Cloning in Manual Mode

What version and build of TI are you using?

Have you tried booting to the TI CD and performing the clone instead of doing it in Windows?

I just bought the software yesterday, and it updated itself as I was using it last night. I don't have a CD, I downloaded it from the website.

Stray,

If you are new to Acronis, I encourage you to peruse Grover's true image guides, in the useful links, in the left panel of this discussion. There is a learning curve for ATI (Acronis True Image). http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426

In particular, read the cloning guide in paragraph 3

You can create a CD using TI. Select Tools & Utilities and then click Rescue Media Builder (under Protection tools) and follow the steps. You can start Media Builder from the Start menu too.

I didn't post my superfluous data because I didn't want to cloud the issue with irrelevant facts.

If the Windows Version of the software is not going to do a manual cloning process, then why does it even let a user go through that process? Why go through the motions of letting a user spend a bunch of time resizing the target partitions, if it's just going to reject the commands, and do whatever it feels like.

Right after my last post, I went ahead and burned a blank DVD with the bootable version, and have been cloning for 20 minutes, but it is not echo-ing the details, so I have no idea if it's rejecting my manually sized partions like it did before, or if it is working as intended.

I took a look at the guide, and there was no information there that I didn't figure out for myself by just using the software, it's a fairly uncomplicated UI, and easy to set up, it's just that the software seems to have other ideas, and hijacks the cloning process, and switches to proportional cloning. We'll see if the bootable version has any better results.

In many cases, it does work properly from Windows. However, when it doesn't, it's recommended to boot to the TI CD and try that. Also, there are some procedures (such as cloning the Windows drive) that are recommended to do from the TI CD instead of Windows -- just because it's generally less problematic.

Awesome.

I appreciate the tips. I was just going for the laziest method at first, but the bootable version seems to be pretty much identical to the Windows version.

I just wish it would post more verbose data pertaining to it's operations. Like showing the source and target partition size, and file system type, and other pertinent data.

It's displaying a time, but it's not identified as what this time means. Is it "estimated time to finish"? If so, it's way off base.

Good call on the Bootable version. It cloned all my partitions to target drive using my specified sizes, and the result was exactly what I wanted.

It was displaying what I think was a countdown to finishing the clone process, but it was not at all accurate. The entire process took about 6 hours, to clone a fairly full 500GB HDD to an empty 1TB HDD.

The system boots, but it's like my Laptop has been punched in the face, and it is trying to figure out what the hell happened.

Boot time is really slow, and so is everything the laptop does. I run a CPU monitor in the sidebar, and it clearly shows the CPU load is almost zero on both cores, but the system is always lagging.

It's my guess that all the indexing it used to rely on to speed up performance is now goofed up, because the memory addresses are different, and it's re-indexing the drives. I expect that it'll smooth out after a few days of use, and periodic reboots. If it doesn't, then I may be forced to re-install Windows anyway, because it's performance is really crappy now (this is a gaming computer). However, since my other partitions are beautifully cloned over, it would be a very easy process.

I'd say overall, this was worth the investment.

I assume you placed the Windows partition at the start of the drive (or in the first third) since it's the fastest area. I've seen some cases like that where it takes a little while to return to normal. A defrag may help since TI may not have placed things optimally.

I did place Windows in the C:\ drive, and I fully defragged it before cloning, so it would be a smoother transition.

Running a defrag before imaging or cloning does not mean the restored/cloned drive is properly defragged, especially when the partition sizes are changed (TI may move stuff). Wouldn't hurt to check it. If everything is still defragged it won't take long.

For the placement, I didn't mean the drive letter, but the physical area of the drive. Normally, the Windows partition is the first partition starting from the left (in Disk Management, for example) or the second partition if you have a System Reserved partition.

Yeah, I got all that covered. My OS partition is in the fastest area of the drive platters, and it is not fragmented. I have 25 years of experience building, using and programming a wide variety of computers.

The cloning process completely squirreled up Windows, and it's getting worse every day. It now takes 10 minutes to boot up the new drive and open any program. I even tried a complete prefetch wipe, and cleaned out every temp folder. It is my opinion that registry cleaners are a complete rip-off, so I am not even considering that route. The problem lies in the Operating System's I/O to and from the new drive. It takes forever to access anything on the drive. Because a number of my laptop hardware drivers have been ruined by the cloning process, I think my DDR driver may have suffered as well, causing my data bus to bottleneck. Because there are too many issues that can be "possibly responsible" for the problem, instead of going through them one-by-one, it's just easier to do a complete wipe and start over from the beginning. The sad thing is, that the cloning process also wiped my list of restore points, so I can't even try system restore to fix this.

Acronis didn't produce a smooth operational clone of the OS. It must have made some errors in copying the ones and zeroes. I am going to re-install Windows today, because it just isn't working the way it did on the old drive.

Re-Installed Windows 7, and now it functions as it did on the old drive. The cloning process works great for raw data, but for an entire system, it does not cut the mustard.

What you describe sounds more like something was misconfigured in Windows than any errors in the cloning process. I've run into quite a few of the "slow" problems -- some are easily fixable and some aren't. In any case, I'm glad you have it working now.