drives, especially since many hybrid drives use 5400RPM drives intsead of 7200RPM drives. Things like boot may still be pretty fast on the hybrid, but real world copies and writes, launching applications etc. will be inconsistent at best.

I might suggest keeping your SSD as the primary drive and using the 2TB SSD for storage and Acronis backups of your primary drive.  You can easily free up space on your main SSD by pointing things like your profile documents and music to the new drive instead, using disk utilitities to cleanup old update points, moving things like the itunes backup directory (which is located in your user profile / appdata by default) to the external drive, etc.  

You might want to run free tools like Mindgems foldersize free or Treesize free on your main drive to see where the bulk of your SSD storage is being taken up to see how easy it would be to move files to the new 2TB drive.  There's lot's of good information you can Google to show you how to easily redirect your profile folders, or make symbolic links to force iTunes to save iphone backups on other drives instead of in Appdata.  That one got me for the longest time... Another one that gets me are iMAP email settings if you use Outlook or Livemail or something similar because they also start to fill up the drive in your profile/appdata and really are a waste of space which can be symbolicly linked to another folder on a different drive, or moved to the other drive outright in many cases.

Thanks guys,

After reading your replies and giving it some though I believe I'll invest in an external drive for the backup. A 1TB WD Passport is under $60.00 so I'll get one and use it exclusively as a backup drive. Looked at the 500 GB and it is only $2.00 less than the TB. That way I'll have a couple of backups when done, the current drive and the external drive.

After I get the backup drive, I'll back up the current drive and then try cloning it through the ProBox. It is about four times faster than a USB3 transfer so I'd prefer to go that route if I can. If not I'll try something else.

Just curious, I was looking at the instructions on cloning and it's my understanding that while cloning Windows will be shut down, is that correct? What does it do go through safe mode? 

Thanks again, Linda

It actually reboots into a Linux based environment to perform the clone task.  Same is true when a recovery is done if that recovery is of the system OS disk.  It is best to create a Recovery Media disk or USB stick using the Media Creation Utility within the Windows installed product and test it to maek sure you can boot to the media.  If you cannot then the reboot from Windows will fail as well.

Because of this fact it is recommeded that Clone and REcovery tasks of system OS disks be performed using the recovery media.

I was told by the guy who built this computer that the drive I selected, a Seagate Hybrid was a very good and fast drive. This SSD drive is only 250 GB and I've only got something like 25 GB free. I've already got a second 2TB drive installed in this computer that I use as a storage drive and have nothing on this SSD drive but the operating system and programs. A while back I was looking into adding another storage drive and it seems that the only free eSATA port, on this motherboard, shares with a PCI port that I believe is being used by the video card. The eSATA port doesn't work in any case. That is why I purchased the ProBox, so I could add storage. It has 4 ports and all of the drives can be accessed at the all times when the ProBox is on. We are wedding photographers and absolutly can't have enough storage.

I don't do a lot of ITunes or such so that can't be taking up any space. The updates and email may be a space problem, I'll have to check into it. the email is only 300mb so that isn't a problem. I moved it off C anyway. If I can't clear enough space I'll continue on with this and I'll have the old drive to fall back on if I need to.

Thanks,

Linda

Definitely won't be as fast as an SSD, but it is a compromise between storage size, cost and speed.  Just for comparison you can check out the video at the link below between the 3 types of drives and how they react on the same build.  Don't trust benchmarks like crystaldsik, atto, etc for any drive - they mean nothing in real world usage and are often used by manufacturers to make their drives seem better than they really are in many cases. 

SSD vs Hybrid vs Hard drive

I'm sure the hybrid will serve you well - you can't argue that the price for the additional storage is a nice selling point since larger SSD's (1TB-2TB are still considerably more).  If you're running out of space on your primary OS drive, and it can't be cleaned up enough, you will have to get something bigger anyway (I'd really recommend running treesizefree if you have the opportunity to try and find data that you can manually clean up so that you can keep the SSD as your main OS drive though).  

What kind of computer do you have?  If it's a desktop/workstation, there are probably other internal SATA ports you could use if the extra storage doesn't need to be internal.  If they're all used up, what about USB 3.0 (2.0 is quite a bit slower).  You could always get a cheap USB 3.0 hub to give you more ports and there are a ton of USB 3.0 storage solutions, dockign stations and duplicators that will allow you to easily swap in a drive like a portable one.  

Google for StarTech.com 6Gbps USB 3.0/eSATA on that big "Jungle" store.  There are many similar ones, but this one has eSATA and USB 3.0 connectivity if you need/want both options - alternatively there are cheaper ones that just have eSATA or USB connectivity.  It can be a hard drive dock for any 2.5" or 3.5" drive (2 of them actually).  It can also physically copy disk to disk without the need for a computer or software (if you are wanting to do a full physical clone from two equal size disks or from a small one to a bigger one). They're very versatile and relatively cheap... plus they basically turn any drive into a portable one and you can swap drives out of them super easy which may alleviate your photo storage space problem since you can just fill up a drive, remove it and hold onto it to dock in as you need it and replace with a new drive to keep adding more as you need more space.  

