Cloning unstable
Recently got a serial for Acronis True Image 2015 with my purchase of a 256GB M.2 Crucial drive, which is perfect because I wanted to clone my current C: to the 256GB drive (current is a mere 60GB, not much overhead for the odd application that refuses to install elsewhere).
So I format my new drive, run some tests on it, and boot up ATI. I enter the serial, create an account, etc. and set it up to clone in manual mode, "as-is", thinking I'll just expand the main volume later. When I'm done cloning and restarting (after accepting the sector-by-sector clone warning on the old drive), my computer decides it wants to repeatedly run and kill explorer.exe so rapidly I have a hard time seeing it in task manager. I let this go on as I'm trying to find the source of the problem--strangely enough, instances of explorer.exe created through "Run new task" on the task manager won't crash unless a context menu appears. My computer eventually hangs while I'm searching, probably from the hordes of error reports I see popping up in task manager. I go into my BIOS and boot up my old drive, everything works perfectly fine, but the error reports are nowhere to be found, so I format the new Crucial again and create a system report. Something I probably should've done before running this in the first place.
So, I figure it's just me trying to customize my processes (I have a nasty habit about this - I always choose manual, even if I don't make any changes from the "express" or default settings). I run the software again, this time on "automatic" mode. All looks good, until after the post-clone restart. My computer goes through the BIOS, then a black screen appears and various error or debug texts appear. I'm out of my depth here, but I can see it's generating a report at the bottom, so I let it finish and save to USB. I then restart, and the same explorer.exe issue appears again, so I ran the system report a third time. If the report files don't contain sensitive info, I don't mind posting them here to get more help.
My specs: http://pastebin.com/wpVjXSbu (Intel i5 4690K, 16GB corsair DDR3 RAM, ASUS Z97-E MOBO, drive #1=C: & drive #3=clone of C:)
I did some searching online, and couldn't find anything related to what I'd encountered, so I assumed it was either A) one of those "common knowledge" bugs that people fix easily enough on their own and I'm just missing something, or B) it's a very rare issue. Since support is discontinued, I don't know if I can view these myself (It's nearly 2:30 in the morning here so I don't feel like trying right now), and I don't know if I can even understand what they say if I can even view them, I'm turning to you, dear reader, in hopes of assistance.
Thanks for your reply. To answer your questions: Yes, I started the clone from Windows. However, trying the clone from a bootable media had the same results. I have all my disks in ACHI-mode already, so that's not an issue. I did try the boot with both drives enabled initially, however I did try disabling the original drive through my BIOS before posting and it wouldn't load the login screen. I didn't check the BIOS boot order, but since reading your post I have at every stage and I've noticed that either the Acronis bootloader or the clone drive is selected, depending on the step I'm at -- no manual selection was necessary for me.
I was able to follow the instructions of the 5th comment, https://forum.acronis.com/forum/125166#comment-392804. For me, there wasn't a difference between using a bootable CD and using the cloning program from windows. I got it to work thanks to the suggested use of the backup tool, rather than the cloning tool, and I'm typing with the "cloned" drive as my boot device now.
edit: I did write the Acronis Recovery Manager to a CD and used that as my bootable media, but I don't think that made a difference because the clone I made using the bootable media failed in the same way that the clone made via the Windows program failed.
I suppose it's worth noting that at no stage did I physically disconnect my original drive from my motherboard. My BIOS allows me to enable or disable SATA drives, and I still have my original SSD attached, but it's not discoverable by my OS. So my idea is that I'll let it sit connected; in case I need it, all I have to do is enable it through my BIOS.
Thanks for your help!