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Clone disk hangs while booting

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Hi,

I tried to clone the HDD onto a new SSD Kingston KC600 using Acronis True Image, but even though the cloning  procedure seems to work fine (every partition is recreated onto the destination disk and the same files are copied as well) when the comptuer boots from the SSD disk then it hangs on a black screen. If I move the mouse I see the white arrow with the little blue circle spinning but nothing happens. I tried several things, such as disabling the source disk, disconnecting the source disk, moving the SATA cable to a different port, but in every single case I did not manage to boot from the SSD. In some cases the hang happens in a different place, but I never manage to get to the Windows login.

FYI, my computer is a Dell Precision 5810, with Windows 10 Pro (19043.1466).

 

Please, any adivice would be really appreciated, I spent 2 days repeating the cloning procedure and changing settings in the BIOS, but things are really getting frustrating now...

 

Thanks!

Alessandro

0 Users found this helpful

Alessandro, welcome to these public User Forums.

See the following reference documents and action them.

  1. Create the 'Simple' version of Acronis Rescue Media (WinPE) using the tools provided in ATI 2021 in Windows.

KB 65508: Acronis True Image 2021: how to create bootable media

  1. Next, make a full disk backup of the working PC to an external storage drive.   

KB 65520: Acronis True Image 2021: how to back up files or disks
KB 65468: Acronis True Image 2021: how to back up entire computer

Note:  this can also be done from within Windows using ATI 2021.

  1. Now, confirm how your PC boots into Windows from the BIOS - I would expect this to be using UEFI BIOS boot mode but you need to check this.  This is important because you will need to boot the PC from the Acronis Rescue Media using the same boot mode!

Note: you can run the command: msinfo32 from within Windows then look for BIOS mode in the right side panel that is shown.

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

  1. Now you need to check that you are able to boot the PC from the Rescue Media using that correct BIOS mode before anything else.
     
  2. If booting from the rescue media is successful, then the correct method of cloning is as documented below:

KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - 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 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."

As per the above, you need to remove the HDD from the PC, install the SSD in its place, then boot the PC from the rescue media to perform the clone operation.

Note: you can achieve the same end result by forgetting about using cloning and use the full disk backup image created in step 2.

  1. KB 65539: Acronis True Image 2021: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media 

This method is safer because you can remove the original working HDD, set it aside away from any interaction, accidents etc, and restore the backup created earlier direct from the external storage drive to the new SSD installed in the PC.