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won't clone to a new ssd

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I just bought a new 1 TB ssd drive.  I want to clone it from my current laptop drive which is 1/2 TB.  Process crashes both from new drive internal and new drive external, and whether booting from windows or from the rescue disk.

Is TI 16 buggy with the cloning process?  I can't get anyone from Acronis to answer me.

 

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Comments: 120

Hi Cliff,

I am sure the MVP's and others ,with much more expertise than I,  can help you but here is what I did to set up my new SSD.

I created a new Partition Image (no cloning) of my "C" drive using TIH2016 and saving it to my internal backup drive.

Shut down the PC, pulled out my existing, internal C drive from my hot swap box, installed the new SSD, Booted the machine with the TIH media recovery DVD that I created earlier.  Restored the new C drive partition image to my new SSD, removed the boot DVD and booted the machine.

That was it... It worked perfectly. 

Steve

I would think your issue is likely due to how the external disk connection is being made.  If your are using USB (likely) and connected via a 3.0 port try using a 2.0 port if available.  It might also be the USB adapter you are using so you might wish to try another.  A less likely issue would be that of a bad USB cable so you might try a different cable.

It is prefered that your target disk is installed in the laptop connected to where it will live after a successful clone and the source disk attached externally.  Clone process should be run from the Recovery Media as well.

I have used the clone tool from the Recovery Media several times without issue personally.

Edit: Another possibility is that Clone will only work on a basic disk.  If either of your disks are dynamic the clone tool will not run.  In that case a backup and restore would be required to migrate your current disk to the new one.

OP

The important step is that that SSD or eSata drive that you are cloning to is installed as the primary drive in your laptop and/or workstation.  At least that is my understanding of at least one way to clone to a new hard drive.  There are others way too.

Since the new SSD drive has to be installed anyway, might as well install it and then copy the cloned image to it.  Then restore the image from the new SSD logical partition over to the primary partition as Steve did.  The restore process will take less time as well compared to restoring from a slave interal drive and/or from an external drive via USB 2.0 or 3.0. In addition the image of the primary partition is already on the new SSD in the logical partition (if that is where you want to keep it).  I would copy it, however, to an external hard drive, and not use the disk space of the image on the logical partition.

Steve's way will work , however, the image cloned to the logical partition on the new SSD will have to be the same size or smaller than the primary partition of the original CD.  At least that's my understanding.  In other words, if the primary image on the original drive is 350 gig, then when restoring the image to the SSD, the primary partition of the new SSD has to be at least 350 gig.  However, if the new SSD was partitioned as Steve did, and the new SSD is 500 gig, then when partitioning the new SSD the primary partition should be at least 350 gig leaving 150 gig of free space on the logical partition for the cloned image from the original primary source.

However, if the software used to restore the closed image will automatically resize the primary partition on the new hard drive to accomodate the larger size of the original image then not to worry.  However, I think the logical partition on the new hard drive has to have enough free space to resize the primary partition to that of the source primary partition.

A good example.  My new Lenovo T450s came with a 500 gig eSata hard drive.  I want to replace with an SSD hard drive.

So I think (please correct me if I am mistaken)  buying a 480 gig SSD hard drive would not have worked because the target SSD drive was smaller than the source drive if it was not my intent to partion the new SSD. 

But I could partition the originial 500 gig eSata hard drive in the laptop reducing the size of the primary partition so that it is less than 480 gig.  Then the cloned image from the source primary partition would be smaller than the primary partition on the target drive (480 gig SSD).

It can get confusing and there are many ways to clone.  I've always cloned to an external source but I might try Steve's way way since I intend to partition the new SSD anyway.  The downside, however, might be when I clone 35 gig to the logical partition, and then delete it when I move the cloned image to an external hard drive for save keeping.  Will there be some degradation on the new SSD writing and deleting 35 gig right from the get go - don't know - perhaps not.

All,

Have a look at the link below:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/56634

Regular Poster
Posts: 198
Comments: 120

WOW...I can see where this can get really technical and I would be a bit lost...

My SSD was "smaller" than the source disk.

The source disk was 1 TB.  The SSD is about 480GB.

