Backup bootable C drive disk to 2nd data/backup disk, then recover onto 3rd disk, make it the bootable C disk??
I'm sorry, I'm sure eventually, with enough time, high blood pressure and trial and error I could figure this out, but it might take a few evenings and maybe some kind soul who's very experienced with True Image/Cyber Protect can help save me a lot time and trouble.
I want to migrate my Window 10 system disk from an old SATA SSD with 512 sector size to a new U.2/NVMe SSD that unfortunately has the newer style 4096 byte sector size so it won't let me clone the disk. Very unfortunate the cloning software can't translate that.
I have a 2018ish Dell 5820 workstation PC with an old 120GB Crucial SATA SSD as a system disk with a 111GB C: partition, 100MB boot partition, 509MB Recovery Partition.
I have a 3TB SATA traditional spinning hard disk I hope to back up to and restore from.
I have a new 1.9GB U.2/NVMe SSD I want to make my new system disk with a copy of my current system disk and Windows install. Obviously I would need this to be bootable once the restoration from the backup onto the hard disk is complete.
Questions:
Can I do a Windows 10 install onto the new SSD and recover from a backup while booted from that fresh Windows install? If possible, would that be a bad idea? Restoring onto a booted and running C: drive? Or is Cyber Protect smart and fancy enough to get that right?
Or, would it be best (or the only way) to boot from a USB drive created in Cyber Protect and restore the old system disk from the hard drive containing my backup? I suppose removing the old system disk SSD before would be ideal to avoid conflicts, confusion and so there wouldn't be two bootable system disks installed at the same time?
There's no options I see to say whether a backup is bootable or not? Does the backup software just "know" it's bootable and save a copy of the Window boot loader and anything else it will need to make the restoration on the new drive bootable? I tried doing one backup of the system disk and it seems like each partition was backed up into directories with full filesytem structures and the files in them? I'd expect it to save a file or files with an image of the disk?? Not replicate the file system? Where does it back up the MBR and any other configuration data needed to make the restored disk boot just like the original backed up disk?
A document/web page specifically about backing up and restoring a bootable system disk would be great?! Am I just not finding that? Simple, clear, step by step, but not dumbed down or way too technically detailed would be super helpful.
Observations, complaints about Cyber Protect:
Sure would be nice if the clone tool would give simple, easy to see info on why a disk isn't valid if you try to click on it during the target disk selection. Took me a while to find the sector size difference issue.
Would also be very helpful if Cyber Protect would say if the backup it's making can be restored as a bootable replacement for the bootable drive you are backing up and, ideally, even offer to then create the bootable media needed to do that restoration???
Dylan, welcome to these public User Forums.
I want to migrate my Window 10 system disk from an old SATA SSD with 512 sector size to a new U.2/NVMe SSD that unfortunately has the newer style 4096 byte sector size so it won't let me clone the disk. Very unfortunate the cloning software can't translate that.
As you have found, cloning cannot be used for this type of migration due to the differences in logical sector size, however, you may be able to use Backup & Recovery instead as the new NVMe SSD should support emulating 512 byte sectors (as I understand it).
I have a 2018ish Dell 5820 workstation PC with an old 120GB Crucial SATA SSD as a system disk with a 111GB C: partition, 100MB boot partition, 509MB Recovery Partition.
I have a 3TB SATA traditional spinning hard disk I hope to back up to and restore from.
I have a new 1.9GB U.2/NVMe SSD I want to make my new system disk with a copy of my current system disk and Windows install. Obviously I would need this to be bootable once the restoration from the backup onto the hard disk is complete.
Most NVMe SSD's normally require using UEFI BIOS boot mode, so you need to check whether your system is already using UEFI or whether it is booting in Legacy mode? You can check this by using the command msinfo32 within Windows then looking at the BIOS mode value shown in the right side panel information.
When migrating from your old 120GB SATA SSD I would recommend removing that SSD before attempting to boot from the NVMe SSD, plus checking that the latter is shown as the BIOS boot device with Windows Boot Manager as the boot option from the new SSD (for UEFI boot mode).
