HD Cloning / Acronis Issue

I have a 320GB 7200rpm SATA drive that I loaded from scratch, but still couldn't get it to work my SD reader in the CF-30, even though the original 80GB has no such problem. After weeks of back and forth with Panny Tech (nice people, but no solution), and trying everything that was suggested, I've temporarily given up.

So, I picked up a brand new 160Gb 7200rpm SATA HD with the idea that maybe the capacity of the other drive could be an issue, power-wise (Panny idea).

I tried to clone the 320 using Acronis, as suggested here, but it always said operation failed. Gave up and loaded it from scratch. I now created an Acronis boot disc, set up the 120Gb in a USB case, left the OEM 80Gb in the CF-30, and tried to clone the 120Gb. Everything set up fine, but when I started Acronis, it ended up "operation completed, with errors" after less than 2 seconds - obviously it failed. So, what am I missing here ? I've tried to clone 2 different drives, both using Acronis on the 80Gb drive, and separately on a boot disk, and can never get it to work. Acronis doesn't give any idea what the problem might be, so I'm left to guess what the problem could be. Any Acronis guru here available to guide me on how to correctly clone one drive to the other ? I've followed Acronis instructions, and suggestions on previous threads here, but nothing....TIA

 

Most of my experience with imaging in the commercial realm has been with Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition/Solution Suite; however, for a straight disk-to-disk clone where the destination drive is larger than the source drive, you might consider given the Open Source software Clonezilla a try. Here are their instructions for cloning a smaller disk to a larger disk.


Matthew

 

Larry,
I have tried a few differnt cloning utilities over the years. :GEEK: I have used Ghost on several occations with great success, however it costs $70 for the latest version. They do offer a 30-day trial, but I don't know if it is limited in any other way besides the time. As far as free utilities, I highly reccomend EaseUS Todo Backup. I have come to depend on using this backup & cloning tool over the past months as it has a simple & easy to use interface, great on-line support (Which I have only HAD to use once to find out how to do something), and is FREE!!:yes: My copy of Ghost is a little dated and needed to be upgraded. Since it was a corporate edition from a job I had 6+ years ago, there was no chance of an 'upgrade' incentive from Symantec! I decided to try this free utility after it was reccomended by Computer Shopper magazine (I think-It was one of my computer mags anyway) and I have never looked back. Since I don't work for them, and it doesn't cost any moeny, I don't feel so bad giving out a shameless plug for the software :tongue:

I have done over 50 clones with this program and I have only had two fail. The first failure was due to a disk error. The owner had waited to long before doing a back-up and offered me reconstruction fees if I could get all of his data off of the old HDD, and would be jumping for joy if I could make it just like it was. The motor was going bad in the disk, so I replaced it with an exact motor out of a duplicate drive with a set of bad platters and poooof worked like a charm. Since it was a hardwire failure and not the program, I didn't hold it against the software.

The second failure drove me crazy for almost two days!! I had a 2.5 HDD in an enclosure and was trying to get a 80Gb HDD to a 320Gb HDD (both IDE). The software would start normally and start to read the information on the 'copy from' drive (I do all low level cloning - sector by sector), and as soon as it went to clone that information into the external HDD, it would fail. I tried another drive that had already been placed in another enclosure, and it worked perfect. So after fussing and figting with it, the enclosure was the issue. It didn't matter what HDD I put into the enclosure, it wouldn't clone. It worked fine in Windows, as well as on a MAC, for data and program storage. For some reason that specific enclosure, which I haven't seen one of in over a year, wouldn't allow the disk level access needed for the copy method. (It was a cheap $1.50 enclosure I got off of eBay as a throw-in gift with another auction)

Anyway, Todo Backup had performed excellent for me on many occations. The only thing I haven't done with it yet is to create a bootable CD/DVD for installing a clone image onto a disk at boot. This is something that I did quite often in Ghost as 'back-up' media on refurb systems missing the origional disks.

Just my $0.02

Beau K1SFD

 

I had good luck with Acronis but I clone using my desktop and the two drives set up in usb enclosures. If you search there was a post re cloning a few months back.
Good luck

 

What version/flavor of Acronis are you using?
Are trying to do this clone by USB?
If so, that is most likely the issue.
Pull the drives and connect them to a machine directly to the MBoard.
I have a machine setup for just cloning.
Did that after I dicovered the USB did not always do exact clone.

Best wishes
N

 

I just tried EaseUS, after making a boot disk, and after 83% it said "sector error"
Acronis doesn't even get that far. The 80Gb is 4 months old, and the 320 and 160 are brand new, so I don't think there's a hardware issue here. I am trying with the new drive in an external USB case, via bootable CD, but no luck. I'd try a direct mount to the MB but I don't own a desktop computer - just 4 laptops of various ages and abilities...so I'll have to see if I can "borrow" a friend's desktop, I guess...

