Cloning on desktop, destination drive greyed out
Using Acronis True Image 2012 on a Windows 7 32-bit system. I have a Maxtor SATA 180 GB drive with three partitions, and a new Kingston 120 GB SSD. I want to clone only the partition containing the OS and instaled software (about 40 GB) to the SSD, and make it my boot drive, in order to make room on the 180GB drive, which is pretty full. The drives are installed on separate SATA ports, respectively as Primary Master and Secondary Master. I need to use the "manual" procedure, as I can't clone the entire 180 GB HD to the 120 GB SSD.
At the "select source disk" step, it correctly shows the two drives and I select the Maxtor. It then asks me to select the destination drive. It lists the same two drives correctly, but both are greyed out, unavailable to be selected. There are no error messages, no markings that either is unavailable, no hint of any problem, except that I can't select either, and until I do, the only option to select is "cancel."
Additional details:
1. The new SSD is all unallocated. There is not a partition to delete. I have tried after using the software's "clean" feature and also after using the "add a new disk" feature, which supposedly creates a MBR but AFAICT no partition.
2. Both are "basic" drives. Acronis, Windows Disk Management, BIOS, and Diskpart all show the same data. There are no inconsistent readings I can find.
What am I missing?
You obviously have given a lot of thought to this, and I appreciate the effort, but as far as I can tell your reply says that Acronis True Image does not do what it says it does.
The page at http://www.acronis.com/articles/cloning-software/ says clearly that this is one of the things you can do with it. The "Clone Disk" prompt in the software itself says "Clone partitions from one disk to another." And when you start that operation, the "Manual Mode" prompt says "Manual mode will give you full control over the hard disk cloning procedure. You will be able to adjust the size of the target partitions, change their parameters, and much more." The Help file says "Use Clone disk wizard if you need to clone your hard disk drive by copying the partitions to another hard disk."
I am trying to do this and it is doing nothing. You're telling me I don't want to do that.
ALMOST THERE
Acting on the general concept described here, but not all the details, I was able to get this to work . . . almost.
Using a bootable CD, I was able to do a full drive backup to an external drive (just barely had room). Using the Restore feature I was then able to restore from that backup to the new SSD. There was no need to do multiple runs. The Restore feature allowed me to select the C: partition and the MBR partition to restore. This is not exactly user-friendly, as there is no way to tell from the instructions that this is the way to go. Only when you get down to the step of selecting the MBR partition and then select the Help screen does it finally say anything about making the new drive the primary OS drive to boot from. But in any eve
Anyway, I can now boot into Windows from the new SSD - but only if the old drive is physically disconnected. In that case, it boots properly, and when I go into Windows Disk Management, it shows the new restored partition as C:, System, Boot, etc. The new SSD is in the primary position on the Motherboard, and is correctly listed as the drive to boot from first in BIOS. But if I reconnect the old drive to another SATA port, despite the fact that that physical drive is set lower on the Boot list in BIOS, the PC boots from the old drive, and in Windows the old one again shows up as C:, System, Boot, etc. How do I overcome this?
SteveG,
Remove the OLD disk from the computer, boot on the Window installation DVD, go to repair your computer, system recovery option, choose command prompt, and enter the following commands:
bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildBCD
Reboot.
Then put your OLD disk back.