Skip to main content

Unable to clone

Thread needs solution

Windows XP.

I use Acronis 11 regularly for backups and restores, and used it a while ago to clone my laptop's HDD to a bigger one - successfully.
I'm now trying to clone to another, slightly bigger HDD but the process apparently freezes.

The existing HDD is 90Gb, the new one is 120Gb. I have checked that the new HDD is working - it is recognised in Disk Management and I have copied files to and from it. I have it in an external USB enclosure for the cloning operation.

The cloning process seems to start normally - the PC reboots and starts up with Acronis screen. Then I get the following:
Analyzing partition - 100%
Locking partition - 100%
Checking partition - 100%
Analyzing partition - 100%

Then nothing happens. So far I have left things in this state for 3 hours - should I wait longer, or has something gone wrong ? Judging by the disk activity light on the laptop - there isn't any !

Appreciate any help or advice, thanks.

0 Users found this helpful

I would advise you to use a safer method. Clone should be used only by advanced users who know what they are doing. It is riskier and can result in a loss of data and a failed system. Create a full disk mode backup and restore it, using the bootable Rescue Media, to the new disk, as it's far safer.

Thanks - I was coming to that conclusion !

From the bootable media, can I restore from one disk to another ?

I ask because - using the installed version of Acronis - I could only restore to "C:", not to another disk. I presume you are saying that from the bootable media I can restore from one USB drive to another ?

If not I guess I can just pop the new disk into the laptop and restore to it using the bootable media.

Martin

PS I am not expecting to boot from the USB drive - once succesfully written to, I will mount it in the laptop and boot from there.

I'm not sure what you're asking. You may restore a backup to a different disk. If you're replacing your primary OS drive with a new drive, I would do the full disk mode backup as I advised, remove the disk and replace it with the new one, then restore to the new drive "in place".

OK, I'll do as you suggest - "do the full disk mode backup (happening now), remove the disk and replace it with the new one, then restore to the new drive 'in place' "
I'll report back tomorrow - hopefully success.
Thanks

All accomplished - thanks for the support. I had to use EASUS to re-size the partitions on the destination disk as cloning didn't work at all. Overall not as simple as I had hoped but I got there in the end.

PS an oddity I came across in the process. Although BIOS was set to boot from the DVD drive, I couldn't boot from the Acronis DVD until I had disconnected the USB drive that I wanted to restore from. Then I had to re-connect the USB drive and wait (for quite a long time) for Acronis to "find" the USB drive so that I could designate it as the source for recovery. I'm unsure why I couldn't boot from Acronis until the USB drives were unplugged.

Martin Moyes wrote:

PS an oddity I came across in the process. Although BIOS was set to boot from the DVD drive, I couldn't boot from the Acronis DVD until I had disconnected the USB drive that I wanted to restore from. Then I had to re-connect the USB drive and wait (for quite a long time) for Acronis to "find" the USB drive so that I could designate it as the source for recovery. I'm unsure why I couldn't boot from Acronis until the USB drives were unplugged.

That is not an Acronis issue. The same thing would have happened even without the Acronis Rescue Media disk. It's an issue with your BIOS settings. Likely you have USB boot set to higher priority than the DVD drive, so when BIOS detected a connected USB drive it tried to boot from it, but couldn't find an OS. The "solution" is just as you found, to disconnect the USB device. You could have reconnected the USB drive as soon as the system began to boot from the DVD.