 

Try what NlightN said, I had the same problem until I made a dedicated cloning machine. Since then I haven't had a problem with any of my drives, and I've done about 100 or so for desktops and laptops

 

HI,
I don't have any answers. Larry seems to have been fighting this problem for quite a while. While he has been trying to do this, I have ordered a new 100 mB drive, received it, cloned it (with a few minor problems, mostly my fault) and it has been running fine for several weeks. I used my CF-29's USB port. It works. I have been monitoring this soap opera from afar in total amazement.

Speaking for myself, a computer user and not a professional repairman, I think setting up a special machine just for cloning is not practical for a lot of reasons. I would seldom use it. Certainly, it would not be my primary machine. There must be a better answer. Come on you guy's, put your thinking caps on.

Something seems fundamentally wrong here. This should be a piece of cake.

Larry, the only thing I can suggest is to bite the bullet and buy Ghost. Don't you think at this point in your adventure that saving the purchase price of Ghost is a false economy? Ghost would definitely be cheaper than setting up a special computer, both time and money wise, unless you have spare pieces sitting around. I don't and I build my own machines. I know Ghost works and you do not need to be a professional to use it. I never trust free software and seldom use it.

I follow the old saw, "You get what you pay for". I'm funny that way.

Sparky

 

I recomend doing a fresh install using the restore disks

It takes a bit of time to download updates and upgraded drivers, but it is a good learning experiance

Alex

 

Eh, that's what he did first, isn't it? Unfortunately it did not work out properly, it seems.

Given that he already seems to have bought True Image, in his situation I would be hesitant to buy another product which may not do the job. TI usually works as well, and judging by a quick Google search Ghost and TI seem to be roughly on the same level regarding reviews, performance - and problems, unfortunately. You are right though, this is an odd situation, given that this should normally be very simple.

cruiserlarry, have you tried not cloning the drive directly, and rather make a backup/image of the original 80GB drive to some third external drive (not the 320GB one), then switch the 80GB and the 320GB, and then restore the image onto the 320GB drive? I think it is possible to restore to a drive of a different size, I could be wrong though.

Björn

 

Contact Acronis support. You'll need your install key and will need to create an account on Acronis.com if you haven't already. You may need a newer version of Acronis than what you're using, or Acronis may provide you with a special ISO file to use. If you post in their support forums ( http://forum.acronis.com/) they're very good about finding a solution.

 

I wasn't intending for him to build his own dedicated cloning machine, I was simply stating that I agreed with another member in performing this action solved the problem that I had (which was very similar to his). Building a dedicated machine for myself was a good investment for me since I do alot of computer repairs and setups. Just because it was a good thing for me to do doesn't me I'm pushing it on everyone else. It was just my 2 cents, take it or leave it

Dan

 

Just thought I'd update anyone interested in the final result.

A friend of mine is an IT tech; he took my 320GB drive, my 160GB drive (bought this after Pani said a 320GB couldn't work - WRONG !!), and the original 80GB drive that came with the CF-30. He used Norton Ghost, and was able to clone both new HDs with no issues. I've used both in the machine, and everything works perfectly. He did the cloning externally, using a bench set up he has for upgrading his client's machines.

So, I'm in business. The 320GB has been in the CF-30 for about 3 weeks now, everything is great, programs are running a bit faster (and loading faster), and battery life doesn't seem to have been aftected much, if at all.

Thank you, all, for your suggestions and assistance - as always your help and support is appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving to all !!!

 

I am using a 500GB drive in my cf-30 mk-2
No problems either



Alex

 

I am using a 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN HDD on my Time Warner 8240 HD cable box... no problems there either.

mnem
"You currently have 282 recordings. 70% disc space remaining."

 

I have used Ghost and Acronis. I recommend Acronis. I am no guru, but I found that it is much easer to make one DVD restore solutions then having to use Bart's PE and Ghost together to try and approximate this same thing. If you do go with Ghost I would download a copy of the "Ratified Guide to Ghost." It is a handy little guide that this kid put together that works great on getting you up to speed quickly.

All this said, I have not used the latest Ghost, but I am currently using Acronis True Image 10.

Sorry, that is what little "help" on this subject that I could give!

 

I figured out how to do this with ATI 2010, so i am quite positive you can!

 

Another free program to clone HDD's . .

HDClone - http://www.miray.de

Worked a dream for me . . upgraded from 40Gb to 160Gb - perfect clone, just required one reboot of XP after it updated the S.M.A.R.T. drivers thingy

 

I use Acronis and have never had any issues. I have an external HDD with two partitions on it, the first is the boot partition with Acronis on it the second is where all the drive images are stored. I have severial different CF-18 images and have never had an issue with them. When you do your backup are you making sure you only select the partition with your operating system on it and not the one with Acronis on it?