A Simplified Recovery Procedure
I just finished recovering my Windows System backup to a new SSD with greater capacity than the original HDD. While I have been regularly backing up my system I have never actually performed a restoration procedure. When I first read the Recovery section of the Acronis True Image User Guide I was overwhelmed with details about disk partition structure when all I wanted to do was recover my system backup to the new SSD without changing the partition structure. I found that this can be done quite simply within Acronis bootable media but it is not discussed in either the User guide or the help topics. Instead the user is dragged through a sequence of partition settings that I had no need to change. In the interest of passing on this information to novices like myself I have attached my supplement to the user guide detailing this simplified procedure.
In the interest of learning how to use the more versatile restoration features I would like to know how much free space should be specified for the first usually hidden partition. This information does not appear in either the "backup details" screen or the "what to recover" screen. I would assume that this space must be sufficient for the MBR (512KB?). The example shown in the User Guide for the setting of partition 1-1 allows 1MB. Is the actual value critical for the Operating System to function normally?
Videos are available to.. both from Acronis and from user Youtube posts...
117004: Great Acronis "How-To" videos and other Acronis Resources
You're complicating things too much. Take a full disk (not paritions) backup of the original. Then, restore a full disk (not paritition) backup to the SSD. It's a one-for-one backup and restore action that takes all of the guess-work out of the process - you don't have to think about any partitions or sizing or anything, just let it do it's thing. If moving to a different capacity disk, Acronis will automatically extend the primary OS parition for you to take advantage of the larger disk space or, shrink it if going to a smaller disk (assuming the actual data will fit).
If you manually partition a disk, then yes, your partitions must be at least as big as the original partitions, but there's no need to do this and makes things way harder than they need to be.
Thank you Steve and Bobbo,
I believe what I outlined in my post is exactly what Bobbo is suggesting. I was working from a full disc backup and I restored the full disk. The problem was the user guide did not describe how to do a full disk restoration. I stumbled onto it. Is there an article that specifically describes how to do a full disk restoration?
I have always used the default settings when doing this or doing a clone. Not sure if I ever read the instructions on how to do this as it was a long time back that I first did so.
I agree that instructions should start with the simple approach and have options for customisation discussed later. It is also a good idea to indicate if customisation is something that a user should consider and the circumstances in which customisation may be appropriate.
Ian