Cannot select target disk when cloning
I just cloned a HDD to a solid state drive and it worked perfectly, however I am trying to repeat the process using a disk from a dell laptop and I can't select it as the target drive.
I have formatted the disk, removed partitions, and used the cleaner tool to write zero's, and it is still greyed out when selecting target disk. There is no information as to why it is invalid, and nothing in the (mostly useless) help file. If something is stopping the drive from being used why is there no indication at all? Very poor design.
Also I found out today that the software I bought a month ago to do this is out of support contract as of today. Really nice...
This is a SEAGATE LAPTOP 1000GB SOLID STATE HYBRID DRIVE ST1000LM014 1EJ164-038 out of a brand new Dell M6800 portable (well, 2 weeks old).
To answer your first question: I tried to "clone" from the hard drive to my the USB linked hard drive, it failed.
I did, as you recommend in your second sentence, clone after booking from the ATI bootable Rescue Media - it failed because the target HD was there but grayed out without a reason why (FYI: I used Acronis clean utility which took forever on the new HD, i also removed partitions using diskpart thinking that might be an issue, it wasn't. I have it now formatted as a basic drive I can see when i plug it into my computer via the USB cable, completely clean with no partitions, but Acronis won't see it).
Then I tried the "safer but equally effective" method of purchasing a second external USB hard drive, created a backup image and storing it on this USB drive, putting the new hard drive into the portable (removing the old one), booted off of the Bootable Rescue Media I created with the Acronis software, and when I get to the restore stage of "New Partition Location" it says Disk 2- Unsupported. Why is that? What is not supported? Why can windows see it but not Acronis?
That information would have been much more useful under the "requirements" section of the software, not in the troubleshooting section "After" a person has gone through multiple steps.
Is there a list of hardware the software doesn't work with anywhere? Or do you wait until users run into software limitations and frustration and then let them in on the secret?
I mean, you didn't even say there is an issue in your link above...is that so people don't search the database to find tech note 45886: Hybrid Drives Are Not Supported in Acronis Bootable Environment? There, I posted it for others to find for you.