Skip to main content

Clone laptop drive to WD ssd

Thread solved

At the risk of asking a stupid question... I would like to replace the sad 5400 rpm 1T drive in my HP laptop with a 1T WD Blue ssd. I see that WD has Acronis-signed cloning software, etc and its use is encouraged. Do I need that if I am already a subscriber to ATI and run the latest version of 2021 on all my systems? I can only imagine how introducing another version of Acronis to a stable ATI installation would go...I could be wrong.

Looking for the best route to this.
Thanks in advance.

0 Users found this helpful

If you already have the full ATI 2021 version then please ignore the OEM versions of ATI which are definitely a step-down from what you have.

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.

I would strongly recommend that you make a full disk backup of your working OS drive before embarking on any cloning operation, this is your safety net in case of any issues / errors etc.

Note: the safest method of doing this migration would be to use a full disk backup image to restore that backup to the new SSD drive installed in place of the old drive, when booted from Acronis Rescue Media.  This would allow you to set the old working drive aside safely away from any change etc!

See KB 65508: Acronis True Image 2021: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

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

Excellent information; much appreciated!

I typically opt for a clean install, but that's Plan B or C at this point.

Thanks again,
DD