Acronis True Image For Crucial - Crashing After Cloning if Source Drive Is Not Removed.... How To Keep BOTH Source and Cloned ?
Hi,
I bought a new nvme ssd (Crucial T500) to replace an older nvme drive. The new ssd included Acronis True Image for free. I followed the instructions to clone my drive. After cloning, the instructions say that I must remove the old drive then reboot. I tried this at first and it works, however, I also want to KEEP the old drive as a data drive, so when I plug back the old drive in the motherboard the system will boot back again initially into the new drive's cloned windows but inevitably will crash within a few seconds... Then when the system restarts there are 2 possibilities:
- The new cloned drive is no longer detected so I can only boots from the old source drive (even if I try to go in bios to force boot on the new cloned drive, this drive is not detected now so I cannot select it).
- The cloned drive remain detected but after the crash the bios defaults back to the old source drive instead of the new cloned drive, then if i boot in windows with the old drive, I can see in disk management that the new cloned drive is still there (it has the same name as the old source drive), however if I try to restart the system and force boot into the new cloned drive, then once I get into windows it will crash again.
Basically, the only way that I can get into windows with the cloned drive is if the old drive is unplugged.
How can I get both drives to work together?

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I bought a new nvme ssd (Crucial T500) to replace an older nvme drive. The new ssd included Acronis True Image for free. I followed the instructions to clone my drive. After cloning, the instructions say that I must remove the old drive then reboot. I tried this at first and it works, however, I also want to KEEP the old drive as a data drive
Have you tried putting the new NVMe SSD in the place where the old SSD was installed, as a direct replacement and not as an additional / second drive?
I suspect that your system BIOS is choosing the first NVMe slot as the default / preferred boot device slot and doesn't like finding another NVMe SSD with the same disk signature in the second slot.
You need to create the Acronis bootable rescue media then boot your computer from that media with just the original old NVMe SSD installed. Within the Acronis stand-alone application go into Tools then choose 'Add new disk' then select the old SSD and reformat that drive to be used as a data drive.
Once the old SSD has been reformatted, then shutdown the computer, install the new SSD in place of the old one, and move the old SSD to the second NVMe slot then boot into Windows.
Note: when creating the Acronis rescue media use the 'Simple' option to create Windows PE media from your Windows Recovery Environment. You should do this when booting into Windows with only one SSD installed.
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
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Steve Smith wrote:
Have you tried putting the new NVMe SSD in the place where the old SSD was installed, as a direct replacement and not as an additional / second drive?
My motherboard has two m.2 slots, the primary M.2_1 slot has faster speed capabilities than the secondary M.2_2 slot. The original old drive was in M.2_1 initially but before cloning I moved the old source drive to the secondary m.2_2 slot because I want to install the newer drive into the primary M.2_1 slot in order to benefit from optimal speed. After I did this, I could boot from the secondary M.2_2 slot using the old drive without any issues everything seemed to be working normally. I then started the process of cloning the old drive in M.2_2 to the new drive in M.2_1.
I suspect that your system BIOS is choosing the first NVMe slot as the default / preferred boot device slot and doesn't like finding another NVMe SSD with the same disk signature in the second slot.
You need to create the Acronis bootable rescue media then boot your computer from that media with just the original old NVMe SSD installed. Within the Acronis stand-alone application go into Tools then choose 'Add new disk' then select the old SSD and reformat that drive to be used as a data drive.
Once the old SSD has been reformatted, then shutdown the computer, install the new SSD in place of the old one, and move the old SSD to the second NVMe slot then boot into Windows.
This seems kinda risky... If I format the old drive and find out there are some issues with the new cloned drive, then I am screwed? Is there something else I can do to it to avoid conflict with the other drive but that would allow it to remain usable as boot drive in case of need? My intention ideally was simply to keep the old drive installed there just in case, if anything goes wrong I can then simply boot from the old drive and remain operational without hassle. I would only keep the old drive as is temporarily, maybe for 2 weeks or so until I am 100% sure that everything is fine with the new cloned drive.
