Wanting to upgrade to a new hard drive

You should be able to create an Entire Disk Image backup of the 120GB drive and restore it to the new drive. However, the new drive won't be in a "clean" state (just recovered). It would be the same as what's on the 120GB drive. Perhaps this is what you want.

For the scratched DVD: Have you tried making a copy of it (perhaps on another computer)? Some DVD drives can read discs better than others. It's possible you may be able to create a good disc and then use it during the recovery.

Yes you can make a backup and restore it to a new hard drive. See http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/forum/2009/08/3426/gh-acro…. Although for an older version the principles are the same. See also http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1299861&postcount=9. and http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=218533.

Hi MudCrab and thomas,

Should I use the clone feature on acronis true image? When i do that it asks to delete everything on my external drive. Will i need to create a bootable disc also because for some reason it keeps saying e is not accessible

Are you getting a "Device not ready" error when trying to create the TI CD? If so, try placing the blank CD in the tray and pushing it in manually at the time Media Builder needs it (the time would be just before the error message normally appears).

You could also create an ISO or download the ISO version from your Acronis account and use any ISO capable burning program to create the CD.

I don't recommend using Clone unless you have a backup already of the source drive. In addition both drives MUST be connected internally to the computer for the best chance of success. It's usually better to create a backup image, remove the original drive, install the new drive, and restore the image. Cloning to a drive in an external enclosure or one connected via USB will not work correctly on some laptops and may not on others (this is due to drive geometry being detected differently).

Mudcrab,

Thanks that worked for the boot disk. I am going to try and transfer the contents to the new drive from the external.

You could try using a different brand of DVD media. See this KB article for more information on burning an ISO file. Most DVD software programs support burning ISO files (Nero, for example). I usually use Nero or UltraISO.

To create the ISO, select that option instead of selecting to create a CD/DVD. There is also an ISO already created available for download in your Acronis account.

MudCrab,

When I loaded the bootable recsue disk from acronis i get the following error "kernel panic - not syncing: vfs: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(1.0)" and it stays on for about 20 minutes. Is there a way around it?

I loaded the new hard drive, put in the bootable disk, and also connected the external hard drive to the computer, but it was booted to the cd so the hard drive thing should not matter.

What version and build of TI are you using?

Was the TI CD you're using created from the ISO made from TI or was it using the ISO downloaded from your Acronis account? If you've only tried one, you can try the other one. The drivers are different and one may work better on your computer.

You can try the quiet acpi=off noapic option detailed in Section II of the Read Before You Post thread for the TI created CD.

If you're using the current Acronis account ISO CD, press F11 when you see the "Starting Acronis Loader..." message, then type the options in the box:

Older downloaded ISO versions may display a menu that includes several troubleshooting options (including this one).

MudCrab,

I managed to get the restore bootable disk from acronis to work and also the external hard drive to the new hard drive. The problem now is that I put in a 300gb hard drive and now when i look at my computer my c drive has a capacity of 96.9gb and the d drive 13.8gb, the same as my last hard drive. Did I do something wrong, because I should have the 300 gb capacity and not the old 120gb?

Did you resize the partitions as part of the restore?

There should be unallocated space on the drive. Does Disk Management or TI show this?

MudCrab,

I ran the disk management tool on windows and it shows that 186.30gb is unallocted. That would be the illustrate the full 300gb when i add the other 2 drives (C and D) to it. Should I do something to allocate this so that i can use the remaining 186.30gb when i need to?

If you don't need the existing partitions larger, you can use Disk Management to create a new partition using the unallocated space.

Otherwise, you'd need to use partitioning software (like DD) or just restore again and resize them as desired.

Thank you MudCrab for all of your help, I am creating a new partition.

The only odd thing is that i am creating a partition with the remaining 186.3gb, so in the disk management tool i used 186300 for the new partition, but now it shows 4.37gb as unallocated still.

Was 186300 the maximum value you could enter? That's only around 181.9GB.

Is this on XP?