Clone from laptop hard drive to anther lap top hard drive in external enclosure?

Yes, you should be able to use the esata docking (preferably) or usb but you need to make one change in your procedures. Install the blank drive in the Hp and place the source drive in the enclosure. You also have the best chance of success if you boot from the TI Rescue CD which can be made from your software.

Any hidden or diagnostic partitions should be retained in the original sizes and my recommendation is that the cloning be performed in manual mode where the user controls the sizes. Suggest you check item 7D in my signature index. Cloning would not be my method of choice as I would prefer to create a full disk image of the existing setup and then restore the image onto the new disk--rather than cloning but the choice is yours.

Thanks, Grover H, for the info. I've found opening up the primary drive bay in my new HP laptop very difficult, and opening the secondary drive bay nearly impossible. I do make images that I store on an external hard drive, but have gotten in the habit of cloning to a second hard drive as an additional backup. It also allows me to boot the 2nd hard drive and use it when I suspect I'll run into viruses or am loading and testing a lot of software. If anything happens I can just reclone the drive. I would also like to be able to test the image and make sure it works on the second hard drive. It seems foolhardy to test it on the original.

With my 7 year old Gateway I can clone directly from ide hard drive to ide hard drive in around 1 1/2 hours. In my 5 year old Dell I was unable to do that (perhaps the sata drives). I now make the image, about 2 hours, and then clone the 2nd drive from the image. But this procedure takes around 8 hours.

Now, I've got the brand new HP laptop. It turns out that besides the difficulty in opening the drive bays, a second drive requires a special docking caddy that is very difficult to obtain. I don't know if Acronis True Image will allow me to clone from the first to the 2nd directly. Or if it will clone directly to an identical hard drive mounted externally via USB or e-sata.

I guess I could mount the 2nd drive externally and then clone it from the image on the external hard drive? That would keep me from opening the drive bays except for an occassional test.

I find it odd that cloning would require the drives to be reversed. Is there a reason for that?

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Steve

I find it odd that cloning would require the drives to be reversed. Is there a reason for that?

This is frequently referenced as a "reverse clone". If you have an IBM or Lenova laptop and maybe some other brands, a reverse clone is the only method which will work. This method has to do with the geometry of the disk being different in these brands. A reverse clone will work on all brands but only required on those with special geometry. Your new computer may or may not require a reverse clone but a reverse clone will work.

As you read in my 7D reference link, if you are going to clone, it is safest to have a full disk image backup of all partition as a safety valve in case something goes haywire. Yes, there has been many reported instances of a botched clone causing the loss of data on both drives.

If you intend to clone, then go ahead and try it using the eSata because it is much faster than the USB. The special docking unit would have been an 2nd choice if the reverse method was not usable. The special docking unit has worked well in the IBM/Lenova units to hold the source drive.

The only way you are going to get your answer is to try it and see but try to do it safely which requires you to have a current full backup image. It's your call. If you succeed this time, subsequent clones should work the same way.

I just posted my sob story in another area.
I apparently lost all data on the source drive while attempting a clone.
I had often wondered if backing up / restoring an image would achieve the exact same results and before reading more here i would have asked "then why is there a clone function?"

I am seriously disappointed that this software would even allow for such an error to occur.

That being said, does anyone know what method ATIH used to wipe the drive?
I have found a program called GetDataBack V4.00. Might this be able to recover the source drive data?

As verification as to what Grover H has to say, having a new larger and faster drive ordered, I tried to clone the drive in my Acer laptop to a 3 1/2 inch drive connected to the laptop by USB so that I would kow how to do it properly when the new drive was delivered. True Image took about 2 1/2 hours and the 3 1/2 inch disk was (apparently) cloned. However, when I then attempted to boot the laptop from the USB drive (the USB boot option was set to the first option), the laptop refused to boot. After booting to the source (C:) drive, I compared the two drives and it appears that they are virtually identical.

I found this thread while trying to find a solution to the problem, and my guess is that by doing a "reverse clone", I shouldn't have the problem when the actual drive comes.

Thanks, Grover. By the way, I found nothing about this in the Acronis User Manual. They really need to add this information.

Coov,
Try taking thedisk out of the enclosure and mount it inside the computer. It may still work without the reverse clone--providing the clone was not a Thinkpad (which must have the reverse clone).

The user manual and the KB references suggest the blank disk be mounted in the computer before cloning or restoring.

I am updating on my previous post from over a year ago.

I don't remember exactly how I did it but all I had to do was use the MS diskmgmt tool and reset/recover a pointer/partition and the data was still intact.

Whew!