Note: when creating the Acronis rescue media use the 'Simple' option to create Windows PE media from your Windows Recovery Environment. You should do this when booting into Windows with only one SSD installed.
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
I have now created the rescue media after running into a bunch of issues... I will try to use this tool to create a new clean clone again from the old drive in M.2_2 slot to the new drive in the M.2_1 slot. Maybe doing it this way somehow makes it so that both drive can be used at same time...???
Otherwise, what are my options? I see that you often recommend using a backup instead of cloning... My understanding was that backups wouldnt work as bootable drive? Backup in my mind is used kind of as restore points, more data-wise, not sure how restoring a backup on another drive would work... Also, does the Acronis True Image for Crucial OEM software allow me to do this kind of backup and kindly could you let me know the exact process for doing these bootable full drive backups, how do I back up the old drive located in M.2_2 slot and then restore it as bootable in the new drive located in the M.2_1 slot?
Thank you so much for your help!
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I have another update. So, I created the acronis bootable media and cloned my old drive from m.2_2 slot to the new drive in M.2_1 slot. After cloning, I shutdown the computer and removed the old drive from m.2_2 slot, then booted into windows.
So far so good, in fact, it seems somehow that cloning from the bootable media tool gave better results than when I did the cloning in windows 10 (previously when i cloned from windows and removed the old drive, it would boot normally and windows worked well except some icons from my apps were blank, as if the icon path changed and windows couldnt load them, but now all my apps icon are loading after cloning from bootable media tool).
Now I have not yet reconnected the old drive into the m.2_2 slot, as I am afraid it will crash again, but what I have done so far is converted my new cloned drive from MBR to GPT... my original old drive was running windows and was a MBR drive, running legacy bios. After I completed the conversion on my new cloned drive, I am now able to boot into windows in uefi mode and the drive correctly identifies as GPT, I set the bios boot mode to UEFI only and so I wonder if I now add the old M.2 drive back in the system if it will still cause conflict?
I am worried it might cause issues again and crash windows, but am curious what you think... If I do try to add the old drive back and it causes crashing, can I simply remove the old drive again (or use the acronis tool to format the old drive?) and go back to using the cloned new drive or will this somehow damage the cloned drive? ...
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One simple solution to your issue here is to just remove the old SSD and keep it safely in a box while you test out that the new SSD is working fully as you expect. Once you have completed your testing then you can address the matter of reformatting the old SSD to use as a data drive.
The key issue with having both SSD's (original & cloned copy) installed is that they both have identical disk signatures which is known to be capable of causing issues with Windows.
I personally favour making Backup images and then using Recovery of those images to new drives because in my opinion it is a much safer process when the recovery is performed using Acronis bootable rescue media.
Using this method, the original drive is always removed from the computer and stored away safely, so is an easy option to revert back if needed. With NVMe M.2 SSD's - my own main laptop only has a single NVMe slot so again using B & R saved me having to buy a suitable NVMe enclosure to use if doing cloning.
Backups are much more than data restore points - when you create a full Disk & Partitions backup image you capture the whole drive in to a compressed image archive file which in turn allows for running automated backups on a regular schedule and storing multiple backups on a single storage drive.
Compare this to using Cloning with is both a manual operation and cannot be scheduled and there is the added benefit that Backups can be much more up to date if made regularly.
Clone obviously depends on the Source drive being in good working order in order to proceed, whereas using Backups, there can be a choice of multiple recovery points that can be used if the most recent shows any errors or issues, i.e. if the latest backup was made after a Windows Update corrupted things!
OEM versions of Acronis do allow you to make Backups and perform Recovery as well as being used for Cloning - the key limitations with the OEM versions are that a drive of the same OEM make has to be detected, and that they do not allow for scheduling from within the Acronis GUI (though the scheduling can be done using Windows Task Scheduler and a fairly simple batch command file).
