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Clone advice requested

Thread needs solution

New desktop with 2 TB 7200rpm HDD, presently 60GB in use

Installing a 270GB SSD on Monday

Using ATI 2017, with plans to clone the 2TB "C" drive to the new 270GB SSD

is it as simple as it seems in the menus? Will I boot from a drive different than "C" from this point on?

Do I have to go into BIOS to tell the machine to boot from the SSD (will it be designated "C" drive after cloning?)

Do I have the opportunity to format the 2TB HDD and use it as a "D" drive?

All advice is welcomed, as I am braver than I am knowledgable.

Mike

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Mike T wrote:

New desktop with 2 TB 7200rpm HDD, presently 60GB in use

Installing a 270GB SSD on Monday

Using ATI 2017, with plans to clone the 2TB "C" drive to the new 270GB SSD

is it as simple as it seems in the menus? Will I boot from a drive different than "C" from this point on?

Do I have to go into BIOS to tell the machine to boot from the SSD (will it be designated "C" drive after cloning?)

Do I have the opportunity to format the 2TB HDD and use it as a "D" drive?

All advice is welcomed, as I am braver than I am knowledgable.

Mike

Hi Mike, it's not quite as simple as it sounds... due to UEFI becoming more prominent than Legacy and how manufacturers customize the firmware in the bios, no 2 system bios are the same these days so it's become a little more complicated for the user as they have to know a little more about their firmware settings and make sure they are configured correctly in some cases.  However, for the most part, since you're still going to be putting the new hard drive in the same computer, it should be fairly straight forward; however, I would suggest you follow my recommendations in this post...

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/125166#comment-387534

Once all is done, yes, when you boot to the new drive, it will be the C: drive.  Make sure you can boot the cloned drive all by itself (without the original connected and with the new new clone attached where the original used to be).  If you have an external case or external adapter, it would be ideal to attach the 2TB to the newly booted cloned OS, after the new clone has booted into Windows already (via the USB external adapter or case if you can).  You can then format the older 2TB drive from Windows and use it as your D: drive for storage.  It "should" be fine to attach it internally after the first good boot with the newly cloned drive, but it makes things easier if you can attach it externally and format it that way (just in case).  

My main recommendation, if you have another drive or network storage device, take a full disk backup of the original drive first!  If things go South or things don't work as intended, your backup is your safety net (just in case).  

***EDITED - sorry for all the spelling and grammar issues before - hopefully this clarifies a little better now.***

I agree that you should make a full backup before doing the clone operation (I always do so). Things have a habit of going wrong at the worst possible time.

Ian

Four attempts at cloning all ended with what looked like success, but would not boot into windows.

1) Disconnected the existing drive, 2) disconnected the ethernet cable, 3) used ACER recovery USB to "restore" the new SSD to factory setting, 4) connected my WD external drive with Acronis backup image, 5) booted with Acronis Recovery Disk, 6) restored image to "new" SSD.

Worked perfectly

Weird path, but I am delighted with the experience and outcome

thank you to all who increased my knowledge

I'm glad too!  

Yeah, cloning can be more finicky than backup and restore and is my preferred method.  Clone is supposed to be the easy path, but because of some of the limitations (perhaps a dirty sector on one of the drives, not really sure), I go the backup and restore route.  It's worked great and I feel safer having the backup anyway.  Been a few posts here where folks jumpped head first into a clone without a backup and some have actually cloned the wrong direction - no good if you don't have anything to revert too!