Cloning of a Logical Drive
I am almost enthusiastic about TI, and I have recently switched to TI2015(#6613) to backup my Clean Installation of Windows10 and restore that backup to other logical drives of my computer. That worked great with Windows7 but I failed miserably doing so with my Windows10 installation.
My working system (still Win7) runs on the SSD, and I have started a clean installation of Win10 on a logical drive of my HD. Then I took a full backup of that clean installation and restored it to another logical drive. The adjustment of the boot menu is simple with EasyBCD.
Indeed, the restored/cloned version of Win10 appears to boot properly and requests my PIN. The PIN is accepted and then the screen goes black. Ctrl+Shift+Del does not work - I have to reset the computer.
Booting of my standard working system raises a message for each single logical drive on HD and SSD that the drive is not consistent and must be checked (consumes a lot of time for 2*2TB+512GB). Fortunately, all consistency checks came up with 'no errors'.
Ok, I had to assume that the cloned Windows10 was bad and I had removed it.
Another try: I took a sector-sector backup of my clean Win10 installation and restored that as a clone. I had the same problem: That Win10 booted, let me log in and then went dead, leavin all my logical drives "inconsistent".
Can somebody give me a hint how to clone a Win10 installation successfully?
Your best bet here is to connect your target drive to the same data port on the motherboard that the source disk was attached to when the backup was created then restore the backup .tib image to the target disk.
Hi PatL,
I had tried all three methods I could think of:
(1) initiated the backup operation using the running Windows10 to backup itself, then initiated the restore to another volume using the (still) running Windows10
(2) initiated the backup operation using the running Windows10 to backup itself, then initiated the restore to another volume using the recovery CD
(3) initiated the backup Operation and then the restore Operation from the recovery CD.
I had used EasyBCD to set up the boot menu to enable booting of the cloned Windows10.
In all cases, I had used the ATI and recovery CD (Build #6613).
In all cases, I was able to boot the System and logon to my admin account. The password was accepted, but then the Screen went totally blank. The System appeared to be dead but I tried then a few other things after my third backup/recovery attempt: I was able to Launch the Task Manager; it showed me that there was my admin account active and many other processes (I do now know if all necessary processes) were active. I was even able to launch the user accounts management. The attempt to change the admin Password failed with some "handle Problem", I gave up. I was able to Launch the Task Manager again and then reboot the system.
Interesting Observation when I attempted the restore to the (different) target volume: ATI notified me about a change of a drive letter. Does anybody know what that means? Where does ATI Change any data, and how can I eventually prevent the ATI from doing so?
I am sure that the backup process was completely successful: The attempt to restore the system onto the same Partition as the source of that backup resulted in a good and operational Windows10.
By the way: The cloning of a single volume works well with a Windows7 System volume with any of the three backup procedures described above.
Have a look at the documentation link for the newly released 2016 version. Section 5.1 deals with restoring disks and partitions. Section 5.1.1.4 covers restoring to a new disk. You should think about an upgrade.
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/download/docs/ati2016/userguide/
My working system (still Win7) runs on the SSD, and I have started a clean installation of Win10 on a logical drive of my HD.
That initial installation was booting fine?
Yes, booting of the Win10 works fine.
Only - any attempt to move that system to another partition (e.g. for duplicating it to have a 'clean' test system or to replace the current working system which runs on a SSD) seems to be corrupting the Win10 somehow, refer to my initial post.
My thoughts about the newly release 2016 version: I have just purchased the 2015 version about two months ago, and I am a bit hesitant to pay again to replace a software which does not work as expected.
Paulb,
Did you read through the documentation link sections noted? TI 2015 documentation should have read the same way as well and you should be able to perform the same operations described in the 2016 documentation in 2015 as well. There are exacting steps to follow for the application to do what you want. They must be followed or the results will be what you are experiencing or some other failure.
What I will say here to to help you with this to a degree is that you MUST have the target disk connected to the SAME sata data port on the motherboard that the source disk was connected to in order to perform the recovery of the backup file. You MUST use the recovery media created by the Media Builder from inside the installed Windows TI application. You MUST be certain that you mark the check box on the last recovery screen to Shutdown Computer after Recovery Completes. You MUST disconnect the original source disk from the motherboard prior to an attempt to boot the new target disk in the machine.
I have experienced the same issues you have here in attempting to perform what you are. It is my opinion although I have no definitive proof that, what you are seeing is a corruption of the user profile after logon to the Windows OS. Thus the black and or fast flickering screen.
One piece of advice here is that if you want to have more than one OS disk in the same machine you are asking for trouble. The only way to do such a thing without grief is to buy yourself a hotswap adapter for your machine and swap out OS drives when you want to run a different OS. Not convenient no but this will eliminate the issues that occur in multilboot systems when 2 or more disk are used for OS installations.
I think that those in the multiboot crowd whom install a number of OS's on a single disk may find that with Win 10 this is a big problem. Time will tell!
Hmm... I am running out of ideas. Clearly Windows 10 introduced some change that makes your procedure fail, whereas it was working with Windows 7. Clearly it seems that the problem is linked to the fact that the same OS installation is duplicated on 2 different partitions in your system, since you can recovery Windows 10 nicely on its original partition.
Regardless of the reason, it is possible this is because of ATI, but it might be because of Windows 10. In both cases, it is not obvious that ATI 2016 will solve your specific issue. You will have to try...
I think you will need to contact Acronis support.
Hi Enchantech,
Thank you for your extended information, I will give it a try within the next few days and let you know here how it worked.