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Some Questions About Cloning

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I don't currently own ATI and I have a few questions about cloning on a Windows 7 PC.

Does the clone operation boot to DOS to complete the clone? If yes, why?

What drive letter does ATI assign to the clone? I would start with "C" as the source and "D" as the destination.

Will I be able to keep both the clone and the original HDD on the PC?

Can the clone be booted while the original system HDD is still installed? Could I add a second option in the Boot Manager to boot the clone?

Thanks for answers to these questions and for any additional insight to ATI.

Thanks, Jim

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Just to clarify, in Acronis speak, Cloning is a direct copy of the drive it can only copy a complete disk. An image is a copy of the used sectors of the drive held withinin a proprietary container file (tib). An image as a file is far more versatile in what can be accomplished.

Technically the clone operation (on the OS) drive will reboot into Linux. This is to prevent Windows from trying to perform actions whilst the clone is in progress.

From a cloning point of view, you are duplicating the disk, so partition C is partition C no matter what. As it is a duplication the second disk will contain the exact same information and layout as the source disk.

You can keep both drives on the PC but you have to either hide the drive letter or use a disk boot manager or not have the drive electrically attached, as with two drives marked as active and with booting files on them, the Windows boot system will get confused and will not consistently boot the same C:\ partition, registry will also have incorrect entries in it. You can change the clones drive letter which would solve the problem, but you'd need to change it again in registry if you swapped the drives over because you need to boot from the clone.

Another alternative would be to make a complete disk image, convert it using the 2012 utility to a VHD file, and if you are running Windows Ultimate of Enterprise, you could then add it to the Windows Boot Manager and use it as a second OS.

Colin B wrote:

Just to clarify, in Acronis speak, Cloning is a direct copy of the drive it can only copy a complete disk. An image is a copy of the used sectors of the drive held withinin a proprietary container file (tib). An image as a file is far more versatile in what can be accomplished.

Technically the clone operation (on the OS) drive will reboot into Linux. This is to prevent Windows from trying to perform actions whilst the clone is in progress.

From a cloning point of view, you are duplicating the disk, so partition C is partition C no matter what. As it is a duplication the second disk will contain the exact same information and layout as the source disk.

You can keep both drives on the PC but you have to either hide the drive letter or use a disk boot manager or not have the drive electrically attached, as with two drives marked as active and with booting files on them, the Windows boot system will get confused and will not consistently boot the same C:\ partition, registry will also have incorrect entries in it. You can change the clones drive letter which would solve the problem, but you'd need to change it again in registry if you swapped the drives over because you need to boot from the clone.

Another alternative would be to make a complete disk image, convert it using the 2012 utility to a VHD file, and if you are running Windows Ultimate of Enterprise, you could then add it to the Windows Boot Manager and use it as a second OS.

I guess the only way to use the clone would be to physically remove the original HDD and replace it with the clone HDD? I was hoping to be able to test the clone without having to physically move HDDs.

Thanks again, Jim

Correct. You either have to detach th epower cable from the source drive or a better solution is to buy an internal rack which would allow you to slide the drives in and out. This is what I use for one set of my images to protect them against a catastrophic power burst killing all my drives in the PC.

Racks are sometimes called mobile racks. They are IMO quite cheap, I purchased two from the UK for GBP2.50 each.

For the last several months I have been completely unable to clone my Primary Master drive to my primary Slave drive in order to be able to use the new drive for the OS as well as the usual data. I updated the ATI software yesterday in the hope that the latest version would work better. A few seconds after the cloning operation starts I still get the notice Operation Failed. I have used both the automatic and manual approaches to cloning all to no avail. I use Windows 7, 32 bit and the Primary Slave is empty but formatted. Views please. David

David,

Are you doing the cloning from the recovery CD?