ATI 2021 Active Disk Cloning Observations and Unexpected Surprises And Frustrations
Hello Forum,
I have been an annual renewing customer since ATI 2013. I have some observations about a recent clone operation I performed on my system to upgrade individual 250GB C and D SSD drives to individual 500GB C and D SSD drives. I read on these forums that with ATI 2018 Acronis changed their cloning tool to run under WinPE instead of Linux. That in itself may explain what I’m about to say about what I observed and am puzzled about. Luckily, being a 30 year IT Engineer and PC/Server enthusiast, I was able to solve the issues I surprisingly encountered. I used “Active Cloning” of ATI 2021 to first clone my original D drive (SSD 250GB) to a new empty 500GB SSD drive. Then I turned the computer off, removed the new D 500GB cloned drive, and installed a different new empty 500GB to then boot up Windows 7 x64 and “Active Cloning” to this other new 500GB SSD from the existing 250GB C SSD drive.
So then I shut the computer down and swapped in the new individual cloned 500GB C and D SSD drives into the same SATA cable ports, being care to be sure that the new C and D drives attached to the SATA at the same ports as the original drives.
This is what surprised me: I expected at boot up, because I am using exact same hardware as before, that the drives would just simply boot up with only a swap file recreation message. But instead, the computer booted up and began installing a complete new set of devices, (and therefore device drivers), in Device Manager, as if I was operating WinPE with new hardware. I don’t understand why this needed to happen. I wasn’t using Acronis Universal Restore or Acronis Recovery Media, or cloning to any different hardware besides the larger drives. So why the full driver set/Device Manager rebuild upon first boot? This required alot of unnecessary multiple follow up reboots and manual intervention of yellow triangles deletion in Device Manager to correct a big number of automatic driver install fails. I know I had cloned before in the “Linux” environment ATI clone tool and never had to do this much driver cleanup effort. Here a week later I’m still doing “cleanup” of what should have been a simple “clone and go” disk size only system upgrade.
Is it that ATI 2021 is built around Windows 10 and not my Windows 7 x64 system? If so, then I could understand better, and I plan to do a full clean install of Windows 10 Pro over this coming winter.
PS. This install of ATI 2021 was not a multi-version generational upgrade, but a “clean” ATI 2021 install after doing the suggested posted previous ATI version cleanup and registry edits listed in this forum.
Thanks,
Scott
Hello Mustang,
I reviewed the link you provided and found a matching situation where you found that when you performed cloning with a USB disk connection, it triggered UR on any OS but Win10. My new empty clone drive destination was connected using a common USB to SATA adapter device, while the cloning process original source drive was on the original Intel SATA port. So UR was applied, (incorrectly and automatically by ATI 2021), and made for me a lot of confusing and unnecessary post-cloning work with the clumsy and unreliable all new driver installs on SAME hardware. So it appears that simple same hardware disk cloning is broken on anything other than Win10, and maybe even then too. So I hear you when you say to avoid ATI cloning. Since I have installation files of all earlier editions of ATI of every version back to ATI 2013, which previous version did simple, same hardware, disk cloning work reliably? I don’t care if it’s “active cloning“, WinPE, or Linux boot media. And what was the overall best version of ATI, since I use it only for backup and restore, and disable the security and protection features anyway.
Thanks,
Scott
Ekaterina,
Below was your post from back in 2018. I have been a year to year renewal customer since ATI 2013. So Acronis hasn’t fixed simple, same hardware, disk to larger disk cloning since it was broken in ATI 2018? What exactly then is a priority for Management and Product Teams? I don’t want or care about security protection features, as I have purchased Acronis TI for 8 years for backup and restore and cloning. I manage security protections on my systems with other company products whose expertise and technical foundations are primarily to that purpose.
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Hello Everyone,
The issue is already being worked on by the development team (internal ID TI-128198). Currently, Acronis Universal Restore is not applied if the following conditions are true.
- the operation system is Windows 10 and higher (this condition is only checked when cloning the live OS)
- the cloned drive doesn't have an OS installed
- both drives have the same interface e.g. SCSI->SCSI
So, to solve drivers issues like one reported by OP the devs now work on adding the check for OS to the bootable media.
Sorry Scott, I don't have much experience with cloning. I never thought it was a good way to go (user preference). I only try it to help when there are problems reported by other users. The post in 2018 was the first time we figured out that UR could be imposed by True Image. That was a shock! I don't know which versions of TI had that questionable feature and which did not.
I did try a "Live" clone of a Windows 7 system using TI 2020 with the target disk connected to an internal SATA port. It worked well. I'll try the same "Live" clone with the target connected to a USB adapter. I'll also try a clone from the WinPE recovery media with the target connected to a USB adapter. I'll let you know the results.
Here's the results of my testing.
1. "Live" clone of Windows 7 system using TI 2020 with destination disk connected using a USB adapter. Universal Restore was applied. I could see the last step of the cloning process said applying Acronis Universal Restore. There were no error message when UR was applied. The cloned Windows 7 booted and went through a long process of installing new hardware. After 3 requested reboots, I looked at Device Manager. In my case all devices were working except the audio controller.
2. Clone the Windows 7 system using TI 2021 booted from WinPE with the destination disk connected using a USB adapter. Universal Restore was applied. This time there were error messages saying drivers for devices could not be found. This actually was a good thing. I clicked Ignore All and the clone completed successfully. The cloned Windows 7 system booted and went through a much shorter process of installing new drivers. After one requested reboot, I looked at Device Manager and only the audio controller was not working.
It is very easy to get problem devices working in Device Manager after the clone. All you need to do is start the Update Driver process for the device and select Browse my computer. Then select Let me pick a driver. In the next window you will see the device listed. Just highlight the device and click Next. The driver will install successfully. After you have all the problem devices fixed using this method, then you can check to see if they are using the latest drivers you were using before the clone. You may need to update drivers for some devices. That would be interesting to see if the latest drivers were used for all devices, or if original Windows 7 supplied drivers were used.
Thank you, Mustang, for all that effort confirming what I experienced, and more. I guess my takeaway from all this is how disappointing it is of how Acronis has reduced efforts of support and development of their core products, backup and cloning. Really sad they are fixing less of current products, and requiring you to upgrade to get fixes. I won’t be using ATI cloning going forward.
Thanks to all the pro’s on this forum for their volunteered time and efforts.
Scott