Cloning should be performed only when booted from recovery media which you can build using the Media Builder tool found in the Tools screen of the application.  Your original disk should be removed from the PC and attached via another connection and the new drive needs to be installed in place of the original in the PC prior to cloning.  When the clone is run you need to select the option to shutdown the computer when operation is finished.  When shutdown occurs you need to disconnect the the original disk from the PC to boot to the new disk. 

Not following these steps will result in a failure of the clone operation.

About a month ago I cloned my HDD to SSD and with only minor difficulty it went well and is functioning properly. As a test, I tried to recover the backed up SSD to a HDD and even tried cloning the SSD to a HDD. Upon reboot the system just hangs in the dot circle forever. The system will boot into safe mode but I am unable to determine why it won't boot normal, even when set to clean boot. My question is, what was altered when I cloned over to the SSD and how do I change it back so that I can restore to a HDD if I ever need to?

Ed, when you perform a clone operation, the source and target drives should both be identical at that point, including the disk signatures.

Once you have booted from the cloned drive then differences will occur due to the new hardware that then requires different device drivers, plus any other changes that occur normally with Windows updates etc.

When you say that you have tried to recover the backed up SSD to a HDD, please provide more details of the exact steps that you followed when trying to do this?  Also, is your system UEFI or BIOS / Legacy for how it boots into Windows, and did you use the Acronis bootable Rescue Media in the same boot mode as used by Windows?

If you are getting a message that the machine is rebooting then you are not using the Recovery Media to run the clone operation.  The errors you state are indicative of a clone operation being run inside the installed Windows Treu Image application which again is not recommended! 

As I said originally, when I cloned the HDD to SSD I had little problem which was handled by WIN 10 during boot. Incedentally I also performed the same switch up on my wife's Laptop with very little trouble.

As for different drivers being installed, I am not sure that this is the casae as when I look up the SSD on this system it is listed as ATA and is using the same driver as my other HDD's (Microsoft 10.0.14393.0).

System is BIOS/Legacy(Rev. 5001) on an ASUS M2A-vm Motherboard.

I use the True Image 2017 Backup utility and when restoring I use the Recovery disk and True Image (64 Bit). I have tried doing a full automatic recovery and partition by partition restore. Neither has worked and results in the same outcome where boot progrsses to black screen and the circle of dots rotating.

It could be that I have a missing driver when I try to restart, but I am able to get into Safe Mode and setting clean boot still doesn't allow the system to start. It could also be that I am not waiting long enough, but I have allowed the dot circling to go on for over 30 minutes. When I am using the SSD as I am now, the system goes from the Windows logo to black screen (no dots) and onto the Logon almost instantaneously.

I know the Clone operation does not run on the OS system. I always take the system offline and use the recovery disk with True Image 2017 (64 Bit). I also put the new drive in the boot position of the system and copy (clone) from a USB link. I also disconnect all other HDD's. I also use the recovery disk to do a system restore, not the on system.

My suggestion would be for you to contact support.  Recovery of backup has unlimited support.  Opening a support request would be your best course.

Not sure if this could cause the problem you are seeing, but woth checking. On my PC there is a BIOS setting for the type of drive HDD or SSD - you may have a similar setting that is set to SSD and causing issues with the HDD.

I has a similar issue with stuck on loading windows after recovery. But I had problems before that so I suspect a possible hardwar issue.

Ian

Enchantech wrote:

Cloning should be performed only when booted from which you can build using the Media Builder tool found in the Tools screen of the application.  Your original disk should be removed from the PC and attached via another connection and the new drive needs to be installed in place of the original in the PC prior to cloning.  When the clone is run you need to select the option to shutdown the computer when operation is finished.  When shutdown occurs you need to disconnect the the original disk from the PC to boot to the new disk. 

Not following these steps will result in a failure of the clone operation.

What qualifies as " recovery media?" Then wouldn't you have to go into BIOS (in my case,) to redefine the boot order?

Thanks,

xxx

Recovery media = Acronis bootable Rescue Media - built using the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media Builder application and available either as standard, Linux based, media or as Windows PE media using the Windows ADK.

The Rescue Media can be created on CD/DVD or USB memory stick.

You may or may not need to go into the BIOS to redefine the boot order depending on whether your BIOS provides a temporary boot selection menu or not.  Some systems such as Dell's offer the F12 key at boot to access a boot override menu where you can choose a temporary boot device such as USB stick or CD/DVD.

It's the .iso you download from your account products and burn to disc.  Or better yet, you create it directly in Acronis.  

Booting rescue/recovery media does not require you to change the boot order in the bios if you use your system one-time boot menu or bootoverride menu.  Options to access these vary from system to sytsem so you should refer to your system manual if you're not sure. For most systems, after rebooting or a cold boot, pressing F12 will get you there.  On others, it may be F1 or Esc.  For some, you have to go into the bios and the last tab may have a boot-override menu.

See screenshots examples of a Dell here.   

I have used the procedure you defined a number of times to no avail. In fact I tried again this PM and the results were the same. I left the spinning dots for over an hour before finally shutting down. I have never had any problems cloning HDD to HDD/SSD but I am at a loss why trying to rereverse the op won't work.

Ed,

Please contact support as the procedure you outlined should work HDD to SSD.  From my perspective the only time this would not work is if in fact the source (original) drive was not disconnected from the computer prior to booting to the target (new) drive.  You have 2 years support so take advantage of it.  I myself have not performed a clone HDD to SSD with TI 2017 but I might give it go if I can find the time.

You have not read my problem very well. I did a HDD to SSD about a month ago and everything is working fine, for that matter I am using this system to run. Also I did the same on my wife's laptop and it has been working well also. Incredible inprovement in load time and overall performance.

