How do I clone my harddrive?
I read the sticky on how not to clone but exactly how are you supposed to clone or do I even want to do that? I am having some components replaced on my 6 year old work computer and I want to replace the harddrive while we are at it. I made a clone a few months ago with no problems. I keep it in a safe place. I also make weekly backups to another external drive both full and incremental. I also made a rescue disc.
Are there instructions somewhere on how to make a copy of my harddrive to a new harddrive and replace it? I made a duplicate question on the sticky but this might be a better way to ask.
edit...I did find instructions but I do not know how to clone the disc under bootable media. I thought this would be simple - clone it then replace it. The csticky makes it sound like a dangerous thing to do.
Sorry for posting in two threads. I think the confusion comes in that I can find information on how to do back ups but I do not know what to do if I have a total harddrive failure. I didn't know if a full back up was enough to replace a total disc failure without reinstalling windows and all the software which is what I worry about most. I thought it would make the most sense to have a recently cloned hard drive which I could put into place then back up from the point when I cloned it. Now that I want to replace my old harddrive I am just trying to figure out the best way to do that.
My hard drive is a basic drive I don't even know if it has partitions. At least I didn't make any.
In reading the instructions again I remember that when I chose to clone the drive the computer rebooted first to the stand alone Acronis. Is this good enough or should I still reboot with the rescue media?
I was having issues with errors both when I cloned the first time (if I remember correctly) and with back ups. I did the check disk and repair of both the source and destination drive. I reformatted the destination drive and checked the disk which showed no problems and then have had only a few errors which I do not know about during the scheduled back up. I only find out when I back up manually and then it tells me that the scheduled back up had an error. So, I do not trust the automatic back ups anymore. I do them manually and check to see if everything is okay. Maybe some of the errors are due to my processor failing which is why it is being replaced.
I can always put the old drive back in the if something doesn't work right but it would be easier to change it over when it is opened up. I will be replacing the mother board and processor so I need to worry about drivers but I have an expert doing this and he says he knows how to do that.
Hi Karin,
We've posted in your other thread, so we can pick up over there.
Karin, a full disk & partitions backup is very capable of being used to recover from a total disk failure - this is actually the recommended method of such a recovery as it is more flexible that using cloning.
You full backup will contain everything on your source drive that is needed provided that all hidden partitions are included - it is very rare wth most modern versions of Windows OS (from Vista forwards) to not have at least 2 partitions, and often may have 3 or more partitions. The Microsoft System Reserved partition is used to store the Windows Boot configuration information or alternatively you may have an EFI bootloader partition, plus Recovery partitions.
If you are confident about using cloning, plus have your full backup for protection, then go ahead and using cloning but follow the guidance given in the referenced KB document above on this subject.
Thanks everyone for your help and patience. I think I have my plan figured out. I will post my success (hopefully) when it is up and running.
Ok here is my problem. I purchased true image 2014 and it would not recognize my HD (WD 2TB), When 2015 came out I figured whatever the problem was should be updated. I was wrong again. Purchased another USB HD (Seagate 3 TB) and 2015 would not recognize it either.
Here is my question. If I purchased space in the cloud could I just backup to it and not worry if True Image will find my drives or not. Then my only concern would be that it can find my source drive (1 TB).
If this is how it will work for me then I am ready to upgrade to 2017 and give it another try.
Richard
Richard, welcome to these user forums.
Please would you use the option to create your own New Topic by clicking on the same at the top of Acronis True Image 2015 Forum (as this seems to be the product version your post concerns). This is preferable to hijacking a topic from another user which for a completely different issue than the one you are raising. Please also provide more details of your Windows OS version, HDD make/model, how attached etc in your new topic post.