The original 1TB source was partitoned as C: 500GB and M: (500GB) Data Files

I made a partition image backup of the C drive and the resulting file was about 120GB.

I used that C drive image to restore to the New SSD that was placed as the boot drive and booting up with the recovery media.

After the SSD was booted, I used the Win10 Disk management to re-size the C (OS) partition to about 250GB and added a M: Data Partition to the SSD for the remainder of the space..

That worked for me but it is always interesting to see new procedures and better ways to manage our systems.

Steve

 

Thanks to all of you for replying.  I just upgraded to acronis TI 16.  I have a laptop win windows 7 and a 450 GB HD.  I bought a new 1 TB SSD to replace my current HD.  I put the new SSD in my laptop internally.  I then connected my new ssd externally by USB III.  I then ran clone disk from the acronis bootable media.  The software recongized both disks.  I then ran clone disk from the old disk to the new internal disk.  the process crashes and I get the message "clone operation failed".  the system then reboots itself.  I have done this several times.

I believe that this is exactly what Acronis is recommending.  If not, please tell me.

The cloning process starts and then crashes.  What can I do next if Acronis won't talk to me?

Cliff Spitser wrote:

Thanks to all of you for replying.  I just upgraded to acronis TI 16.  I have a laptop win windows 7 and a 450 GB HD.  I bought a new 1 TB SSD to replace my current HD.  I put the new SSD in my laptop internally.  I then connected my new ssd externally by USB III.  I then ran clone disk from the acronis bootable media.  The software recongized both disks.  I then ran clone disk from the old disk to the new internal disk.  the process crashes and I get the message "clone operation failed".  the system then reboots itself.  I have done this several times.

I believe that this is exactly what Acronis is recommending.  If not, please tell me.

The cloning process starts and then crashes.  What can I do next if Acronis won't talk to me?

Did the SSD hard drive come with cloning software?  If so and it is a Samsung, I would download 'Samsung Migrate' and use it to clone your orig HD to the new SSD hd.  Won't hurt to try.  Make sure you have a good image of the original HD before proceeding any further with TI even if you have to resort to making a second system image with Windows.

Did you change the BIO's to recognize the SSD drive?

I would try again connecting with USB II.

I tried USB II and I got the same crash.

Now, I would like to try to create my new ssd disk by doing a disk and partition restore from a disk and partition backup that I made last night from my current hard disk.  I just tried this with my new ssd internal in the laptop and booting from the rescue media.  I was unable to figure out all the correct choices to make on the 3 screens that I have to fill out.  It keeps saying that I have something wrong.

Now I am going to read through the TI 16 user manual to see if it has any pictures of the screens and how to fill them out.

If I can't figure it out I will get back to you for more help.  I took pictures of these screens with my camera

 

Cliff

The drive is a Crucial MX 200 1 TB.  It came with a coupon for TI 14.  I didn't use that because I already had TI 16.

No I didn't change the BIO's.  What is that? and how do I do that?

Cliff,

Since you state/ask "No I didn't change the BIO's.  What is that? and how do I do that?" I suspect that your issue with cloning and the same will be true with recovery of a backup image is that you do not understand thus know how to boot your laptop into the Recovery environment using the Rescue Media.  Assuming I am right here would mean that all your attempts at cloning have in reality been done from within the Windows installed TI 2016 application.  The problem you face here is that whether you are cloning or recovering a backup image when doing so from within the Windows installed application requires that the machine reboot into a stand alone recovery environment which is the same environment as the rescue media by the way and your machine is not able to do this.  So the end result is that the clone task crashes and I suspect that a recovery will be no different.

I recommend that you visit your laptop maunfacturers support site and do some Google searchs for how to access you machines bios and learn as much as you can about the different available settings there.  Attempt to find out how to boot the machine from a USB stick or CD/DVD disk would be most helpful.  Follow what you can learn about such steps and attempt to boot using the rescue media.  I think if you can accomplish that either the clone or a recovery will be doable.

I am suprised at what you say.  I have said over and over that I booted from the acronis bootable dvd and then put the destination disk inside the laptop and the source disk attached with a USB to sata adapter wire.  This is what acronis recommends.  This process crashes.  The bootable media log file says "MFT bitmap corrupted.

