Need help cloning hard drive

M

M.L.

My niece recently purchased two desktops for her home; one to be used
upstairs, the other downstairs. The two computers are exactly the same
make and model, and have the same specifications.

I set up her upstairs computer already and it works perfectly, so
perfectly that she would like me to clone the upstairs computer to the
one downstairs. After reading the newsgroups, I encouraged her to buy
Acronis True Image to do the job, which she did.

She bought a USB2/Firewire enclosure to house the 120 GB internal hard
drive from her old computer to use as a portable hard drive to shuttle
data between both new computers, which each have 200 GB hard drives.
(The 120 GB hard drive is only 5 months old.)

However, I have never done a clone from one computer to another and am
afraid of making mistakes here. I would like someone to describe the
steps needed to copy the hard drive from the new upstairs computer to
the one downstairs, using the external 120 GB hard drive as the
go-between. I'd like to transfer all partitions. Temporarily removing
the internal hard drive(s) to another computer is not an option.

The 120 GB hard drive has about 15 GB of precious data already on it,
and is divided into 3 partitions. The newer upstairs drive has only
about 8 GB of data on it, and is divided into 4 partitions. Any help
appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
C

Carey Frisch [MVP]

Official Acronis Support Forum
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/forum/

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"M.L."wrote:

| My niece recently purchased two desktops for her home; one to be used
| upstairs, the other downstairs. The two computers are exactly the same
| make and model, and have the same specifications.
|
| I set up her upstairs computer already and it works perfectly, so
| perfectly that she would like me to clone the upstairs computer to the
| one downstairs. After reading the newsgroups, I encouraged her to buy
| Acronis True Image to do the job, which she did.
|
| She bought a USB2/Firewire enclosure to house the 120 GB internal hard
| drive from her old computer to use as a portable hard drive to shuttle
| data between both new computers, which each have 200 GB hard drives.
| (The 120 GB hard drive is only 5 months old.)
|
| However, I have never done a clone from one computer to another and am
| afraid of making mistakes here. I would like someone to describe the
| steps needed to copy the hard drive from the new upstairs computer to
| the one downstairs, using the external 120 GB hard drive as the
| go-between. I'd like to transfer all partitions. Temporarily removing
| the internal hard drive(s) to another computer is not an option.
|
| The 120 GB hard drive has about 15 GB of precious data already on it,
| and is divided into 3 partitions. The newer upstairs drive has only
| about 8 GB of data on it, and is divided into 4 partitions. Any help
| appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
T

t.cruise

"Carey Frisch [MVP]":

Which software do YOU recommend for cloning/imaging/ghosting an internal hard drive to an
external USB2/Firewire hard drive, which can then be easily restored back from the
external drive to an internal hard drive? Acronis? Other software?
 
C

Carey Frisch [MVP]

Norton Ghost v9.0
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

Animated Shockwave Ghost tutorial with sound
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/tutorial/ghost_2002/2001032917165825_s.html

How to perform a disk-to-disk clone
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/pfdocs/2001032917165825

Introduction to cloning a Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP computer
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...nsf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl


--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Which software do YOU recommend for cloning/imaging/ghosting an internal hard drive to an
| external USB2/Firewire hard drive, which can then be easily restored back from the
| external drive to an internal hard drive? Acronis? Other software?
| --
|
| T.C.
 
A

Anna

M.L. said:
My niece recently purchased two desktops for her home; one to be used
upstairs, the other downstairs. The two computers are exactly the same
make and model, and have the same specifications.

I set up her upstairs computer already and it works perfectly, so
perfectly that she would like me to clone the upstairs computer to the
one downstairs. After reading the newsgroups, I encouraged her to buy
Acronis True Image to do the job, which she did.

She bought a USB2/Firewire enclosure to house the 120 GB internal hard
drive from her old computer to use as a portable hard drive to shuttle
data between both new computers, which each have 200 GB hard drives.
(The 120 GB hard drive is only 5 months old.)