I would recommend making a full disk backup of the Crucial SSD from within Windows using Acronis, storing this on your 3TB drive, then booting the system from Acronis rescue media to perform the restore of the backup to the new NVMe SSD (with the Crucial SSD removed).
See forum topic: Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I have documented (with images) the process that I have used multiple times for my own laptops using Backup & Recovery.
Thanks, Steve. Your reply came while my last message was awaiting moderator approval.
To try to keep things simple, my main questions now are:
A: Does sector size matter when making partition or disk level backups and restorations? Is that limited just like the cloning disk feature? Because it looks like it will let me select my new 4095 byte sectors SSD as a restoration target if I select a backup I made of a test Windows 10 install I made on that same drive. But if I select backups made from my original 120gb 512 byte sector SSD it will not let me select the new SSD as a target for restoration?
B: Will having existing partitions on a target drive affect the ability to restore to it in some cases? If I delete the partitions on the new drive will I then be able to restore to it from the backup made of my original SSD?
C: If I do a file level backup of my old C drive on the old 120gb system disk, can I restore that onto the fresh Windows 10 install on the new 1.9tb SSD and will that then boot as the original SSD did? Or will restoring over the existing Windows 10 installation result in a mess that may or not boot and if so may not be the same as the original Windows install I want to duplicate?
A: Does sector size matter when making partition or disk level backups and restorations? Is that limited just like the cloning disk feature? Because it looks like it will let me select my new 4095 byte sectors SSD as a restoration target if I select a backup I made of a test Windows 10 install I made on that same drive. But if I select backups made from my original 120gb 512 byte sector SSD it will not let me select the new SSD as a target for restoration?
Sector size can matter depending on the mix of disk drives and disk controllers involved, hence this is going to be a case of giving it a try to prove if it will work for your specific scenario. If you are saying that you cannot select the new 4kb sector size SSD when using a backup from the 512 byte source drive, then you are hitting a limit imposed by the disk controller most likely.
B: Will having existing partitions on a target drive affect the ability to restore to it in some cases? If I delete the partitions on the new drive will I then be able to restore to it from the backup made of my original SSD?
Yes! When doing a disk level recovery the target drive is wiped so any existing partitions will be removed ready to prepare the drive to be setup like the source drive (with any automatic adjustments of partition sizes as needed).
C: If I do a file level backup of my old C drive on the old 120gb system disk, can I restore that onto the fresh Windows 10 install on the new 1.9tb SSD and will that then boot as the original SSD did? Or will restoring over the existing Windows 10 installation result in a mess that may or not boot and if so may not be the same as the original Windows install I want to duplicate?
Sorry but this will never work for an OS drive. File level backups cannot capture locked system level files and data (including the Windows Registry files etc). The drive content would look very similar to the original but will never boot into the OS!
If using cloning or backup + recovery will not allow the migration from the 512b drive to the new 4096b SSD, then the only real alternative is to do a fresh install of Windows on the new SSD then re-install your programs etc.
What you can use a Files & Folders backup for is to capture all your user data and port that over to the new drive.
Some observations:
First, all U2/NVMe and current SATA ssd's are 4096 sector devices. It is likely, if sector size is actually at play here, that your old SSD does not conform to the 512e standard which provides compatibility with 4096 sector size.
Second, with the boot media showing your U2 disk greyed out suggests that this drive may be a previously used disk and your mention of existing partitions on the disk seem to back that up. If that is the case I would use diskpart to clean that disk and then initialize the disk as a GPT partitioned disk. After that the boot media should show the disk as available. If your backup was taken from an MBR booted disk, which it sounds like it was, when that backup is restored to a GPT disk the software will convert the install to a UEFI booted disk. So if your PC is UEFI boot capable once the conversion is made you would need to change the computer boot method in the bios setup to boot UEFI and the newly restored U2 should then boot fine.
I did a quick check on your Dell 5820 user manual and that shows that default boot for that PC is UEFI. If that is the case then I would suspect the real problem is the exiting partitions on the U2 drive. Clean that disk, initialize it as GPT and try the restore, My bet is that it will work.
