Question on cloning hard drives

[Russ Smith]

Was upgrading a user from an older XP system to a new Win 7 last week. Did the full install on the new machine that was given to me by my boss and when we went to do Windows Easy Transfer, it informed us the HD was too small Not sure but we think way back when they shipped the wrong size HD with the machine and my boss hadn't used it and hadn't realized.

Luckily the user is in the type of job where he uses lots of hardware and he had a spare 500Gb drive(the other one was 100). So rather than swap drives and do the install all over, we decided to download the paid version of Acronis and try cloning it.

It worked, the new drive ran, there were a couple of issues with a mapped drive that didn't work initially but after clicking on it, it started working. Same with administror it said there was no regular administrator set up but it was there and after clicking on it, it then allowed it to run(we needed that do do Easy Transfer).

I noticed when reading over the manual that in one place it seemed to be recommending put the new drive in the laptop, the old drive in the disk dock and then clone. Yet in another it seemed to be saying the opposite, new drive in the dock, old drive in laptop then clone? I googled it and there seems to be back and forth on that.

Any feedback, does it matter? We have another user who seems to have some intermittent issues and we'll probably need to clone his drive soon(same size) so I wanted to know in advance.

Probably naive question but if I put the new drive in the laptop and the old drive in the dock and clone. What do I have to do to the new drive first? Just initialize it using disk manager and then put it in? I have Acronis on CD so I'm assuming I could swap the drives, boot off the CD and run Acronis but wasn't sure.

 

[Chaz]

Was upgrading a user from an older XP system to a new Win 7 last week. Did the full install on the new machine that was given to me by my boss and when we went to do Windows Easy Transfer, it informed us the HD was too small Not sure but we think way back when they shipped the wrong size HD with the machine and my boss hadn't used it and hadn't realized.

Luckily the user is in the type of job where he uses lots of hardware and he had a spare 500Gb drive(the other one was 100). So rather than swap drives and do the install all over, we decided to download the paid version of Acronis and try cloning it.

It worked, the new drive ran, there were a couple of issues with a mapped drive that didn't work initially but after clicking on it, it started working. Same with administror it said there was no regular administrator set up but it was there and after clicking on it, it then allowed it to run(we needed that do do Easy Transfer).

I noticed when reading over the manual that in one place it seemed to be recommending put the new drive in the laptop, the old drive in the disk dock and then clone. Yet in another it seemed to be saying the opposite, new drive in the dock, old drive in laptop then clone? I googled it and there seems to be back and forth on that.

Any feedback, does it matter? We have another user who seems to have some intermittent issues and we'll probably need to clone his drive soon(same size) so I wanted to know in advance.

Probably naive question but if I put the new drive in the laptop and the old drive in the dock and clone. What do I have to do to the new drive first? Just initialize it using disk manager and then put it in? I have Acronis on CD so I'm assuming I could swap the drives, boot off the CD and run Acronis but wasn't sure.

Typically I would install the new drive first and boot from the cd to run the clone operation but it really doesn't matter. I just like to get the hardware change over with so when the clone is done the job is done. If you are less sure that a successful clone will be completed then leave the old drive in so it is easier to revert to the existing setup.

Keep in mind also you may have to expand the the partition once cloned to the bigger drive to use all the additional space.
Some cloning software has options to clone and resize the partition and some just creates the same size partition on the new drive and you still have the same space issues until it is expanded.

 

[Russ Smith]

Typically I would install the new drive first and boot from the cd to run the clone operation but it really doesn't matter. I just like to get the hardware change over with so when the clone is done the job is done. If you are less sure that a successful clone will be completed then leave the old drive in so it is easier to revert to the existing setup.

Keep in mind also you may have to expand the the partition once cloned to the bigger drive to use all the additional space.
Some cloning software has options to clone and resize the partition and some just creates the same size partition on the new drive and you still have the same space issues until it is expanded.

Yeah Acronis has a choice of as is or increase which basically multiplies the size of each partition by however much you increase the drive. So a drive 5X bigger the partitions are all 5X bigger. We chose that so had plenty of room for the Easy Transfer.

It was the first one I'd done so I was a bit leery of taking the old drive out until I had it cloned. Worked just fine though I was just wondering if the issue with the administrator and one mapped drive may have been because I didn't do the cloning with the new drive in the laptop. I guess I'll try it that way the next time.

 

[Russ Smith]

I would add, be VERY careful you know what you're getting when buying Acronis. I didn't realize 1 computer literally meant one computer. I had a very difficult time in the download it doesn't want to write an actual copy of the app it wants to burn the installer and then you install on the computer you're cloning. That's what I ultimately did, figuring I'd uninstall it later in case I needed to use it again.

I then installed it on my own computer so I could try and make a working CD copy of it, and then got a message telling me I had activated too many copies of it and need to resolve it. So I tried to uninstall from mine and can't. It's no longer in add or remove programs, but still on my machine. I can't use it because of the too many activations. Googling reveals this is a VERY common issue with them, uninstall doesn't work. They make a special tool for it but even they warn you it might cause other problems such as registry.

It actually even screwed up my windows backup because it wanted me to use Acronis not windows. I got rid of that issue but I still have the program.

Finally sent them an email asking what do I do now. Should I buy a 3 computer CD copy, how do I uninstall it without screwing up my computer etc.