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Cloning and restoring backup not working?

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I just reccently bought a new 525GB SSD and wanted to move my Windows 10 install over to it from a HDD (250GB). First I tried cloning the HDD to the new SSD, but on completetion and restart the new SSD does not show up in Windows 10. When I go to look at the SSD under device manager it shows it as completely unallocated and unformatted. Next I tried backing up the HDD and doing a restore to the SSD, but it ended up doing the exact same thing. Restore completes/reboots and the SSD shows up as completely unallocated and unformated like it didn't even do anything. The space taken up on the HDD is only 100GB out of the 250GB. Any ideas on what is going wrong?

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e c, welcome to these user forums.

From your description above, it sounds like you are attempting these actions (Clone / Backup & Restore) from within the Windows ATIH GUI and this is then not actually performing the request action for the SSD.

All clones should only ever be performed when using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media created on either CD/DVD or USB memory stick.  The rescue media needs to be booted in the same way that your Windows 10 OS boots, so if Windows uses the UEFI bootloader, the rescue media should do the same too.

Next, when using cloning, you should remove the original HDD drive and replace it with the new SSD drive, connecting this directly in place of the HDD.  The HDD drive should be connected externally via a USB to SATA adapter or attached to a spare SATA connector temporarily for the purpose of the clone action.  The logical sector size of both drives should match, and both be recognised by Windows as being Basic disks.

Please see KB documents: 56634: Acronis True Image: Cloning Disks  and  1540: Difference between Backup and Disk Clone  for more information on both of these processes and the differences between using them.

In simple terms, the process of cloning should be as follows:

  1. Install the new SSD drive in place of the HDD, connect the HDD as a secondary drive (USB or SATA)
  2. Boot the system from the Rescue Media, and check that you can see the SSD and HDD drives.  If the SSD is not seen, then use the option provided to Add the disk.
  3. Perform the clone operation and ensure that this is shown as being successful.
  4. Shutdown and remove both the rescue media and the HDD drive - do not attempt to boot into Windows with both these drives connected as they are now deemed to be identical and have the same disk signature as each other which will confuse Windows at best and could cause corruption at worst.
  5. Restart with only the SSD installed and confirm that Windows starts correctly, including installing any new device drivers that may be needed.
  6. If all is OK and you want to reuse the HDD, then attach this externally via USB then reformat / repartition the drive ready for reuse.

Note: If using Backup & Restore instead of Cloning, then follow very similar steps, but backup the HDD to an external drive, then using the Rescue Media, restore the backup to the installed SSD drive, keeping the HDD fully isolated from the system during this process so that you have this as a fall back to use in the event of problems.