Options for cloning...?
I've used Acronis products for a long, long time, but it's not a regular part of my kit.
One of my laptops that has an inbuilt RAID and that neither Linux nor Windows can see without drivers. The SSD inside is starting to exhibit some problems that makes me think it's time for a replacement.
In the past, I'd boot up with the recovery media and clone that way. That has not always been successful in that Acronis may not be able to see the drives or the clone fails. I've gotten around this by doing a whole drive image and then writing the image to the new drive.
Questions!
Can I clone the Windows disk I've booted to?
Do all clones have to be done off-line?
If I'm booted into Windows, can I create a full disk image from that drive and then write it to a replacement drive and boot from it?
Any help appreciated!
m


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Steve Smith wrote:Michael, there are various options when considering cloning but if using any bootable media, the RAID drive(s) have to show as if they are a single drive.
With Acronis True Image, it is possible to create both Backups and Clones from within Windows using the Microsoft VSS snapshot feature, but this again will only work when the source drive is seen as if it is a single drive.
I would recommend making a full disk backup of your suspect SSD while it continues to work so to protect against it 'falling off the cliff' as SSD's tend to do when they fail!
Hey Steve,
Sorry it took so long to reply.
When you say "single drive," do you mean one partition? Windows disks are rarely one partition anymore. I'm sure you know this, so I think I've misunderstood you. (Disk 1 is a USB drive.)
Tomorrow, I am going on-site to perform another clone. I don't know how successful I'm going to be. Typically, I have to:
- Connect the new drive via USB
- Boot the Acronis WinPE recovery environment
- Start the clone
- Watch it fail
- Use Acronis to create an backup of the source drive to a third drive
- Recover the image to the new drive
If there's a better way, I'm all ears.
Thanks so much,
m
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Michael, if you only have a single installed drive in your laptop, then RAID is just being used for the SATA controller mode rather than being used to combine several drives in an array, so you just need to have driver support for RAID.
The key issue that you will have is with BitLocker for your C: drive, as this needs to be unlocked before you can attempt to clone that drive!
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.
Reference the above recommendation, you will definitely need to create the 'Simple' version of the Acronis Rescue Media using the Windows Recovery Environment so as to pick up both RAID and BitLocker support in that media.
See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media
I would recommend doing a test boot of the rescue media and check that you understand how to unlock the BitLocker C: volume.
When doing the clone, then remove the current OS drive and replace this by a new drive, then connect the removed drive externally via a USB adapter.
Boot from the rescue media, unlock the external BitLocker drive, then clone from that external drive to the new drive.
When all is completed, check the Log to ensure all is good, then shutdown, remove all media & the external drive before booting from the cloned internal drive.
See below for information on unlocking BitLocker from the rescue media:
If you create the 'Simple' version of the ATI 2021 rescue media, and do this on Windows 10 Pro which has BitLocker support, then this is included in the rescue media but there are some steps that are needed in order to access a BitLocker encrypted drive in the rescue environment.
When you boot into the rescue environment, you will see a black Command prompt window along with the main ATI 2021 application window. You need to close the ATI 2021 window in order to have access to the command prompt in the black window.
Now, you can use the BitLocker commands to identify and unlock your encrypted drive before relaunching the ATI 2021 application again using "X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
See the following data captured from my own system booted from the ATI 2021 Simple rescue media with an encrypted drive connected.
X:\windows\system32>wpeinit
X:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
Terminate batch job (Y/N)? nX:\windows\system32>manage-bde -status
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.19041
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.Disk volumes that can be protected with
BitLocker Drive Encryption:
Volume C: [Windows]
[Data Volume]Size: 200.83 GB
BitLocker Version: None
Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
Encryption Method: None
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: None
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors: None FoundVolume D: [SSD-Data]
[Data Volume]Size: 263.29 GB
BitLocker Version: None
Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
Encryption Method: None
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: None
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors: None FoundVolume L: [Label Unknown]
[Data Volume]
Size: Unknown GB
BitLocker Version: 2.0
Conversion Status: Unknown
Percentage Encrypted: Unknown%
Encryption Method: AES 128
Protection Status: Unknown
Lock Status: Locked
Identification Field: Unknown
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors:
Password
Numerical PasswordVolume H: [Data]
[Data Volume]Size: 114.10 GB
BitLocker Version: None
Conversion Status: Fully Decrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
Encryption Method: None
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: None
Automatic Unlock: Disabled
Key Protectors: None FoundX:\windows\system32>manage-bde -unlock L: -password
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.19041
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.Enter the password to unlock this volume:
The password successfully unlocked volume L:.X:\windows\system32>dir L:
Volume in drive L is Seagate250gb
Volume Serial Number is 1052-D550Directory of L:\
07/11/2020 00:08 46,379,683,840 MyBackup(1).tibx
05/11/2020 00:51 45,030,981,632 MyBackup.tibx
2 File(s) 91,410,665,472 bytes
0 Dir(s) 158,538,076,160 bytes freeX:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
X:\windows\system32>
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Sure enough it failed.
I connected everything up thus:
New drive in PC
Old drive in usb enclosure (usb 3)
setup the clone
it started writing partitions then said clone failed.
I gave up and am doing a backup/restore.
no Bitlocker in play here. That was a sample image.
cloning has not worked for me in several years. I’m obviously doing something wrong but I use it so infrequently that I don’t get substantial time to troubleshoot.
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