 

Acronis nowhere that I can find says anything about messing with the BIOS

You might want to run chkdsk on the original HD to see if that will fix the issue.  I would reinstall the original HD into the laptop - unless the Acornis recovery media will let you do so from the CD/DVD. 

However, rather than take the chance and run chkdks on the wrong HD (the SSD HD) I would remove it and reinstall the original HD and run chkdsk from the full copy of Windows.

After chkdsk completes, you also might want to try to create a full bkup of the original HD and then test it after completion to make sure it is a good copy so it can be used to restore. As I recall with TI V8 the imaging process would fail if TI found errors while making a backup image.  Don't know about TI 2016. In other words, will you get the same message if you attempt to make a full backup of the original HD.6

FWIW

I just installed a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500 gig HD in my new Lenovo T450s.  Disgusted with TI 2016 that I just paid for and downloaded I decided to use the Samsung Migration cloning software that was distributed with the Samsung SSD HD instead using TI 2016.

I purchased the Acronis Laptop Drive Upgrade kit rather than purchase another external enclosure.  I did not install their software. I just used the supplied 3.0 cable. It connects to the SSD HD via a USB 3.0 connection to the laptop. Next I opened the Samsung migration tool app on the laptop and then clicked start.  That's it, nothing else to do. It took less than 10 minutes to copy the image from the Sata drive in the laptop over to the external SSD HD. Everything went without a hitch.

Next step was to open the back cover on the laptop and remove the 500 gig Sata HD in the laptop and install the Samsung SSD HD.  I installed an additional 8 gig of ram also while the cover was off.  I attached the back cover, installed the battery, enabled the internal battery, and hit the start button.

It booted without a hitch. 

Note: I could have used the Apricorn cloning software supplied in their kit but chose to try the Samsung cloning software first. 

The Apricorn software uses the same process as Samsung. The image from the internal HD is copied to the external SSD and/or Sata drive via what they call Sata wire 3.0.  I am sure it would have completed without error as well.

As I recall I used an Apricorn external 2.5 HD enclosure when I installed an SSD in my Lenovo T61 along with their cloning software.  Same process except that the connection then was with a USB 2.0 cable.

Suummary: I guess it depends on the cloning software and if you have to install the SSD first and then migrate the image from the external original HD or do as I did and migrate the image from the internal drive to the external SSD HD.  Both methods work.

I think the OP perhaps has a corrupted Windows Installation or Master Boot file.  Get it corrected and I think the OP will be good to go.

I don't want to disurb your discussion but can you make a screenshot how the clone failed?

Yesterday I tried to clone a Toshiba HDD to a OCZ Vertex 4. The total size of the HDD was of course bigger but the actual usage fits (50 GB data, SSD size 256 MB)

AHCI was used, but I think in my case the problem was that ATIH failed to convert the MBR disk to a cloned GPT disk which he advertised to do before the process. Somewhen later the process quit with an error that the clone process failed.

Very interesting.  Thanks for the info.  I have used apricot before.  Long time ago.  And like you say, ater cloning, switch the drives and then the computer boots and runs as good as ever.

What is the OP?

I will loot at the master boot record.

 

Cliff

Cliff Spitser wrote:

Very interesting.  Thanks for the info.  I have used apricot before.  Long time ago.  And like you say, ater cloning, switch the drives and then the computer boots and runs as good as ever.

What is the OP?

I will loot at the master boot record.

 

Cliff

 

On another forum (Tractor Forum) we refer to the OP as the original poster - member who started the thread (discussion).

What is good about the Apricorn 2.5 HD cable is that you can use it to connect any 2.5 Sata HD or SSD HD to the source (laptop or notebook) via USB 3.0.  Obviously if the HD is not an SSD HD (SSD is enclosed on all sides) then the underside of the drive is not protected like it would be if installed in an external enclosure. So the cable can be used infrequently if needed to connect Sata HD's to a laptop.

And the Apricorn cloning software is generic so it can be used with any sata HD unlike Samsung Migrate or others that require their brand if using their software.