Now, to re-iterate my problem. I am concerned that when  one of these SSD's that I installed fails, I would like to know that I can simply restore my backups to a HDD, which I have on hand and not have to rush out and get another SSD. In so far as that goes I have been unsuccessful in either restoring to HDD or even cloning back to HDD.

So here is the problem, Acronis does not claim or even describe a clone from SSD to HDD and I am concerned that it may be impossible at this time. Since nobody else has jumped in to either confirm or deny this problem I can only assume that that it has not been tested.

Just on the off chance that maybe I have defective or inferior hardware, I was hoping to have someone here confirm either way before contacting support.

We're forum users like you.  Not the go-to for all technical support (which is included in your purchase and provided by Acronis).  As suggested, that is where you should go for the definitive answer.

I've done it - it works going from SSD to HD or HD to SSD - it really makes no difference as long as they are both SATA drives and are not restricted by the limitations of the clone process.  Personally, the clone process is more restrictive in nature due to limitations of drive sector size, errors on disks, bios settings, etc.  I would alaways recommend backup and restore over a clone, regardless if going from SSD to HD or HD to SSD.

56634: Acronis True Image 2016: Cloning Disks

1540: Difference between Backup and Disk Clone

58578: Acronis True Image 2017 FAQ

2699: Solid State Drive Support in Acronis Products

Bobbo's Thoughts on Clone vs Backup/Restore

Apologies for misunderstanding.  I have not cloned SSD to HDD but I have restored a full disk backup file from an SSD to an HDD.  In fact I have done this several times without issue.  I have restored an image from a PCIe SSD to an SATA SSD as well without issue.  So I see no problem in doing what you propose.  

It was not my intent to raise ire but rather to enlist help. Yes I have requested assistance from ACRONIS support. I do believe from the comments about it being possible that there is a misunderstanding about my problem.

Here is the sequence that I am trying to resolve;

Primary OS (WIN 10 PRO 64 bit) cloned to SSD from a HDD. Operation fully successful as this is the system I use every day.

Created ongoing backup of primary disk.

Have tested a restore to SSD and all went well (except for Outlook files which are not backed up, but that is a different problem)

Tried to restore to a HDD and get as far as the revolving dots, forever.

Tried restore to HDD using selective partition method, same result.

Tried coning SSD to HDD, same result.

All cloning/restoring done with stand alone disk, not under OS Win 10.

I have two suspicions;

1 - My system is a legacy BIOS Motherboard and Acronis does not recognize what I am trying to do.

2 - I have read that when converting to SSD, Acronis optimizing the structure for the increased speed. If that is true I suspect that unless there is built de-optimization I am stuck with always needing a SSD for my primary drive.

Unless Acronis or someone else has a resolution, I guess I will have to order a spare SSD.

Ed,

It is possible that the HDD in your equation has some sort of disk corruption either bad sectors or file system errors.  To address this possibility I recommend that you run chkdsk X: /r /f  where X: is the drive letter of the HDD to correct such errors if they do exist.  Once corrected, again if they do exist, you should then be able to clone to or restore to that HDD.

Decided to test things today for verification.  I have successfully cloned from an SSD to a standard HD and it booted fine.  I also did a full backup/restore of my SSD to the same HD and it also booted just fine afterwards.

HOWEVER, in order to get there, I had to image from my NVME PCIE hard drive to the SSD first and this is where I ran into problems.  I have submitted feedback and look forward to working with Acronis support to help identify the issue (if possible).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to work with a support engineer or developer to determine if this is a bug in the product...

I have a Samsung 950 Pro PCIE NVME hard drive. If I restore backups directly to it, they restore just fine and the system boots as expected.

However, I have taken the same full disk offline backup (using the WinPE media, which is necessary due to RAID being the SATA mode in the bios on this one drive NVME PCIE hard drive setup) and cannot get a bootable system after restoring to a SATA 3 SSD (PNY XLR8 or OCZ Vertex 4) or SATA 2 spinning Hard drive. In either instance (restore or clone from NVME to SATA drive), when I go to boot , it says no accessible device found.  I have tried using Windows media creation tool and the resulting Windows 10 installer to do a "startup repair" as well as several bcdedit fix attempts - none of those help as they always show that no OS is detected.

In order to get a bootable system after a restore, I must use the Windows installer advanced command prompt and DISKPART to mount the 100MB FAT32 EFI System partion volume with a drive letter, format that partition completely and then run a Windows System repair (usually twice). After th second system repair completes and reboots, that is when the system boots correctly (for me), when attempting to restore a full disk image or clone from an NVME PCIE drive to a standard SATA 3 SSD.  

ALSO... this same boot issue occurs when cloning as well .  Like the previous restore, the clone is reported as a success in the Acronis recovery media, but upon powering off, disconnecting the original drive, moving the clone drive to SATA port 0 on the motherboard, booting into the bios and ensuring the clone is listed as the first boot priority with "windows boot manager" and then attempting to boot that clone, the the same boot error is received. I must then use the Windows repair disk again, access the advanced command prompt, open DISKPART, mount the 100MB FAT32 EFI system parition, format that parition, and do a Windows startup repair (usually twice) and then it boots correctly.  

Once I have repaired the system parition this way, I can then clone or backup the disk again and/or restore the SSD to other SATA SSD's and/or to standard spinning hard drives just fine - all of those are successful.  My issue seems to be specifically related to trying to restore from (or clone from) PCIE NVME to a standard SATA SSD or hard drive and the restore not having a valid bootmanager as a result.  Once that's sorted out, then I'm back in business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~