Cloning vs recovering image: going from 650 GB disk to 500 GB - is cloning simpler?
Hello all,
I read Grover's 36 page guide on transferring an image to a new drive, and with all the partition steps, it seemed more complicated than cloning.
The question I have that I haven't seen a clear answer that I can understand is, I have a 650GB drive in the laptop, I have purchased a 500GB drive.
The current (and supposedly failing drive, the smart sensor is tripped) has used space of 137GB and free space of 444GB. With the new drive being only 500GB, will Acronis automatically make adjustments, or will the smaller drive give me problems when cloning?
I have read the guide about putting the new drive in the drive bay formerly occupied by the drive being replaced. I have an external drive housing with USB adapter ready for the old drive to go into. I have made the boot media disc, and I am at the stage of booting up with the CD and either testing my validated image, or going ahead with the cloning, as I understand it I could choose either one from the boot CD's options.
Unless there is some problem with cloning when going from larger to smaller hard drive, I am inclined to clone.
If I am missing something or there is an obvious flaw in my understanding, please correct me. I have attached a screenshot of the disk management utility.
I am going to restart and boot up with the CD to get some practice and then I will be back.
Thank you,
TJ
James,
Thanks for the quick response.
I just got done testing my Acronis Rescue Media disk, it is working and I went through some of the steps for practice. I obviously didn't have the new drive in place yet, but I did have an external USB drive plugged in, so it was easy to see see how it would go about the clone process.
One question I still have is the source drive is larger than the target, 650GB vs 500GB. Will Acronis have problems with that, or will it automatically adjust for the difference? There is about 137gb or so that will be cloned from the source, that would leave plenty of open space on the target after cloning.
I saw something while I was practicing about manually changing partitions....and that is giving me concerns.
Will I have to do something at that juncture, or not?
I now have another computer up to monitor the forum here, so I can go ahead and remove the old drive and put it in the external enclosure, and install the new drive in its place. The rescue media works, as I said, so if I can get this last question about cloning from bigger to smaller drives clarified, I am ready to rock..
Thank you,
TJ
Acronis can automatically adjust to accommodate the smaller drive during the clone. That is sometimes the problem, as you may not have control over which partitions it wishes to resize.
It is always best to avoid cloning when possible to allow the greatest control of the restore process.
In your case you can try the clone, and then revert back to restoring from the backup it you don't get good results from the clone.
Since you alread have a backup (hopefully a full disk backup), you could try and do the restore first instead of the clone.
It is pretty simple once you get started.
As per Grover's guides and the many posts here on the forums, you can restore each partition individually when restoring from the backup image.
This gives you the most control, as you can specify the size of each partition as you go.
In your case, you would restore the first partiton as is.
The second partiton would need to be made smaller to leave room for your third partition.
The third partiton would need to be restored as is.
Then you would restore the MBR/boot track and disk signature.
You can do this one step a time, without leaving the program.
After restoring the MBR/boot track and disk signature last. You would be finished.
You are able to go either way at this point. Do either method as you wish, and try again if your results are not what you expect.
James,
Thanks for clarifying.
The cloning is underway, I will report how it turned out.
I do have several good, full back-ups on a couple of external USB drives, if if the cloning is unsatisfactory.
TJ
Well, it is some hours later and the cloning appears to have been successful.
The software did just make the adjustments to the partitions proportionately.
I had no errors, and I cannot thus far detect anything out of the ordinary using the system.
James, thank you again for your advice.
TJ
Glad to here it worked out okay.
Hi TJ,
Is this the TJ from TAB?
Curious as to which partitions the clone program resized and how much were they changed. Would you consider posting a screen capture of the new disk as shown in the
Windows Disk Management graphical view.
Which version and build of TrueImage did you use for the cloning?
Thanks.
GroverH
ps: My signature index also lists guides for cloning. When restoring or cloning, the final summary page (which has the Proceed option) provides advance information about the changes being made. The proceed option accepts the changes but you can use the Cancel option as an information tool to gain information without actually doing the restore or the clone.