HDD bad. Acronis boot CDROM doesn't work. Alternative to restore to a new SDD
Dear forum experts,
I have a Dell Latitude E6410 running Windows 7 that has a failed HDD. Prior to the hard failure, BIOS and Dell diagnostics reported all other components including memory was OK. Several years ago I used Acronis (probably 2018 or earlier) to create a boot CDROM. I was hoping to use it to get the laptop alive enough to copy my last backup from my external USB backup drive. No joy. The boot CDROM reports "loading Windows" and then stalls at the "Starting Windows " screen that has the multi-color Windows logo.
I have another laptop running Windows 10 with Acronis 2020. Is it possible to mount the new (blank) SDD in a USB drive cage, hook my backup USB drive to another USB port and use Acronis 2020 to copy my disk image from the backup drive to the new SDD, then install the SDD in the Latitude? If not, what other options might I have?
Thanks
Shawn


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Steve,
Thanks for the quick reply.
I do have a good Acronis TI 2020 backup image from Oct 24th on my USB backup drive. Just a matter of booting the Dell to a state where I can recover the Oct 24th image to the new SDD that will replace the bad HDD. I was really disappointed when the Acronis boot CDROM failed to work.
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Shawn, booting from CD / DVD varies between different computers - I very rarely use that type of media apart from with very old PC's which don't want to boot from USB.
The key factor when booting from any rescue media is to ensure that you do so using the same boot mode as used by Windows. With older computers this is often Legacy where the boot device is the physical HDD by make / name. With newer ones the default is now UEFI where the boot device (shown in the BIOS settings) is the 'Windows boot manager'.
The Acronis rescue media can be used in either boot mode as per: KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media
I would recommend creating and trying using a USB memory stick for the rescue media. The size should be between 2GB minimum and 32GB max size (due to Microsoft restrictions).
See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media and choose the 'Simple' option for creating the media.
Once you have a working USB rescue media that can boot the Dell laptop, then you can install the new SSD in that laptop and restore your October 24th backup image to the SSD.
KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media
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An update. I used Acronis 2020 TI Rescue Media Builder on another Dell Windows 7 desktop PC to create a boot USB stick, following the instructions at 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media. The media build executed OK. But when I used the USB stick to boot my laptop with the bad HDD, it did the same thing as the rescue CDROM I had created on the laptop several years ago. Reported "loading Windows files," then I got a Starting Windows screen but the process hung at that point.
So I got another USB stick and used the same Dell Windows 7 desktop to build Acronis Universal Restore media, which ran successfully. I did not try to add any drivers when Universal Restore gave me that option.
I replaced the faulty laptop HDD with a new SDD, plugged the USB stick into the laptop and it booted immediately, loading Acronis. I selected Arconis True Image, selected Restore with my backup USB drive plugged in. Selected the date/time for the restore file and started the restore. A few hours later it finished. The laptop booted to Windows 7 with all my files and programs (from the last backup) intact. I'm actually using the laptop to write this update. Only anomaly I've seen so far is that the restore created a disk partition on the new SDD smaller than the SDD 500GB size (C: properties reports 226 GB capacity plus there's much smaller hidden rescue partition).
No idea why using Rescue Media Builder failed to solve my problems. Both the CDROM created using Rescue Media Builder on the laptop several years ago and the USB stick created on my Dell desktop failed to boot the laptop. The laptop did have WindowsRE enabled (reagentc /info run from cmd line).
Now I have to check all my other computers to make sure the "rescue media" I created actually boots the machines. Disappointed that the advertised means to build rescue media did not work. Guessing it might be some issue with how Dell installs the OS and recovery files but I'm far from an expert on the subject.
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Shawn, thanks for the update and good to hear that you have a working laptop again after doing the restore to the new SSD.
The size issue is a known one and is usually caused because Acronis couldn't move the Windows Recovery partition to the end of the larger SSD drive space.
This is easily remedied by using a partition manager such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard to move the WinRE partition then resize the OS partition to use the unallocated drive space.
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