However, I have never done a clone from one computer to another and am
afraid of making mistakes here. I would like someone to describe the
steps needed to copy the hard drive from the new upstairs computer to
the one downstairs, using the external 120 GB hard drive as the
go-between. I'd like to transfer all partitions. Temporarily removing
the internal hard drive(s) to another computer is not an option.

The 120 GB hard drive has about 15 GB of precious data already on it,
and is divided into 3 partitions. The newer upstairs drive has only
about 8 GB of data on it, and is divided into 4 partitions. Any help
appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

M.L.
I'll get to the cloning process shortly, but first...
In your final paragraph you state that the 120 GB drive -- the one that will
be housed in your USB/Firewire enclosure -- now contains three partitions
totaling 15 GB of "precious" data. And, of course, that's the drive your
niece will initially be cloning *to* from her "upstairs" internal drive. So
if you want to retain the data on that 120 GB drive, you MUST copy that data
to the *upstairs* internal drive *before* you clone the drives. Otherwise
when you clone the contents of that internal drive to the USB/Firewire EHD,
*all existing data* on that latter drive is deleted as a consequence of the
cloning process. I trust you understand this.

The Acronis program is a satisfactory program to achieve your objective
assuming that you want to clone the entire contents of the *upstairs* drive
to the *downstairs* one using the EHD as the intermediary. In other words, a
disk-to-disk copy so that the ultimate destination drive will be an exact
duplicate of the source drive. If, on the other hand, your niece's interest
is cloning *specific* partitions from one drive to another, then Acronis
would *not* be the most desirable program to achieve this. Symantec's Norton
Ghost would be a better choice.

Rather than my describing the cloning process at this point, perhaps before
doing so it would be better if you would clarify your (your niece's)
specific objective per my comments above.
Anna
 
C

CS

The Acronis program is a satisfactory program to achieve your objective
assuming that you want to clone the entire contents of the *upstairs* drive
to the *downstairs* one using the EHD as the intermediary. In other words, a
disk-to-disk copy so that the ultimate destination drive will be an exact
duplicate of the source drive. If, on the other hand, your niece's interest
is cloning *specific* partitions from one drive to another, then Acronis
would *not* be the most desirable program to achieve this. Symantec's Norton
Ghost would be a better choice.
Click to expand...
Rather than my describing the cloning process at this point, perhaps before
doing so it would be better if you would clarify your (your niece's)
specific objective per my comments above.
Anna
Click to expand...

Anna:

I have seen you say this many times... "If, on the other hand, your
(niece's) interest is cloning *specific* partitions from one drive to
another, then Acronis would *not* be the most desirable program to
achieve this. Symantec's Norton Ghost would be a better choice."

I have to disagree with you here - I have never had a problem cloning
a single partition from one drive to another using Acronis True Image.
I even clone ext3 (Linux) partitions without problems. Why do you
think Ghost is more suitable?

In my experience (I have Ghost 2003 latest build, Drive Image 2002,
BING, and TI 8.0 latest build) I have run into difficulty the most
using Ghost. Ghost has an extremely poor track record of recognizing
external media such as a firewire or USB 2.0 drive. Even with the
latest build of Ghost 2003, it's recognition and use of external
devices is poor at best.

As a matter of fact, I have had better luck using Drive Image 2002
from a DOS boot disk with USB 2.0 drivers loaded to create and restore
images to and from an external USB 2.0 HDD. The drivers supplied by
Symantec are Iomega drivers which I have found to be unreliable.

Anyway, I don't want to drag this on... but I think you need to take
another look at alternatives to Ghost 2003. For me Acronis True Image
works best both for cloning an entire HDD or individual partitions.

Regards.
 
»

» mrtee «

Acronis TrueImage will work just fine for this purpose.

Move the data from the 120 GB HDD to where you want it on the 200 GB HDD.
Format the 120 GB HDD to 1 logical partition. Start TI and create a backup
image of the entire 200 GB HDD to the 120. Connect the 120 to the other
computer, boot from the TI boot CD that you created when you installed it
and restore the image. Done.

You may want to do a repair install of XP after the restore, the NIC will be
different in the other machine as well as other hardware IDs. Reactivation
may be required.
 
