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Cloning from a failing HD to a new Larger HD

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I have a failing XP SP2 drive that I want to clone to a new larger drive. To do this I would like to mount the Failing XP SP2 "source" as an external drive on a USB cable and the target on another USB connection. I'll be using a XP SP3 computer for the operation. I want to do a bitwise clone and copy bad sectors as is. After that I'll repair the drive and upgrade to SP3. Is this possible? I fear the upgrade to SP3 may kill the drive.

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The clone should be doable in this scenario.  Just keep in mind that if the disk is too faulty to read, clone or backup may fail anyway. Personally, I would try to take a full disk image backup of the failing drive, save the backup to a different location and then restore the image to a new drive.  Replace the original drive with the recovered image drive and all should be well.  

Regardless if you choose to clone instead of backup and restore, you want to make sure to remove the original drive and replace with the newly made one - don't leave them both in and try to boot as the bios will see them as the same hardware and that can cause issues.  AFter clone or restore, power off, remove original, put newly made drive in the originals place and boot the drive.  Should boot just fine if the backup or clone was successful

See video tutorials here:  https://forum.acronis.com/forum/117004

Check out the unofficial ones as these are users showing you how they do it. 

what is a full disk image backup and how does it differ from cloneing. I wanted to attach the failing drive as an external USB drive and attach the new drive externally as well. After I clone/backup the drive I'll remove both drives shut down and install the new drive in my computer as my C drive. From there I'll make a new backup and run Spinrite to repair anything that is wrong with the files. Of course Acronis may have fixed everything already. I don't know. This leads me to a new question. Will Acronis copy bad sectors bit by bit so they can be repaired later. Some other clone software recomends making a copy before trying to repair a disk that's failing. Sorry about the spelling. I rely heavely on spell checker to catch errors.

Dave, a full disk backup is exactly what it say, a backup image of your failing disk drive that is written to a second or external disk drive in an image file format with a .TIB file extension.  This preserves a snapshot of how the disk drive looks and what it contains at the point of the snapshot being captured.

Having this full disk backup image will allow you to retrieve data from the image at any later time without needing to have the failing disk drive connected.

The key difference between making a full disk image and doing a clone is that for the clone you have to have both the source and target disk drives connected at the same time, then you will make a copy of the source drive and write this directly to the target drive to achieve a duplicate copy of the source drive on the target.

The recommended method of performing a clone operation is to install the new replacement (target) disk drive in place of the original (source) disk drive - in exactly the same place, connected to the exact same cable etc. The original drive should be connected either as a second drive or via USB as an external drive.

Then boot from Acronis bootable rescue media and perform the clone from the second / external drive to the new replacement drive.  Once the clone is completed, then shutdown and remove the second / external drive and restart the system from the cloned, new duplicate drive.

If you are intending to do all of this on another computer system, then making the full disk backup image and then restoring this to the new replacement disk drive is probably the safest method of achieving the same end as doing a clone, as you will only ever connect one drive at a time, assuming that you have space to store the backup image on the other system.

To use this method, simply connect the original failing disk drive to that system, run Acronis from within Windows XP and make the full disk image to a suitable location with the space to hold it.

Next, disconnect the original drive and connect the replacement drive instead.

Finally, restore the full disk image to the replacement drive - again using Acronis from within Windows XP.

Remove the restored replacement drive and replace in the original computer and boot the OS from it, assuming that the level of damage will permit this.

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Dave,

I did what you and Steve are talking about with a Win 7 OS to a new HD and used the Image method.

It worked perfectly.

BUT !!  ...Here is the issue I faced that is similar to yours.  the Source Disk, the Win7 OS had a few BAD SECTORS and I did NOT know it had a few bad sectors.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary with the Win7 OS operation.  I made my image, removed the source drive, installed the new destination drive, booted with the media restore disc and attempted the restore.   Here is where the problem surfaced.  TIH2016 would not let me select the destination drive.  It was greyed out.   After talking to several MVP's here in the forum, one suggested that I may have bad sectors on the source drive and that I should do a Fix or Repair on the disk before creating the image.  Obviously, I thought that was a waste of time.... nothing was wrong with my system... well  I was in error and the MVP's had it all figured out...

I did a chkdsk /f   followed by a chkdsk /r   on the "C:" partiton, rebooted, re-created my C: partiton backup image and started the restore procedure again....

All was good, restored perfectly and booted without any trouble....  

Just a FYI and I am still appreciative of all the great MVP's that spend so much time helping us !

Steve (Perdido Beach, AL)