Booting after cloning with 2 internal SSDs
Hello - I have an HP Desktop (Z840) with 2 internal 1TB SSDs. (W10 Pro 64bit 19041)
(A) Can I boot from C: and run a clone to D:? Or should I boot from an Acronis boot DVD and run the Clone? Everything I've read seems to indicate you should always boot from a DVD and that's the only way to run Clone. The video on their support page shows Acronis 2017 and doesn't really address my situation where the drives are both working and this is a precaution, not a recovery. Things may have changed in 2021.
(B) After I run Clone will my machine still boot from C: or is it going to get confused and try to boot from C: and D:?
(C) If the answer to B is yes, then do I remove D: from the boot sequence in the BIOS and only activate should I need to boot from D: if something happens to C:?
(D) If the answer to D: is no, then can I leave both drives "as-is" in the BIOS after I run the clone?
PS: I have an Acronis Back-up on a portable hard drive. When it's connected via USB my machine boots off of the .tbix?? file. It says: X:\Windows\Acronis\Trueimage_starter.exe/wpe.init, trying to boot into Windows PE, or something like that. (I've never seen that before.) And based on what I've read I need to put the C:drive first in the BIOS, not sure how it got changed to the external drive unless Acronis did that when I created the survival kit. Is that correct?
Thank you in advance!
Dan
This is the same question I have. I have two internal drives on my Windows 10 desktop (one ssd and one hhd). I want to be able to use hhd as an alternate bootable disk in case somethialtng happens to my C drive (ssd). This would enable me use my computer with minimal interruption as opposed to restoring my ssd. To be clear this is not recommended since it could lead to the operating system getting confused with two identical disks.
The recommended alternative would be to do a backup to the hdd and then restore it to the same location.
I am correct in this. The computer in question is a work computer and it is important that I be able to get back to work as quickly as possible.
JohnW, one option that will / does work is to set up your PC as a dual-boot system rather than trying to duplicate the existing OS to the second disk. This means more work but is safer and also easy to achieve.
In essence, the method is as follows:
First, ensure that there is no data you want to keep on the second HDD drive. If there is, then move this to somewhere else such as an external drive.
Next, download & create the installation media for your chosen Windows OS, i.e. download the Microsoft Media Creation tool and use this to create install media for your edition of Windows 10 that is activated currently on the SSD drive.
Boot the PC from the Windows install media and follow the steps to install a new copy of Windows, selecting the second, HDD drive as the place to install to. This will update the Boot Configuration Data for the existing SSD copy with an entry to boot the second copy of Windows from. Note: you can rename the entries later to make them easier to recognise.
You should then be able to choose to boot from either copy of Windows as needed.
The further actions needed will be to install other applications to the second copy of Windows and perhaps consider creating a separate data partition on the larger of your drives to use as a shared data drive used by both copies of the OS.
I have used this approach on one of my laptops for several years until about a year ago, where I had copies of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Insiders (for beta testing) and also a copy of Ubuntu Linux in a triple-boot setup.
Thanks Steve for your informative response. All I was thinking is that if I cloned my system, say every 6 months, on-top of regular Acronis and Windows back-ups, is that as John W wants to do... if C died I could simply make the clone (D:), the primary disc/boot disc in BIOS and go about my merry way. Both are the same WD model SSDs.
I would remove D: from boot until needed it to save the day. (I'm kinda worried about SSDs as when they fail they seem to die completely. With a HDD you usually have a period of time to get some stuff off, which happened to me a few weeks ago, when my recovery failed and I was able to got some files I needed.
Your response seems to indicate that I should just rely on back-ups. Cloning doesn't seem to be of much use for my needs. My OS and data on this machine is 800GB.
But to clarify: if I do want to clone, would I boot off their boot disc as described in the manual (when they described an emergency scenero.) Or if C: is working AOK and I just want to make a clone, can I boot off the C: drive, as any other day? It would make sense if it wants me to boot off disc so Windows isn't in-use and is available to be cloned, or does that mater with Acronis
Thanks!
Dan, my main concerns with cloning is that it is always a 'one off' action, so it has to be repeated regularly if you want the cloned disk to be able to take over from a failed source drive else some data will be lost!
The advantage of using Backups is that these can be both scheduled to run as often as needed but also run on-demand if there have been significant changes due to Microsoft Patch Tuesday updates or new software installs etc.
One thing that you cannot do is use your Backup to update your cloned disk drive as the first action of any disk / partition recovery is to wipe the target drive then recover the partition layout & contents from the backup image.
I understand your concern about how SSD's tend to 'fall off the cliff' when they come to end of life, but so far my own personal experience with SSD's has been positive and I have not yet had an SSD die on me! HDD's can also die in sudden ways without giving any real warning but again that is not a common experience! I do tend to avoid the larger capacity drives - partially because of much higher cost, but also because any failure is that much more of greater impact. I had a friend bring me a PC with a 2TB HDD drive that had failed in just over a year, so out of warranty, where a clean install of Windows was needed as no backups available and only minimal data could be recovered from the failed drive!
Returning to the question of how to use cloning, then you can use Acronis Active Cloning which uses the same Microsoft VSS snapshot tools as used by Backups in Windows, or you can boot the PC from the Acronis Rescue Media to do the clone.
KB 61665: Acronis True Image 2019, 2020 and 2021: Active Cloning in Windows
KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.
Once again, it is best to remove the cloned drive from the PC so as to not have two 'identical' copies of Windows in the PC.
Some final comments:
You have 2 x 1TB SSD's installed and say the OS drive is already using 800GB of the available space!
It is recommended that SSD's should have up to 20% free space for optimum performance.
I would suggest considering using the 2 SSD's in a different way than cloning!
Move the bulk of your user data from the OS SSD to the second SSD, so that the OS SSD only is used to host the OS and all your applications.
This would then limit the impact of the failure of either SSD to one area of the system, i.e. your data or the OS & applications, but where doing regular scheduled backups of these to external backup drives would mitigate against any loss of either SSD, plus you can set an appropriate backup schedule for each SSD according to the frequency of change.
Backups should be ideally stored in multiple different places and locations, i.e. to more than one external backup drive, with one copy kept stored securely offline in a safe or fire-proof cupboard. Risks to data can come from many different sources, i.e. fire, flood, electrical surge or lightening strike, as well as theft plus the threats of malware, ransomware etc.