Skip to main content

How to clone bootable copy of SSD (drive) to another backup Latitude E7270

Thread needs solution

Hi,

How to clone bootable copy of Dell Latitude E7270 SSD (drive) to another (backup) Dell Latitude E7270

Objective is after the clone operation they are essentially the same (interchangable)

Issue 1 the laptop SSD is not easily removable

Issue 2 e-network port, and 3 usb 3.0 ports available to connect the two computers.

Issue 3 no DVD drive, but can connect external DVD drive using usb adapter

Your suggestions are welcome?

I have used True Image 2015 before, by booting from the DVD on a desktop PC, copying hard drive 1 (boot master) to hard drive 2 (cloned) using traditional desktop comptuer with multiple drive bays.

Mike Drumm

 

0 Users found this helpful

Mike, welcome to these user forums.

Please edit your above post to remove your email address from these public forums unless you also wish to receive spam mail from bots that can harvest these forums?

Next, I would recommend not using Clone at all unless you fully understand all the risks that this can involve, including total data loss if done incorrectly (as another user found earlier today!).

Please see post: 128231: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!! which is in the 2017 forum but relevant to any version of the product.

The approach I would recommend, which does not involve needing to remove your internal SSD drive from the laptop, and does not need you to connect the laptops to each other, is to use Backup and Recovery (not cloning), as this is very much safer and only requires an external backup drive that can be moved between the two laptops, plus the use of the Acronis bootable Rescue Media to do the Recovery on the target laptop.

Note: the assumption here is that your two Dell Latitude E7270 laptops are identical in all relevant hardware aspects, and that the SSD drives are of equal capacity.  If there are any significant hardware differences, then the Acronis Universal Restore utility boot media may also be needed to prepare the second laptop to allow the restored OS to work with the new hardware found there.

Hello,

Thank you that makes good sense, and I’ll remove my email address.

I get the backup and recovery, but I need the recovered computer to boot too.

So, I’m unsure of the role of the bootable Rescue Media to do the Recovery on the target laptop.

Perhaps that is how it will be bootable after the backup restored to the new computer.

All the computers are identical hardware, and identical ssd size drives.

Someone metioned Clonezillo to me, but I would rather stay with the True Image solution

I have an external hard drive, but does the external hard drive need to be the same size in GB as the SSD drives

The SSD drives are 128GB

Mike, with doing a Backup and Recovery method of migrating your drive image to the second computer, you need the Acronis bootable Rescue Media in order to restore the backup to the second system.  You cannot do this by using the Windows application as any recovery of the OS drive has to be done from outside of Windows.

The steps you need to follow, in outline, are as follows:

  1. Backup laptop 1 to your external drive.  You can use the installed Windows ATIH application to do this, but the backup must include all hidden partitions.  The backup file on the external drive is a .TIB container file that contains the compressed image of the source drive in a single file. The size of the backup image will depend on the size of data on your source 128GB SSD - so assuming you are using say 80GB, this should compress by a further 20% on average, so give a backup file of around 64GB but this depends on the mix and type of files involved.
  2. Create the Acronis Rescue Media - this can be on CD/DVD or USB stick and can be created on laptop 1.
  3. Test the Acronis Rescue Media on laptop 2.  Ensure that you can boot correctly from it into the Acronis application and all looks OK.
    Note: the Rescue Media should be booted in the same way that your Windows OS uses, so if Windows uses EFI to boot, the media should use the same.  See webpage: Check if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS for help in checking how your Windows OS boots.
  4. Boot laptop 2 from the Rescue Media with the external drive connected.  Use the Acronis Recovery options to select and restore the whole disk image from laptop 1 to the internal drive in laptop 2.  See post: 128057: [Tutorial] How to recover an entire disk backup for an example of doing this type of recovery.  This was written for the 2017 version but the principles remain the same.
    Note: all of the above steps assume that your statement that both of these laptops are identical in terms of hardware.  You will still need to deal with any Windows activation issues that may arise with moving the OS from laptop 1 to laptop 2.  OEM versions of Windows are activated only for a single computer, but if you have a Microsoft Volume License etc you should be ok.