Thanks Bobbo,

What kind of computer do you have?  If it's a desktop/workstation, there are probably other internal SATA ports you could use if the extra storage doesn't need to be internal.  If they're all used up, what about USB 3.0 (2.0 is quite a bit slower).  You could always get a cheap USB 3.0 hub to give you more ports and there are a ton of USB 3.0 storage solutions, dockign stations and duplicators that will allow you to easily swap in a drive like a portable one.  

It's a custom built desktop and it has five internal SATA ports, four are being used for other components and as I mentioned in another post the fifth one is shared with a pci slot that is being used, which makes it dead. I need to look into whether I can swap out the pci card to another slot to activate that SATA port. I've also given consideration to adding a sata pci card to give me some extra internal ports. There are at least three external SATA ports. I'm using one to run the ProBox docking station I have. It is somewhat in line with the StarTech you were telling me about. It has the compacity for four bare drives that can be run at the same time if the unit is on. They are read and write just like an internal drive. 

Google for StarTech.com 6Gbps USB 3.0/eSATA on that big "Jungle" store.  There are many similar ones, but this one has eSATA and USB 3.0 connectivity if you need/want both options - alternatively there are cheaper ones that just have eSATA or USB connectivity.  It can be a hard drive dock for any 2.5" or 3.5" drive (2 of them actually).  It can also physically copy disk to disk without the need for a computer or software (if you are wanting to do a full physical clone from two equal size disks or from a small one to a bigger one). They're very versatile and relatively cheap... plus they basically turn any drive into a portable one and you can swap drives out of them super easy which may alleviate your photo storage space problem since you can just fill up a drive, remove it and hold onto it to dock in as you need it and replace with a new drive to keep adding more as you need more space.     

I glanced at these, they look very interesting, I almost wish I'd come across these before I purchased the ProBox. I may invest in one anyway. I have external hard drives coming out of the wahzoo. Most are full. I keep two available at all times to make duplicate backups as I work as well as a drive with important images from each wedding on a bare drive in the ProBox for easy access.  

Thanks for your input, 

Linda

Glad to help.  I really like those duplicators just for the reason of being able to swap drives in an out so easily and the offline duplication is a bonus to boot.

One thing I didn't mention, that had me pulling my hair out when I got mine, is that although it has 2 slots, if you start it up with just one drive and try to pop in the other, it wont read either of them.  The same goes in reverse if you have 2 drives in it and want to pop one out.

It's an easy fix though - power done the dock then make your drive addition or removal and power the dock back.  It's a little inconvenient, but not bad and the ability to add remove drives at will is still the best feature.  I haven't found any of these that are fully plug and play and just let you add and remove drives on the fly - if anyone knows of one though (in this price range), i'd like to know.

Enchantech,

This may be dumb question but I can't find any information on it. How do you test a recovery media disk? 

Linda

Bobbo,

I'll try to remember that if and when I purchase one. I was trying to think and I'm not sure you can trade out the drives in this ProBox while it is running. I've never had an occasion to try. I'll have to experiment and see.

The main advantage over the ProBox that I can see is the offline duplication. That would be a valuable item to have.

Hi.  I am new to this whole cloning business and am trying to replace 128 gb ssd that was stock in my dell inspiron laptop to a 500 gb ssd i purchased.  I have downloaded and installed the acronis software and have connected the new drive using an sata box.  the software started the cloning but gave me an error when it recognized the destination drive.  The error was that the logical sector size of the destination disk was not the same as the sector size of the source disk.  Can anyone help?  Thanks!

Samantha,

ATI cannot clone dynamic disks or disks with different sector sizes.  Therefore, you will have to perform a disk backup of the old drive to another hard drive.  You cannot use the new SDD for this operation.  After you have completed the backup, you will need to install the new SDD and perform a Restore from the backup to the new SDD.

You will need to create the rescue media to complete this process.  Also, it is recommended to perform the backup and restore while booted from rescue media.

I will need to know which version of ATI you are using, if you need help with the backup and restore.

Regards,

FtrPilot

johnson well wrote:

I konw how to back up iPhone  iPhone/iPad to an external drive via FonePaw iOS Transfer, but I don't know whether it can help you. Therefore I suggest you can use it to make a try, because I think the method is same. 

This would not apply - the products are completely different.  Is this a spam add for FonePaw?  The information FTRPilot provided is to the T and would be the necessary method of restoring to the new SSD with different sector sizes using a full system image backup, saved to another drive, and pushing that image to the new SSD and then swapping the new SSD for the old one.