How can I clone or restore a MBR disk to a GPT disk in Acronis True Image 2015?

Not knowing anything about your system it is impossible to offer a path for you to go down or solution. I suggest that you take a look at the Web Help link on the left side of this page, expand the directory tree for Recovering Data, expand Recovering Disks and Partitions, expand Recovering partitions and disks then, expand Migration Method. Look through the resulting list for a system that matches yours for details on how you might achieve your objective.

@Enchantech Thanks for your suggestion. The link says that it is supported and that it should work, but that is not the case.

What happens is to choose add new disk and leave it as GPT? Does it become visible for restore then?

It is always visible. However, it is grayed out. I have tried MBR, GPT or with no partition information what so ever. I can do an add or delete disk. When I add it I can select MBR or GPT and that works fine. However, I can't clone to it or do a restore to it.

And it is the same behavior from Windows and the CD?

Can you restore a backup to that disk?

Same behavior from Windows and the CD. No, I can't restore a backup to that disk. That is the most egregious part of the problem. I would have been horrified if my disk had failed and I bought a larger disk and could not restore to it and not have a way of figuring out that it was not the backup but the backup software that was the problem.

As Enchantech has stated, you haven't provided details about your system. That being said, I can tell you it makes a difference how the TI recovery media is boot. On a UEFI system, you can boot the media either in BIOS/Legacy mode or UEFI mode. TI will make different decisions based on how it was booted. If you boot TI in UEFI mode and attempt to restore a MBR disk, TI will convert it to a GPT disk on restore. If you boot the media in BIOS/Legacy mode, TI will keep it as a MBR disk on restore.

In your case, you are attempting to restore a MBR disk to a disk larger than 2 TB. This will complicate matters further.

As a first step, you should try booting the recovery media both in BIOS/Legacy and UEFI mode and see if it makes a difference on making your target disk available for restore. You could also try creating a 2 TB partition on the target disk leaving the rest of the space unallocated to see if that makes any difference. It can also make a difference based on how the target disk is attached to you system. Did you attach it using a USB enclosure?

What details would you like to know about the system?

The large drive is composed of 4 x 640 GB Western Digital WD6401AALS-00 SATA drives in RAID 0 controlled by a 78LMT-USB3 motherboard. I had previously had the drives in RAID 10 before "upgrading" to the 2 TB Toshiba DT01ACA200 SATA drive a year ago. The system drive is also attached to the motherboard but with standard SATA configuration. I also have a 128 GB Corsair CMFSSD-128GBG2D SSHD on the motherboard. True Image had no problem with transitioning from RAID 10 to a single SATA drive. However, the single drive, though it offers more space, is considerably slower than the RAID 10 configuration and RAID 0 is considerably faster than the RAID 10. Now that I have True Image reliably backing up my system each day I am willing to go out on a limb with the RAID 0 configuration with the expectation that I can drop back to the 2 TB drive in the event of a disk failure. Oddly enough the RAID 0 disk outperforms the solid state drive.

I have a daily scheduled backup to a 2 TB USB 2 attached external hard drive. I also have a 2 TB USB 3 attached external hard drive.

I will try booting in both in BIOS/Legacy and UEFI mode and see if that helps.

There must be some information on that disk that makes ATI believe it is unsuitable as a clone destination or a restore. Could the disk have been part of some OS driven RAID/stripped/mirrored set up or some Windows 8.1 space or something of that ilk? No PCI-e Sata adapter right?

Curious that the SSD is slower than RAID0. Is your SSD aligned?

No information on the disk. I added it with ATI and had it formatted. Copied the contents of Drive C: to it for good measure. Ran the performance tests. Every thing checked out fine.

The drive is connected directly to the motherboard. Is happy and productive under Windows. No PCI-e board anywhere.

RAID 0 with four drives is really fast. Think of it as four SATA running in parallel.

First you should check to make certain you have the latest bios revision installed on your motherboard.

Second, follow Mustangs advice and enable UEFI boot when booting from the Recovery Media and the advice he gives in his last paragraph is sound.

