Cloning fron 1TB SATA/GPT drive to USB NTFS
New to this issue: I've used Acronis to clone my HD's in the past and it's worked great but I bought a new system with Windows 8.1. It has an internal 1TB SATA/GPT HD, I'm using my old USB 1TB external WD HD, which is NTFS. When I clone it tells me that the USB drive will remain a NTFS drive. Question is can this be done as to be able to recover my internal HD (cloning from my USB HD to my internal HD)? I tried it sometime ago and it just looked at me funny when I tried to reboot from the system HD.
When I look at the external HD everything seems to be there.
Or, is there an issue with Win 8.1 and cloning. I have Acronis 2014.
But if you use disk/partition backup, can you boot from that copy?
No you cannot, but you wouldn't need to, except in case of true emergency. Otherwise, you need either restore the backup to the disk, or, if need be, replace the disk with a new one and then restore.
The benefit of backups is that you can store several versions on the backup disk.
When you clone, you'd have to rewrite the target disk everytime you want to update the backup. In some cases, when uptime is key, users do clones to be able to have a disk to pop in the computer ASAP.
That is my purpose, to have a disk ready to go if my primary ever crashes. I have 8.1 and just did the free upgrade to 2014. Cloning did not go through with 2013 but when I tried with the new version the same sequence occurred and nothing completed. On the restart portion, during boot, there is a line that has a string of gibberish with the flashing cursor at the end. That screen would sit forever but I hit enter and it moved forward to load windows. There was nothing on screen to indicate that the process was running but the HD light was active for a l-o-n-g time. After it went out (and I left the machine alone during this whole process) nothing had happened and there was nothing on the destination drive.
You understand that the clone you use as a spare will be outdated and require you to update many things especially emails. If your emails, for example, are important then making a backup file and restoring it is a better approach. You will have to clone repeatedly to keep the backup clone updated.
All true but The cloning process simply did not work. I would prefer to simply do the backup partition etc but what is the best way to be able to boot and then restore everything to a new hard drive for example if the partition copy is not bootable?
You would boot from the TI rescue CD or USB flash drive to restore your partition or complete disk. Most folks here recommend a full disk mode backup. This approach creates a backup of your complete OS and files that can be restored to a new HD and is bootable when restored. See https://forum.acronis.com/forum/56872 for some help.
Thanks a lot. I will follow through on that.
TrueImage is unable to clone a GPT DISK. TI can only replicate a GPT via the backup and restore method.
TI only capable of placing the 128mb Microsoft reserved partition first.
If your arrangement of partitions is different, you will have boot problems which may POSSIBLY be corrected via the Windows Recovery CD Startup Repair option.
Windows Diskpart can be used to check your arrangement of partitions.