Clone Disk: Desktop PC SATA SeaGate HDD 300GB to WD/Western Digital 2.5" Notebook HDD 1TB ?

Download the ATI bootable rescue media. Boot from that and see if it recognizes your drives. If it does , that version should be good for your PC.

I would prefer that you do a Backup and Restore rather than a Clone. Backup and Restore are much safer and more flexible than cloning. There's almost never a need to clone. Backup and Restore will accomplish the same end, but in a safer procedure.

Check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left margin of this forum, particularly Getting Started and Grover's True Image Guides which are illustrated with step-by-step screenshots.

...The reason I have to use Clone Disk because to clone an exact image of bootable Windows 8 Pro HDD so
just in case the HDD is corrupted, I can directly replaced with the cloned HDD at once.

I have had problems using disk clone on my w8 pc (recent sony vaio). The clone seemd to work, but when I took out old hdd and replaced with clone, it would not boot from clone (EUFI mode)

I tried again in pretty much the most basic way:
1 back up whole (GPT dformatted) disk in disk mode to a tib file, using a third external drive.
2 replace hdd with blank hdd (drive formatted as single NTFS primary volume - not sure if this is needed but this worked)
3. boot into recovery cd (bios in legacy mode), and restore disk backup from external drive. I think you have to tick recover disk signature as well.

I then rebooted PC back in uefi mode (reset bios), and it booted up first time

So far, this is the only way I have managed to do a successful clone of my PC, and I have tried EASEUS TODO, Macrium Reflect, Paragon and even Ghost 15 (cold boot mode) and none of them worked properly.

I totally agree with Mr tuttle, backup and restore works very well, and is certainly more robust than cloning.

Ricky Gai wrote:

...The reason I have to use Clone Disk because to clone an exact image of bootable Windows 8 Pro HDD so
just in case the HDD is corrupted, I can directly replaced with the cloned HDD at once.

Backup and Restore achieve the identical as a Clone. It just requires an extra step, but is far safer. Make a Backup, Restore to the new HDD and you'll have exactly what you would have if you'd Clone, but with less risk.

Many laptops require reverse cloning in order to be successful, this entail placing the new drive into the laptop and have th eold drive in the external caddy and then clone from external drive to internal, making sure to remove the external drive on first reboot.

As Tuttle says, imaging and then restoring is a more reliable way.

...thanks for feedbacks, I understand there are better methods as suggested and I appreciated.

However, I have two notebooks and a desktop PC, all were using WD HDDs and I am using WD version of Acronis software
which clone three of my computers and run successfully, and really make my life easier.

You can download it free at here: ( only for WD Hard Disk )
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

I only want to confirm if commercial version of Acronis True Image 2013 supports CLONE DISK
between different brands and size of HDDs ? This is because, I have a server running Seagate 300GB HDD at office, and
I want use Acronis to clone it to a WD 2.5" 1TB Notebook HDD or WD Desktop 1TB HDD, is this possible ?

Please advise.

Yes, ATI supports Clone with no restrictions on brand of disk. But, we do not recommend Clone: Backup and Restore is more flexible and less risky.

...I have a bit doubt about ATI, anyhow I purchased last few days ago and use CLONE DISK to clone the notebook,
after cloned, I replaced it with the cloned HDD and the result is running OK.

QUESTIONS:

1. Is there any specific reason why Clone Disk is not recommended but Backup and Restore is the less risky solution ?
( For this question, I personally encountered using WD version of ATI, using the same notebook, the original HDD failed
to enter into Windows Desktop and stuck at the blue Windows logo with spinning animation. I tried to use Windows
default reset/refresh features all failed and causing the startup hang at blue Windows logo with spinning animation
screen forever... )

2. After installed commercial version of ATI, I do a Backup and Restore to external HDD. May I know, the next time I wish to recover,
am I going to use the Bootable Media CD to boot and restore with the data saved from the Backup and Restore HDD ?

Please advise.

Ricky,

One reason is as I mentioned, laptops especially require reverse cloning due to non standard disk layouts, The main reason however is that if you have made a complete disk image it can be recovered multiple times, whereas making a clone can be problematical if it goes wrong, as it might wipe your source drive as well as your destination drive leaving you with nothing, there is also the added bonus that you can (from within Windows) mount an image or explore it, you can also schedule extra images if you so wish.

