Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Upgrading to New Hard Drive - Cloning Old Drive

Dec 25, 2010 9:54AM PST

So on my home built Vista 64 computer, I inevitably ran out of space on my two hard drives (Master - Seagate Barracuda 160gb ST3160815AS, Slave - Seagate Barracuda 160gb ST3160023A), and ended up buying a new Western Digital 1tb WD1002FAEX hard drive.

I had hoped to clone the original master drive onto the new WD drive, and then copy over individual files from the slave drive. I saw that many people recommended Acronis for the cloning, and Western Digital even had their own version of it, so I tried using that, and ran the cloning function multiple times. Each time, I would start the process, my computer would reboot, and then after the bios screen I would see the progress bar. Once the process was complete, it would reboot again, but nothing would be different. I couldn't boot up from the new drive, nor did it show up under 'my computer'.

So pretty much, are there any other ways to copy my original hard drive to the new one, or any suggestions to get Acronis working properly. Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
So you used the WD cloning SW or you bought the Acronis
Dec 25, 2010 11:44AM PST

product ? If Acronis what version ?

And if you ran Acronis .... did you run it from a boot CD or from Windows ?

Have you disconnected the 'old HDD' ?

VAPCMD

- Collapse -
WD cloning
Dec 25, 2010 12:18PM PST

I used Acronis True Image WD Edition, http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119. Also tried the 15 day trial of Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0

Downloaded/installed those versions and ran them from windows. After the cloning was done, I tried booting from the new drive multiple times with the old drive disconnected and again with it connected, each time getting "NTLDR is missing, Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart"

- Collapse -
Check with
Dec 25, 2010 12:52PM PST

WD and Acronis to find out if version of SW supports cloning from 512B/sector to 4KB drives.

- Collapse -
I've never cloned a drive that way....only from 'bootable'
Dec 25, 2010 1:14PM PST

floppy disk (Ghost 2003) or more recently from a bootable CD using Acronis 11.

Does your system still run from the 'original' boot drive ?

VAPCMD

- Collapse -
Worked after booting from disk
Dec 26, 2010 12:43AM PST

I just made a boot disk using 'Acronis Bootable Media Builder,' then booted from that with all my drives connected. The disk then copied over, and I'm now smoothly running from my new drive. Thanks a lot!

For anyone else doing this, I guess the boot disk is key, and you should run Acronis and clone from that. Thanks again

- Collapse -
Great.....good to hear you got it solved and Thanks for
Dec 26, 2010 1:49AM PST

following up with the 'outcome'.

I use Acronis to create complete image backups of each partition so in the event one of my hard drives dies...I replace the failed drive and restore the image(s) which are stored on another drive (and backed up to an external HDD as well). It makes recovery from OS corruption, virus infection or drive failure much much quicker and far less painful than other methods of getting back up and running.

VAPCMD