Third, given that the SSD installed in your system is an SATA II drive and your raid 0 is running on SATA III drives on an SATA III interface I am not surprised that the raid 0 outperforms the SSD.

The transfer rate for the RAID 0 drive is over 400 MB/Sec while the SSD is specked at 220 MB/Sec and delivers 200 MB/Sec.

I will try booting in both in BIOS/Legacy and UEFI mode and see if that helps.

I tried EFI Boot for CD/DVD (it was previously set to Auto). It allows me to select the RAID 0 Drive as source but not as the destination for drive cloning. It does not allow me to select it as the destination for restore. In EFI boot mode it takes about 10 minutes (as measured by a stop watch) to display the list of destination drives. It takes about a minute or so to generate the list of source drives.

I used ATI to "add disk" first as GPT then as MBR. No change. I then booted to windows and I still can't select the drive as the destination. In MBR format there are two partitions one is 2 TB which can be formatted. the other is 336.18 GB which cannot be formatted.

Since you are having trouble selecting the RAID 0 array as the target, you should try making a WinPE recovery media. Boot it in UEFI mode. You will see a command prompt open followed by the TI GUI. Leave the TI GUI open and select the command prompt. Enter the following two lines to start the A43 file manager utility:

cd \Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\A43
A43.exe

Make sure your RAID 0 array is shown as a single drive with a single drive letter. Right click on the drive and select Properties. Make sure the capacity is shown as the sum of the four drives. If the RAID 0 drives are shown as four separate drives with four drive letters, you will need to add the proper RAID drivers to the WinPE media as it is being created. Then the RAID 0 array should show as a single large drive.

Once you have proved the RAID 0 drive is correctly shown as one large drive, you can go back to the TI GUI and try your restore again.

If that doesn't work, you should open a support case with Acronis. Recovery support is free even after the free support 30 day period has expired.

James,

With your disk connected your system, type msinfo32 into the run command. In the left hand pane expand components, expand storage, and then select disks. Find your disk in the right hand pane and look at the value next to Bytes/Sector. If the value is 4096, then your target disk is a native 4K sector disk. Your 2TB disk is a 512e sector disk which means it has 4096 byte physical sectors, but emulates 512 bytes to the system. At this time there are no disk imaging programs that support system migration from a 512/512e sector disk to a native 4K sector disk.

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50193.aspx

@Joey, the Bytes/Sector is 1024 for the RAID drive (see attached). 512 bytes/sector for everything else. The link talks about 4096 bytes/sector drives. It does not mention 1024 bytes/sector drives. However, it suggests that the issue is with MFT records which are 1024 bytes long. This would be a problem for 4096 byte/sector drives but should not be a problem for 1024 byte/sector drives.

@mustang,I have not problem selecting the RAID drive as the source. It shows up as a single drive with the proper size in the True Image GUI.

How do I request Recovery support?

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/contact-us.html

Use the link above and enter your account information into the drop down menus. If you purchased the software more than 30 days ago, the forum will be the only option. Clicking the link next to solve recovery issues will activate the chat and email options.

You should mention that disk has 1024 byte physical sectors to support.

I was able to open a recovery issue. They asked me to generate a system report. Buried deep inside I found this:

TOSHIBA DT01ACA200
Disk 1 properties:
BIOS number: 0x80
Geometry: 258402 240 63
Total sectors: 3907029168
Logical Sector Size: 512
Physical Sector Size: 4096
Logical Sector Offset: 0

AMD 4+0 Stripe/RAID0 1.10
Disk 3 properties:
BIOS number: 0x81
Geometry: 155618 255 63
Total sectors: 2500000000
Logical Sector Size: 1024
Physical Sector Size: 1024
Logical Sector Offset: 0

My system drive has a logical sector size of 512 and a physical sector size of 4096 while the RAID drive has a logical and physical sector size of 1024.

I also found out that True Image does not think that there is enough space on the RAID drive to put the contents of the system drive (see screen shot).