Question about Disk Cloning
Hello,
Please excuse my newbie post as I am new to all this backing up, cloning, etc. Anyways, I have an HP Probook 4530s laptop with a 500GB hard drive and also have an Iomega 1TB external hard drive.
My question is, is it possible to clone my laptop's hard drive onto my external hard drive, but still be able to store other files with the remaining 500GB that is on the external hard drive?
How is that done? I tried cloning my system to that hard drive, but it seemed to expand itself over the 1TB space instead of just 500GB.
Thank you in advance to anyone who can help
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To supplement what Tuttle has recommended, here is a screenshow of how to create a task and backup from within Windows using the 2012 version. Download the zip file and extract the file. What is inside the ziip file is a file labelled 2012-Howtobackup.exe which is the screenshow. On my keyboard, I use the "Page down" key to switch between screens.
http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/mvp/user285/2012-5545/2012…
Edit: Jan 19
An updated link here.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
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Wow! From me you get advice on what to do. From Grover you get a full step-by-step guide. His MVP badge is well deserved.
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Thank you Tuttle. The timing was just a coincidence as it is something that is currently a "Work in process". Your comments answered questions which were not covered by my examples.
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Thank you both for your help.....Yes I want to make a full backup of my system saved to the external HD...I should have added in my OP that my main reason I wanted to clone my system is because although my HP laptop came with a drivers CD as well as a Windows 7 CD and the only "restore" option for my laptop is a restore partition on the laptop's HD. I do not want anything to happen to that partition because learning from experience from my previous Dell Inspiron system, when that partition is gone, its nothing but headaches then(well for me it was)
I do have one other question....If I backup(and i mean backup) my system, when it comes time to restore, will Acronis TIH 2012 restore that HP restore partition as well as the system partition intact so I may just use the F11 function to restore my system to factory condition if need be?
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If you use that restore partition on the laptop HD, you will lose all your personal content and all installed applications. If you restore with ATI, everthing is back, included on a new disk, if necessary.
Anyway, when you do your backup make sure you have selected the disk, just as Grover's guide is showing you. If you do that, the HP restore partition is backed up as well and you can choose to restore it.
Since you have F11 for the HP recovery, DO NOT turn on the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, or you will lose access to the HP restore partition (but then again, you don't really need it any longer with Acronis).
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Thomas Martin wrote:I do not want anything to happen to that partition because learning from experience from my previous Dell Inspiron system, when that partition is gone, its nothing but headaches then(well for me it was)
As we've indicated, a full disk backup will contain the entire disk, including that HP partition.
But, you likely don't need that HP partition. Its only function is to return the laptop to factory state, without any of your programs, without your files, without your preferences and config. I think that after the first couple of weeks or so, the value of that partition is next to nothing if you have ATI disk backups.
You can safely remove that HP partition if you want to reclaim that disk space to make it usable. On my Dell laptop, eliminating the similar Dell partition freed up 20 GB that I can now use. I'd rather have access to that 20 GB that I paid for, than tying it up with a Dell factory recovery that really is no practical backup (since it doesn't include my data, applications, etc.).
If for some reason you might want to be able to restore to factory state, see if HP includes a utility to write that recovery to DVD-R or USB key instead of retaining the partition. Dell includes such a utility, which I used to create DVD-Rs and a USB flash drive prior to deleting the partition. If I ever did want to return the Dell to factory state, the "recovery" would run from those DVD-Rs or USB flash drive.
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