Salta al contenuto principale

Replacing SSD and using Acronis to Backup and Restore

Thread needs solution

I am a long time Acronis True Image user and have used for backup but it has been a long time since I needed to do a restore. I am running build 39703.

I have a Dell Precision 7760 and the Dell Diag reports that my main SSD fails the Short Test.  However, I see no issues in Windows, with Crystal disk Info or HD Sentinel.  Dell is sending me a new drive to replace.

I hace a second SSD that I back up images to along with Acronis Cloud (I have the subscritption).

some questions:

  1. What is the best way to do the backup and restore?
  2. Should I just make a backup in windows to the secondary drive, swap drives, boot using USB Rescu Media and Restoe?
  3. Or should I use the cloan feature.
  4. for the USB Rescue Media, I just used Acronis to create that to a USB.  I plan to test later to see if it boots.
  5. I am running windows 10 Pro, I have bitlocker enabled on the C dirve I am replacing, but I do not have it enabled on the second drive I backup the image to.  Do I need to or should I disable bitlocker first?
  6. Any other suggestions?

thanks

0 Users found this helpful

Mike, I would definitely recommend using Backup & Recovery to do the move to the replacement SSD and use the Acronis rescue media to do this.

My personal preference when doing a planned drive replacement like this is to make a new, separate backup after booting from the rescue media to use for the recovery though there is one factor to consider if doing so, which is BitLocker!  You would need to unlock your C: drive encryption from within the rescue environment before a backup could be made.

If you use a backup created in Windows, then the backup will always be unlocked because that is how Acronis sees the drive.  You would need to re-enable BitLocker on the drive after doing the Recovery in either case.

A further, but slower, option is to recover the SSD from the Acronis Cloud but you would still need to boot from the rescue media along with establishing a network connection (using wired) to the cloud.

One key factor that you need to establish before doing the above is the BIOS boot mode being used by your PC, whether it is UEFI or Legacy.  You need to use the same mode for the rescue media too.

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

KB 69472: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: how to create bootable media

KB 69427: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

Thanks.  Well I decided to go ahead and turn off bit locker in windows.  I was not sure if I can access it in the recovery environment if I did not.  Well an hour it is still decrypting.  it is 1.86TB drive with 1.2 TB Free.  Hopefully it will complete successfully.  I read it could take a couple of hours.  

It is a new laptop with UEIF Boot.  I also ordered a sabrent NVMe usb c enclosure I was thinking of using and then in the acronis rescue environment use the clone tool.  If not, then a fresh acronis backup and restore.

Is doing a backup and restore better than cloning or does one work as good as the other in restoring all partitions and making it bootable?  

Also does the cloning make the original disk not bootable if I needed to go back to that?

I did test the USB boot media created and it worked so i am ready with that.

Mike, my issue with cloning is simply that it involves both the working source drive and the target one, thus exposes the working drive to additional risk if any mistakes are made etc.

Backup & Recovery is safer because the working drive can be removed and put aside away from any change etc.

Cloning of laptop drives comes with additional considerations and if using an external enclosure, then the original working drive should be in that enclosure and the new drive installed inside the laptop.

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

See forum topic: Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I documented how I have upgraded my own laptop NVMe M.2 SSD drive successfully using Backup & Recovery (done multiple times as I upgraded from 128GB to 500GB to 1TB drive sizes).

Steve, thanks for the help.

I have not replaced my drive yet, but when I do I plan on using the backup to image and then restore from image with the old drive out of the system and new drive in.

I have created a daily backup scheme to Acronis cloud, but also want to do a daily backup to a second drive in the system.

On the Acronis Cloud I left the default advance options of Store no more than 20 recent backups and also delete backup older than 6 months.  If I am backing up daily, is the 20 recent backups the daily backups so it will keep just 20 of them (20 days)?  Does the cloud backup make an initial backup first and then incremental after?

This leads me to my next question. 

I want to create a local daily backup, is it best to keep the backup scheme as incremental opposed to differential? 

Also, the default notes to create a full version every 5 incremental.  The next option is to delete older than X days or store no more than X recent version chains.  Due to space I was thinking of keep 3 recent version changes.  Does this mean that it will keep 3 full backups and the 5 incremental backups made for each full backup?  This way I will have around 18 days of backups before deleting them.

 thanks

 

 

On the Acronis Cloud I left the default advance options of Store no more than 20 recent backups and also delete backup older than 6 months.  If I am backing up daily, is the 20 recent backups the daily backups so it will keep just 20 of them (20 days)?  Does the cloud backup make an initial backup first and then incremental after?On the Acronis Cloud I left the default advance options of Store no more than 20 recent backups and also delete backup older than 6 months.  If I am backing up daily, is the 20 recent backups the daily backups so it will keep just 20 of them (20 days)?  Does the cloud backup make an initial backup first and then incremental after?

Mike, backups to the Acronis Cloud only ever make a single, initial Full backup that is uploaded to the cloud, thereafter all subsequent backups use a delta / incremental hybrid approach to upload only changed data and minimise the volume being uploaded.

Versions in the cloud backup settings tend to more granular that just 'incremental' backups and work more at a file or block level because there will be some data that changes continually and other data that never changes, so your 20 recent backups relates only to data that has changed that many times.  The same applies to data remaining unchanged for a period of time, so if you have data that has changed say 21 times or that is more than 6 months old with newer versions of the same data held, then the rules will come into play.

I want to create a local daily backup, is it best to keep the backup scheme as incremental opposed to differential? 

Incremental backups occupy / require less storage space than differential as only capture the changed data since the previous backup.  Differential backups increase in size as more as run as always capture all changes since the initial full backup for the chain.

The next option is to delete older than X days or store no more than X recent version chains.  Due to space I was thinking of keep 3 recent version changes.  Does this mean that it will keep 3 full backups and the 5 incremental backups made for each full backup?  This way I will have around 18 days of backups before deleting them.

There can be lots of confusion around the topic of automatic cleanup which can be better understood if some basic concepts are known!

First:  automatic cleanup only works on complete(d) versions / version chains.  Do not expect individual elements of version chains to be cleaned up, such as incremental or differential files!

Second: automatic cleanup only runs after a new Full backup for the next version / version chain has been created successfully.  This means that there must be sufficient free space available on the storage drive / location to hold a new Full backup image file!

Third: counting of days does not start until after a new Full backup file has been created when using the option to ‘Delete versions / version chains older than X days.’  It does not start for the active backup version / version chain before that point!

Fourth: the simplest & easiest automatic cleanup option to use & understand is to ‘Store no more than X recent versions / version chains.’  The criteria here means that if you set X = 2, then when the X+1 (3rd) version / version chain is created successfully with a new Full backup file, then the oldest version / version chain will be deleted by automatic cleanup.

Example:

Incremental backup task, using Full plus 5 Incremental backups before next new Full backup.

Task scheduled to run daily with automatic cleanup set to ‘Store no more than 2 version chains.’

Day 1 – Full backup created.

Days 2 – 6 Incremental backups created.

Day 7 – Next new Full backup created. 

Days 8 – 12 Incremental backups created.

Day 13 – Next new Full backup created.  Automatic cleanup deletes files created on days 1 – 6.

If the same task used ‘Delete version chains older than 7 days’, then those 7 days wouldn’t start counting until day 7 for the first set of files (version chain 1) and not until day 13 for the second set etc.  So automatic cleanup wouldn’t delete the oldest chain until day 14 in the above example.