From Dylan via a Private Message:
I have tried posting a reply to my original post with updates on what I've tried since that post. That was before your reply. But I guess I'm still too new to the forum and even my reply to my own post needs to be approved by a moderator to show up??
Hasn't been approved as of seeing your reply and starting to write this PM.
I can boot from the new NVMe SSD just fine. I did a quick, basic Windows 10 install from a USB stick without any issues. The USB installer sees the drive just fine, installed to it just fine, no additional drivers needed or anything like that.
And like I said, I can boot from that just fine. BUT, I can't restore disk backups made from the 120GB 512 byte sector SATA SSD onto the 1.92TB 4096 byte sector NVMe SSD. Maybe because the whole disk backups run into the same problem with the differing sector sizes??
I need to boot from the Acronis USB stick and see if it will let me restore a disk backup I made from the NVMe SSD back onto the same SSD just to see if it's a difference in the backup sources or if the Acronis USB stick just can't restore to the NVMe SSD at all??
Would having an existing Windows install or other partitions on the new disk prevent Acronis from restoring to it?
Would deleting all partitions on that new drive help restoring Acronis back ups to it? Or is that irrelevant?
Funny thing, after selecting the 52ish GB backup file from my data disk that backup disk and the 64ish GB USB stick I'm actually booted from are NOT greyed out and I could apparently (attempt to) restore to those??
How it would let me restore a full disk backup to the drive CONTAINING THE BACKUP FILE I do not understand.
Nor does allowing me to select the USB stick that I'm booted from as a the restore target makes any sense even if is (barely) big enough make any sense to me.
So, I'm at a loss here. I'm dumbfounded that this is so hard?
My last experience using Acronis True Image 2019 to move system partitions (Windows and Linux dual boot even) then using Disk Director to resize the partitions to my liking had be incredibly impressed with Acronis software.
I'm having the opposite experience now and I'm even regretting paying for a year of Cyber Protect, thinking that would have better luck, but finding it has all the limitations True Image 2019 did.
I mean most new disks are 4096 byte sectors, it's a GLARING limitation that moving from one to the other isn't possible or so fraught with problems.
The cloning not being robust enough to translate is sort of understandable, but using the backup/restore method and that not working either is hugely disappointing.
Maybe my case is the exception and not the rule and most people are able to back up a 512 byte sector disk and restore it to 4096 byte sector disks?
Maybe it's the C422 chipset and the way it implements it's MiniSAS/NVMe ports compared to simpler, more standard NVMe/U2 connections on more common motherboards?
There is a Intel Volume Manager option in the BIOS for those ports and apparently using that does/can require additional drivers to access the SSDs using that mode, the drives appear as RAID devices with that enabled. But with that disabled as I have it, they are supposed to act like any other NVMe disk.
And to Window, the installer and once booting from that disk do appear to act as if the SSD is a standard NVMe device?
If I do a file based backup of a Windows C drive and restore that to a different Windows C drive, will it properly restore all the system files and settings so the restored disk operates just like one I backed up from? Because that is the only thing I can think of that's left to try beyond finding another companies software to do this migration??
I've also read that 4096 byte sector SSDs have backwards compatibility with 512 byte sector software via a "512e" mode, but I have no idea if my SSD supports that or how to use it if it does?? There's no jumpers or anything on this SSD.
Anyways, I really appreciate you giving assistance/advice.
So, my big question now is about restoring a file based backup of the C partition from the old SSD to the C partition of the new SSD.and whether that will give me a completely functional, bootable C drive like on the old disk onto the new disk?
Dylan, thanks for the above message (I have taken the liberty to add some paragraph spacing to render it more readable!).
The good news is that a clean install of Windows 10 on the new SSD proves it is good and will work correctly in your PC.
The core issue here remains with attempting to migrate a backup of an older 512b sector drive to the new 4kb sector SSD. Please see the comments above from Enchantech on that same subject.
Doing a file based backup and restore is a recipe for a disaster here unfortunately as there are simply too many files that are locked that will be missing plus this doesn't account for the hidden / system required partitions used by Windows to boot.