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Cloning Surface Pro 7

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Hello Acronis peoples

I have been using Acronis for imaging laptops and Surface Pros.  The latest version I was using was True Image 2016.  I discovered this version was not compatible with the Surface Pro 7.  I downloaded the True Image 2020 trial version, however I am unable to use the cloning tool unless I purchase.  I did, however, create a usb media builder to try on a Surface Pro 7.  It appears it is not working, nothing is booting up, just the spinning status wheel with the Windows logo.  I'm looking for some feedback on this or should I look at other applications that will be compatible with this device.

Thank you,

Joette

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Joette, welcome to these public User Forums.

What type of drive does the Surface Pro 7 have and how is it configured in terms of the SATA mode used?

If it has a NVMe M.2 SSD drive using RAID mode, then you will need to create the Windows PE version of the Acronis Rescue Media for when working with these types of drives, and have the Intel RST drivers (for RAID support) injected into that media.

The easiest way of doing this is by using the MVP Custom ATIPE builder tool - link in my signature below.

Note: if the SP7 only has a single drive, then you need to follow the rules for cloning laptop drives, which means the target drive should be installed in the SP7 and the source drive connected externally via a USB adapter, or else use Backup & Recovery instead of cloning.

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.

Joette,

If your Surface Pro 7 uses the new BGA PCIe SSD then you will not be able to follow Steve's advice for cloning.  To date there are only add in PCIe cards for PC's to use a BGA drive.

My advice would be to create a full disk backup of the disk which can then be restored to another like disk.