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One simple solution to your issue here is to just remove the old SSD and keep it safely in a box while you test out that the new SSD is working fully as you expect. Once you have completed your testing then you can address the matter of reformatting the old SSD to use as a data drive.
You are right, this could work, but it's just impractical for me. My space is limited and my large computer case is cumbersome to move, with delicate glass parts that I've broken while manipulating before (expensive to replace). Currently, the case is sitting on my desk with glass panels open, so I can access components inside. Ideally, I would simply like to place both M.2 drives on the motherboard where they belong now, close the case, and relocate the case where it needs to be (in a stand in a corner behind my desk, which is not accessible). Keeping it on my desk for two weeks is not feasible, and I would like to avoid the process of pulling everything apart again in 2 weeks to put my old m.2 drive back inside... that's why I'd like to settle this now.
The key issue with having both SSD's (original & cloned copy) installed is that they both have identical disk signatures which is known to be capable of causing issues with Windows.
Are drive signatures something that evolve over time or is it something permanent? Is there a way to force a change to the disk signature of the current active windows os drive (new cloned drive)? For instance, currently after cloning the old drive (which was MBR) and removing it from the computer, I have now converted my new cloned drive from MBR to GPT, does this change the signature of the drive and therefore would allow me to plug back in the old drive without any signature conflict issues?
I still havent tried to plug back in the old drive yet, but the new drive seems to be working great, the OS feels so much faster with the new drive, I didnt expect such noticeable difference (my primary objective was simply getting more capacity)... The MBR to GPT conversion also enhanced performance further... While synthetic benchmarks may not fully reflect real-world use, the new drive shows approximately 3x to 5x better performance in most tests.
Everything seems to be working fine, I am not sure I really need to wait 2 weeks to format the old drive so that I can have both old and new drives installed together... I feel tempted to simply put the old drive back in now and format it via the usb bootable media. I do have a question regarding this... Previously, you mentioned that in order to get both drive working together, I needed to :
You need to create the Acronis bootable rescue media then boot your computer from that media with just the original old NVMe SSD installed.
This means I would have to remove the new cloned drive from the M.2_1 slot... Is that really necessary? I hope not, the m.2_1 slot is very annoying to remove physically from the motherboard, requires me removing GPU and my big cpu heatsink, re-apply thermal paste etc... Can I simply add the old drive to M.2_2 slot, boot using the Acronis Rescue Media, and then format the old drive in M.2_2 ? or will this immediatly cause conflicts since both drives will be installed on the motherboard?
Thanks again
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See webpage: What Is a Disk Signature and Why Is It Necessary?
and What is Disk Signature Collision? How to fix Disk Signature Collision problem on Windows?
or How to Fix Disk Signature Collision Error in Windows 11
The other factor that may be coming into play here is that your new SSD is using UEFI / GPT but the old SSD is using Legacy / MBR so it may be necessary to convert that old SSD from MBR to SSD.
See webpage: How to Convert MBR to GPT without Data Loss in Windows 11/10 - in particular, see the section: Use MBR2GPT Disk Conversion Tool.
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I see, according to that first link "what is a disk signature..." :
For MBR partitioned disks, the signature is a 4 byte value presented as an 8 character hex string.
So MBR and GPT drives should have different signatures... This would imply that because I converted my new cloned drive to GPT, the signature should now be different from the original old drive that was using MBR... There is no way for me to test the signature without actually plugging in the old drive though.
Correct?
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I agree that the disk signatures should be different for MBR versus GPT so suspect that the issue is having the MBR disk present with Windows on a UEFI boot system hence the further suggestion to convert it from MBR to GPT.
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To resolve the issue of using both drives together, ensure the cloned drive has a unique name. Reconnect both drives, boot from the new drive, and update the boot order in BIOS.
If crashes persist, use the Windows Recovery Environment to repair startup issues. Check disk management to confirm both drives are recognized.
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