Skip to main content

Cloning or restoring - Target disk can't be selected

Thread solved

Hello,

I'm not sure if I'm in the right section. I'm using Acronis True Image OEM.

I want to clone the HDD of my aging Asus laptop on a new SSD.
When I try to clone it the SSD is shwoning on the select target window but can't be selected (stay gray).
I tried making a backup of my HDD then restoring it to the SSD, but same result.

Computer is on Win7
Both drives are 512 bytes/sector
Both drives are basic
Both drive are MBR (UEFI not supported by the computer)
New drive is larger than old drive (480Go vs 320Go)

Old drive doesn’t have bad sector (neither the new one)

I tried running acronis from windows and from bootable media
I tried cloning and restoring with HDD in computer and SSD in USB case and the opposite

I don't see what I'm missing. Have you some suggestions ?

Thanks for your help

Marc

0 Users found this helpful

Marc, welcome to these public User Forums.

Which OEM version of ATI are you using here and what makes of disk drives do you have?

Most OEM ATI applications are limited to working only with drives from the same OEM vendor, so only with say Crucial, or WD, or Seagate etc, and won't work if such a drive make is not found.

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

Also see forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this - which was written after dealing with many cloning issues in the forums.

Hello Steve, thanks for your answer.

My old drive is a seagate I think and my new drive is a Yucun.

My OEM ATI is from a PNY set containing a usb-SATA enclosure and a bay for the drive. I'm using the provided usb enclosure.

 

Thanks for the links, I already read them. I doubled check and I think I follow the advice.

As advised I tried to place my new drive into the laptop and making the clone from the usb enclosure containing my old drive. Same, the old disk can be chosen as source but the new can't be chosen as target.

One more thing, I can chose the new SSD as source (and the old HDD as target).

Marc, if your OEM ATI is from PNY, then it will be looking for a PNY drive to be present.

 

Hello,

I am a little bit surprised as my usb drive was detected as a PNY device but it seems that the brand of the drives may be the cause of the pb.

I succeded in cloning my drive with Macrium without any problem.

It's a shame that OEM acronis product have this limitation and above all that acronis doesn't provide any info in the software about the problem encoutered (just grayed out).

Next time I will have to save or clone a drive I will not look into acronis products for sure :/

 

Thank you very much for your help Steve