Basically an image being recovered can be manipulated and clones can't. The only manipulation you can perform with clones is to resize the partition and as I said if you make a mistake you could lose everything.

Colin,

1. I am a bit unclear about the "Disk and Partition backup", is it the one you referred to as "complete disk image it can be recovered multiple times" ?

2. Is "Disk and Partition backup" able to backup all my data on HDD ? Currently, the HDD is taking 600GB spaces out of 1TB and
the backup file is around 170GB. Question, is 170GB of file size a compressed format ? if I boot with the media startup CD created by Acronis and restore using the backup file into a NEW empty HDD, is the restored disk contents the same as the original source disk or it just covered the partition sections only ?

3. For "laptops especially require reverse cloning due to non standard disk layouts" as you mentioned, I did a CLONE DISK between same 2.5" notebook HDD size and brand via WD edition of Acronis under Windows 8 Pro x64. The result is causing both HDDs failed to startup properly and cannot enter into Windows desktop screen as well, is there any explanation ? ( By the way, from the WD Acronis website: http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en, the supported operating system of Windows 8 is not listed on that side, is this one of the fault may cause the HDD cloning failure ? )

4. What is reverse cloning ?

Please advise.

Ricky,

4. Look at my post #5 above, I explain reverse cloning there.

3. I don't use WD edition, somethings are slightly different, but generally some laptops have a different drive geometry to PC's this can cause the Windows boot manager to be confused as to where it is supposed to be booting after a clone.

To get a more accurate reply, we would need to know exactly what happens as you try to boot, including blue screen and error numbers or any text messages.

2. A disk image will take all the used data on your hard drive, think of it as a type of clone but stored in a file, similar to a zip file.

When you make disk images you ahve a choice of making a complete disk image or just individual partitions. In your case you need a complete disk image.

1. Any image whether disk, partition or even file backups can be recovered many times, so long as you don't delete the image of course.

The added advantage of a disk/partition image is that you can make incremental or diferential images at a later stage so your image will always be up to date. You can also just make extra complete disk images at any time if you ahve the space.

Colin,

1. "...The added advantage of a disk/partition image is that you can make incremental or diferential images at a later stage..."
- Does this means, is it OK to restore the image into a larger size of HDD as well ?

2. "...you ahve a choice of making a complete disk image or just individual partitions..."
- the "Switch to disk mode" or "Switch to partition mode" you mean ?

3. "...To get a more accurate reply, we would need to know exactly what happens as you try to boot, including blue screen and error numbers or any text messages"
- There is no blue screen at startup, it just stuck at the spinning logo for a long time.

Please advise.

1. Yes you can, but the main idea of making eitherincrementals or differential images is as you add or remove programs or add and remove data such as pictures and emails etc, you are able to recover your system to any state between when you first made the main image and the last time you made an inbetween one. Of course this doesn't have to be manually, you can set up a schedule within True Image to ahve this done automatically.

2. Yes.

3. The Windows spinning logo? This in your case is probably caused by either some file is now in a different place on the hard drive after the clone, or there is some software utility that is provided by the maker of your laptop which is unhappy at being on a disk that is different to the original.

There have been other reports that some Sony laptops aren't happy when their hardware is changed.

Have you checked in your BIOS/UEFI that you didn't make any alterations in order to clone?

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? I have a laptop that had a 100GB drive which i backed up using true image 2013 Plus. I then inserted my new 1 TB drive and recovered my drive by recovering partition and sector by sector. i end up with a C: 88.56GB which was my original drive size and 843.0GB unallocated drive. how do i make the drive 931.5GB

Ming,

Don't use sector by sector recovery, use the normal recovery option and either allow True Image to auto adjust the partition sizes or select the manual partition adjustment option. Do not, adjust the System Reserve partition in size, this is normally 100MB in size but on some OEM machines it can be a few gigabytes as the manufacturer recovery data is stored there - Lenovo machines from 2012 onwards a case in point.

let me give you more information, I had a SATA 100GB drive on my Lenovo laptop T60p now i replaced it with a Seagate SSHD 1TB SATA drive.
it only replaces my original drive but i can't use the remaining 842.95 GB of the drive. i tried doing what you said it didn't work either. what am i doing wrong or is it the SSD drive that is the problem.
Ming