Migrating Entire Partition With Intermediate Disc
I wish to move my entire partition to a new system using a USB drive as an intermediate device. That is, I wish to back up to the USB disc, then use the USB disc to restore the entire system to the new computer.
The target device is an SSD while the current drive and the USB are both hybrid conventional discs.
I tried a normal backup to the USB and then booted the new computer using the recovery disc. The restore routine just froze at the final step where I identify the target drive/partition. I was unable to select a partition to restore to. The entire UI just froze.
I cannot run both computers at the same time to somehow do a direct link and transfer that way. I can't see how to do this not using the USB but the using conventional backup and restore to a new computer failed.
Any suggestions would be most welcome. If Acronis 2017 isn't the correct tool, please advise. I'm not averse to buying an additional tool if necessary.
TIA.


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Thanks for the quick reply. I do mean duplicating all of what's on the current HDD and moving to the new SSD. I perhaps should have said mirror what's on the HDD over to the SSD.
Here are the steps I did and what happened.
1. I made a full backup to the USB device.
2. I had a rescue disk on hand
3. I checked to see if the rescue disk worked. It did.
Note: the new drive is part of a different computer system which currently is bootable using Win10. I am currently running Win 7 and that's what I wish to have appeared in the new system. I cannot run both systems concurrently. I'm upgrading not just to an SSD but to an entirely new system which has a 256 gig SSD and a 1 TB HDD. To make things simple initially, I'll copy all to the SSD and then divide data from programs/OS.
4. I changed the settings on the BIOS on the new machine to boot from a CD using UEFI. I connected the USB with the backups to the new machine.
5. The rescue disk booted the machine.
6. I followed the wizard to the final step which was to ID the target drive for the total restore. That page was non-reactive. I clicked on the SSD but it didn't highlight and Next button remained disabled.
Note: I suppose I could boot into Win 10 and run the Acronis program from there to restore, but I'm not sure if'd made any difference.
Note: the current Win 7 partition is 1 Tb s I'm going from 1 Tb to 256 gig but only trying to move 150 gig of programs and data.
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Paul, thanks for the further information - that does make a very key degree of difference here!
What you are effectively trying to do is to move your Windows 7 OS from one set of computer hardware to a completely different set of computer hardware in the new Windows 10 system.
There more to do here than just attempting to backup the Win 7 OS and restore it to the new computer. You will also need to create and use the Acronis bootable Universal Restore media once you have successfully restored the OS backup to the new hardware.
You need to know what differences exist between the old and new hardware if this is going to work for you? For example, the OS boot mode - is this the same or are the systems different? Older computers use a Legacy / CSM boot with MBR partitioning. Newer computers use UEFI and which may have GPT partitioning.
The SATA mode for the source and target disk drives also need to be matched for the two systems, i.e. if the Win 7 system disk uses AHCI then you need the same for the Win 10 disk. If the new computer uses RAID for the SATA, then this will be a problem!
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Thanks, Steve. The disk I'm trying to move from is MBR while the new is UEFI but not GPT partitioning. I've been out of tech things for a few years now and so have grown more than a bit rusty in looking forward to the consequences of my chosen path.
I was on the fence about using Win 10 as is and reinstalling programs from disk and download. This would be a time-consuming task which I have little appetite for right now when I need to get some work done. However, my Win 7 system, despite my best efforts has, by now, grown rather arthritic and in a way, it'd be a shame to move it to this higher end hardware.
It's likely the right way to go, though. The last from DVD install I did to 7 was 7 years ago which is more than enough time for it get obese, full of mystery whatevers and perform in a sub par manner.
My wife's laptop is Win 10 and after I got rid of the spyware and the need to phone home, I find I like it as a system. I think it's time I bite the bullet, do the from scratch install and go another 7 years. There's no issue with the backup quality or my ability to restore data.
Thanks for the dose of reality here. Greatly appreciated.
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Paul, am happy to share advice and experience with you. One other issue to be aware of if keeping with Windows 7 is that you would only have another few years of support from Microsoft before that OS follows the likes of Vista and XP - Win 7 has an expiry date of 2020 which is not so far away!
Personally, there are many benefits to going with Windows 10, not the least being the support it has for newer computer hardware / components, plus increased security over earlier versions.
You will need to configure the Privacy settings but this is true for any new computer OS these days - the one benefit with Win 10 is that this is quite straight-forward to do via the Settings panel compared to older versions of Windows where it was more hidden away.
If you did decide to try to go ahead with migrating your older Win 7 OS to the new hardware, then I would recommend getting hold of another disk drive to use and to remove the one provided with the Win 10 computer, setting it aside so that you have an easy path to get back to the starting gate again.
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I agree, Steve. I didn't wish to spend the time right now rebuilding a system from distro DVD's and CD's . However, a project I'm on demands I use the more powerful equipment just acquired.
I think the thing which soured me on 10 was the log into MSFT so all my behavior was potentially logged to my identity. When I learned this could be bypassed along with the other spyware inherent in the OS, I calmed down.
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Paul, I have always used a local user profile on all my Windows systems and refuse to be tied to using a Microsoft Account when they introduced it with Windows 8 and later. I also don't sign in to Google etc for much the same reasons.
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Steve,
I'm ok with Google which makes me unusual. I say that because I can operate my machine w/o any Google ware, but I'm stuck with Windows so can't do anything w/o being spied on by MSFT if I'm using my machine and logged onto my account.
I do wish MSFT offered two types of Windows 10. One where you, like gmail, sell yourself for a free or low-cost OS and another where you pay a fair price, get the OS and also remain private.
I guess the world's moved on meaning we're all for sale all the time.
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