Skip to main content

Question about cloning

Thread needs solution

Looking for best way to proceed. Current system has 3 HDD's - C, D, & E - totalling about 300G of data. I waqnt to get a 1TB drive, split into 3 partitions and move the c,d,e data to that single drive.

My question is about partitioning -

If I do not partition the 1TB drive first - can I clone C then clone D and then clone E into their respective partitions, creating the on the fly with AcronisTI?

Basically I am asking for the best procedure to clone 3 physical DRIVES to 1 physical drive.

Windows 7 OS - can use Acronis TI 2011 or 2012 - do not have 2013 yet.

thanx,

Vic

0 Users found this helpful

You can use 2011 or 2012.

You would have to use a disk and partition backup.

Use the recovery CD to create this backup, so that we are sure the CD works OK on this computer.

Create such a backup including all the partitions you want to restore:
- select the entire disk for the boot disk,
- add partitions from other disks.

Then put the new disk in place and you remove all disks that have been backed up (you will be able to put them back in after a successful boot).

Then boot on the recovery CD and restore the partitions in the order you want, one by one. Don't forget to mark the right partition active. Since you have only 3 partitions, you can keep them all primary.

After all partitions are restored, restore the MBR+Track0 of the disk that you were booting from.

If the system doesn't boot, verify the BIOS settings to make sure the boot settings are pointing at the new disk.
You might have to use the Windows installation DVD to repair the startup if it still doesn't boot.

You can not clone the individual drives to a new drive as partitions. You could backup each drive using a disk based backup with Acronis to an external drive and restore each of the drives to a partition on your new drive. You would need to do a disk based backup of your active system drive and restore it first to be sure it works. Then you could restore each of the other backups to your drive.