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Problem cloning with Acronis True image 2020

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Beginner
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Comments: 5

Hi everyone! I am new in this forum. My name is Jens and I live in Italy. I just bought Acronis True Image 2020 because I need to upgrade my ssd drive in my ASUS Zenbook Pro which I bought earlier this year. It now mounts a 512 gb ssd and want to change it to a 1tb Samsung Evo 970 (the faster model) which I have already bought. My problem is that when I boot from a usb pen with the new ssd mounted in the laptop and the old ssd connected by usb I can olny see the new ssd and the usb pen. In this way there is no way for me to choose the old ssd as source disc. From within Windows I can see the new ssd in Acronis True Image app if connected in the usb box, but I want to clone with the help of the bootable media on the pen drive. Is there an easy fix in order for me to see the old ssd connected with the usb box when booting with the usb pen? I hope you understood my poor explanation, English is my third language and I am not very familiar with the correct computer terms. I thank you in advance if anyone can give me a hand.

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Legend
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Jens, welcome to these public User Forums.

Are your old SSD and the new Samsung 970 EVO SSD both of the same type and connect in the same way?  Or are they 2 different types of SSD, i.e. one a SATA drive, the other NVMe M.2 card?

The first important recommendation is that you should make a full Disk backup of your working current SSD drive to an external backup drive before attempting to using cloning!  This is your safety net in case of problems, errors etc.

The next important recommendation is that you should create the Acronis Rescue Media using the Simple mode for the media builder tool and ensure that you know how to boot this using the same BIOS mode as your Windows OS uses.

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

KB 63252: Acronis True Image 2020: how to back up files or disks

KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media

KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

Beginner
Posts: 1
Comments: 5

Thank you Steve for your reply! 

Both drives, new and old, are SSD drives if same connection type. 

I gave already tried all the steps you suggest but nothing have worked so far.

I will give it one more try tomorrow. 

Today I picked up my laptop at a computer repair store in town. They've had my laptop for two days without managing to clone my old drive to the new. Or to be correct they managed to clone but the new drive did not boot. Same problem as I have had.

I have made a full back up on an external Samsung SSD USB drive for safety and I have created a bootable media disc on an USB key drive (which now noticed the computer store forgot to give me back). I'll go pick it up tomorrow morning.

The computer store said that my old ssd might have some problems since it can't be cloned correctly. 

 

Anyhow I'll give a try again. I'm not giving up though I'm getting quite tired of trying. 

I'll let you know if I have any luck in the next few days. 

Best, Jens. 

Beginner
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Comments: 5

This is my new ssd card. 

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Beginner
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The factory ssd is listed to be connected with m.2 sata3. My laptop specifications can be seen in the picture below (in Italian but it should be comprehensive for a computer guy anyhow). 

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Forum Hero
Posts: 59
Comments: 9378

Jens,

Your last post stated your factory SSD to be connected with M.2 SATA 3.  This is not possible.  M.2 connects via PCIe, SATA 3 is the last generation of the SATA protocol connection.

I had a look at your machine manual.  I recommend that you start the computer and enter the bios by pressing the F2 key repeatedly while the computer starts until you see the setup screen.  Once in setup look for the Boot tab and select it.  Now look for Boot Options.  You should be able to click on the boot option shown to select a boot option.

What you ultimately want to have as your boot option is Windows Boot Manager.  If you can, ask your repair shop if they disconnected the factory SSD before attempting to boot the new M.2 drive.  If they did not that is why your machine will not boot in all likelihood.  If they did not disconnect the drive then have them do so.  They can then set the bios boot option to Windows Boot Manager and the machine will then boot as intended

Forum Member
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Comments: 33

Enchantech, this is not correct. M.2 supports SATA3 and USB3. It is a multi-functional port. Please refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2 for an overview of the M.2 spec.

Cloning to an M.2 mSATA to a M.2 NVMe boot drive takes quite a bit of work, but can be done with the right tools. It is not a direct cloning process.

Beginner
Posts: 1
Comments: 5

Thank you Enchantech. 

I'm not sure what and how they did it in the store. I've lost the trust in them somewhat because I was sure they would manage to clone my pc but instead I got it back as before. 

Pic of the factory and new ssd below. 

 

I'll write again towards this evening (now it's 6AM). 

Thank you very much! 

 

Beginner
Posts: 1
Comments: 5

Sorry but I'm not able to upload the photos. They are probably to big. 

Anyhow I cloned the factory ssd again to my new ssd connected by USB. I checked the boot in bios and it is set to Windows ssd Samsung 970EvoPlus. But it won't boot anyhow.

As soon as the store opens I'll go to get my pendrive with the Acronis boot disc on. Then I'll clone again but this time with the new disc mounted inside the laptop and with the factory ssd in the USB box connected to the laptop.

Forum Member
Posts: 3
Comments: 33

Jens, if your old drive is a M.2 SATA drive, doing a direct clone to the M.2 NVMe drive will not produce a bootable NVMe drive. I posted some info on the problems you will encounter when doing this, as well as how to produce a bootable NVMe drive at: https://forum.acronis.com/comment/522169#comment-522169

Forum Hero
Posts: 59
Comments: 9378

Jens,

As I said before your boot order should be Windows Boot Manager not to the Samsung 970EVOPlus drive itself.  The reason for that is that an NVMe drive will only boot via UEFI and the drive must be formatted as GPT.

I confirmed the above using your machine manual, your machine boots via UEFI so cloning the factory drive to the new should work fine.  I am confident the problem is how your boot order is set.