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CLONE OR RECOVER?

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Probably a simple question for most of you, but I can't get my head around this.

I have an Asus F75A laptop upgraded from Win 8 to 10, currently with 500Gb HD split into two partitions. I want to fit a 1Tb and have tried to clone with True Image 2014. The process gets to 4 of 10 and then fails.

I'm thinking my solution now is to recover the individual partitions, but there are another five partitions with no drive letter and no content (jpg attached). Four are marked "recover partition" and one "EFI system partition". Can I safely ignore these and just create two partitions on the new drive and then recover the active partitions from the old drive?

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Peter, welcome to these user forums.

How are you trying to do this disk migration action?

Please see post: 128231: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!! (in the ATIH 2017 forum, but applicable to other older versions of the product too!).

The key advice I can offer is included in that post but summarised as:

Make a full backup before doing anything else - include all your partitions!
Create the Acronis Rescue Media to use to perform any further actions.

Boot the Rescue Media in UEFI mode - you have an EFI partition so this is important.  If you perform a clone or restore with the media booted in Legacy BIOS mode your system will not be bootable!

Backup and Restore is safer and more flexible than using Cloning.  Your original 500GB HDD drive should be removed and put aside when doing the Restore, so is not likely to be affected by any issues that might arise and gives you a way to get back to the starting grid again.

The Recovery partitions have been created by Windows when you have upgraded between different versions or to new builds for Windows 10 - you may be able to leave these out of the restore if you are happy that Windows 10 is running well and there is no need to try to do any form of Windows recovery or reset.  Do backup these partitions.  I would recommend using the Windows Disk Cleanup option against the drive before migrating it - take the further option to cleanup System files and see how much space this will give you back!

Note: One of your Recovery partitions may be created by Asus and to be used to do either a Factory restore or to use to run any diagnostics from.  You should take a look at the partition contents to see what is there?

I use a Linux live DVD (or CD) to do this - most modern Linux distro's should boot on your UEFI system though you may need to temporarily disable Secure Boot if this prevents booting.  

See webpage https://livecdlist.com/ for a page showing a lot of live CD's that can be used.

Hi Steve

Thanks for the speedy reply. I had already done a full backup and created a rescue CD.

I think the restore option is best for me. Also, I'm not too sure that I understand about EFI or Legacy booting!!

The other thing I'm uncertain of is how to partition the new drive before restoring. As you can see from the jpg file, there are no letters on the five small partitions. Will the restore process automatically create them? I don't see how I can create partitions without drive letters.

Peter, with regards to EFI versus Legacy booting, this should be shown in your Boot override menu options (or one-time boot menu) depending on how this is shown on your system.  Essentially, if you are booting from CD then you may see 2 different options, one with UEFI shown and one without - you should choose the one with UEFI.

With regards to restoring, then the restore process will create the correct partitions and sizes provided that you restore your backup in Disk mode (not selecting any individual partitions).

See sticky post: 128057: [Tutorial] How to recover an entire disk backup for details of doing a disk restore.

Peter, good to hear of your success, thanks for feeding back.