H

Heirloom

I use Acronis and agree that, although fine for disk (partition) cloning, it
would not be the best for what the OP has in mind. My first thought,
however, is, 'Will the OP have a problem with the fact that he will be
duplicating the XP OS from one machine to another?' ....even though they
are 'identical' machines, they ARE seperate machines.....
Heirloom, old and just a thought
 
W

WM

Though the systems should be sysprepped first - there are likely very few
issues a consumer would run into in this situation...
 
A

Anna

CS said:
I have seen you say this many times... "If, on the other hand, your
(niece's) interest is cloning *specific* partitions from one drive to
another, then Acronis would *not* be the most desirable program to
achieve this. Symantec's Norton Ghost would be a better choice."

I have to disagree with you here - I have never had a problem cloning
a single partition from one drive to another using Acronis True Image.
I even clone ext3 (Linux) partitions without problems. Why do you
think Ghost is more suitable?

In my experience (I have Ghost 2003 latest build, Drive Image 2002,
BING, and TI 8.0 latest build) I have run into difficulty the most
using Ghost. Ghost has an extremely poor track record of recognizing
external media such as a firewire or USB 2.0 drive. Even with the
latest build of Ghost 2003, it's recognition and use of external
devices is poor at best.

As a matter of fact, I have had better luck using Drive Image 2002
from a DOS boot disk with USB 2.0 drivers loaded to create and restore
images to and from an external USB 2.0 HDD. The drivers supplied by
Symantec are Iomega drivers which I have found to be unreliable.

Anyway, I don't want to drag this on... but I think you need to take
another look at alternatives to Ghost 2003. For me Acronis True Image
works best both for cloning an entire HDD or individual partitions.

Regards.
Click to expand...


CS:
I'm glad to see your response because it's possible that my relative
unfamiliarity with Acronis True Image (I've been working with it for only a
couple of months) has misled me with respect to the problem I've had with
that program cloning individual partitions.

I work with the ATI program using the bootable CD created by the program. I
prefer the simplicity & portability aspects of that approach in lieu of
using the Acronis GUI. It's the way I've used the Ghost program over the
years, although in that program I'm able to use a Ghost bootable floppy disk
to carry out the cloning operation (which unfortunately, one cannot create
in the Acronis program). You can also easily create a bootable Ghost CD in
the Ghost program.

It is a simple matter to *directly* clone individual partitions from the
source disk to the destination disk using the Ghost program. But I've not
found a way to do so using the Acronis program. Based on my experience, it
would seem that the latter program permits *only* a direct disk-to-disk
clone. Please understand I have *no* interest in creating "disk images" on
removable media (CD/DVD) for backup purposes. My exclusive interest and
objective is to *directly* clone the contents (or individual partitions of a
multi-partitioned drive) from one drive to another drive.

I should add that some months ago I queried the developers of the Acronis
program about this and their response was (I think!) that the program cannot
directly clone individual partitions. (Their response was in somewhat
fractured English and possibly I misinterpreted what they were telling me).

I have used various versions of Symantec's Norton Ghost program over the
years including the current one I use - Ghost 2003. With rare exceptions
I've found this program virtually flawless. I've probably cloned more than a
thousand drives during this time with rarely a problem. I've cloned dozens
of various models of USB 2.0 external HDs and rarely have encountered
problems that were due to the Ghost program. (It is true that the Ghost
program *did* have a problem with USB EHDs but that was corrected *two*
years ago by an update to the program). Virtually every problem I've come
across involving the Ghost program was due to defective hardware, or cloning
"garbage", or user error.

So why am I using the Acronis program? I've found one significant advantage
that this program has over Ghost 2003. Speed. The cloning process is
decidedly faster -- by a factor of nearly 50% based on my experience. And
that's a real plus, no doubt about it.

So if there is a way one can *directly* clone individual partitions from one
drive to another using the ATI program, I would be much appreciative if you
could enlighten me.
Anna
 
A

Anna

Heirloom:
Would you be good enough to *precisely* tell me how to *directly* clone
individual partitions using the Acronis True Image program?
Anna
 

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