Pre-cloning information
I purchased TrueImage Home 2011 several months ago. I have never installed it on any of my computers. I now have a need seeing that one of my laptops has run our hard drive space and I want to put a larger hard drive in it.
I think what I need to do is clone this drive? There are minimal documents on this laptop, it is mainly software.
I was wondering if I have to install TrueImage on the old hard drive first? Now the boxed version came with a disc labelled Bootable Media. Can I use this instead of installing the software? Or do I have to install the TrueImage software first, register it and then use the boot CD?
Now I understand that I need to remove the old hard drive, install the new hard drive and connect the old drive via a USB then run the Bootable Media and follow the instructions from there.
Do I need to create partitions for the main drive plus the recovery portion of the old drive? Do I even need the recovery portion if I have the original recovery discs?
Is cloning the way to go or should I be using a different a different part of the program (i.e. backup and recovery)?
Would it be wiser to install the software on another computer rather than the laptop? Can I remove the drive from the laptop and clone it using my main desktop?
Any additional information that can be provided would be greatly appreciated?
What version of Windows? Is your laptop an IBM thinkpad or what brand?
Info link: http://kb.acronis.com/content/2931
The TrueImge program does NOT need to be installed on any computer. The CD which came with your retail package should be bootable. Insert it into the CD/DVD tray and it should boot. In a laptop, you would normally have to press the ESC key or the F2 (varies by brand) key and choose the CD/DVD device as the boot device.
Most likely, the copy you have is not the most recent build for the 2011 version. This can be updated if you register your serial supplied with your retail version. The update occurs by the user downloading a new bootable CD from their registration account.
The clone procedure should work but it is not the safest choice. If something should happen to cause complete data loss during the cloning procedure, do you have a means of recovery? If you choose the clone procedure, the manual procedure gives you better control over partition sizes.
A safer alternative is to use the CD and make a full and complete backup of the existing disk. Then restore the backup onto the new disk for so as to create an exact duplicate new disk.
Preparing the new disk is generally not necessary but if you have Windows 7 installed on your computer, using Win7 to make a new partition on the target disk can sometimes help to avoid issues. Such a partition can be small and does not need to be formatted.
Attaching the old disk to another computer in order to clone or to create a backup is a last resort procedure.
More information along left margin.
Have you examined your old disk via the Windows Disk Management graphical view? This will visually show you what partitions exist on your old disk; plus the need to know which partition is the active partition; plus the need to know partition sequence of the old disk.