Informed Webmaster

I finally went out earlier today and picked up a new drive to install in my BlacX toaster device to clone from my C: drive. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a 1TB drive, so, based on the software stating I can clone to a different sized drive, I went on a hunch, picked up a 2TB drive, and hoped it would work. It did.

The true test with any backup, is testing the integrity of the backup. To do that, I'll have to remove (or just unplug) my current drive, and they try plugging in and booting from the cloned drive. I'm hoping that there won't be any issue since I'm going to be booting from a clone which is a larger drive. It should work and I will have to try it going forward at some point. There was one small snag when I did this in the past, but not a big deal. I think the only sw that had problems was Quickbooks. I found a way online to get around it.

What with all the issues trying to do this recently (I think the clone disk I was using went bad) I'm just glad the cloning seemed to work.

Anyone with experience in backup cloning drives, please chime in.

I used Acronis (paid version) going from a 1TB HD to 500GB SSD with zero problems. Also did it DW's little puter using the free version with no problems.

I finally have a version of the sw that doesn't require having to exit Windows with a reboot, to enable the cloning process. Timing to make that happen (at least on my machine) required a certain combination of turning on the external at a certain point so as not to confuse the machine during this out of windows cloning experience. I'm not comfortable with modifying elements in the bios.

I don't recall what I have. I could have modified the BIOS put when it shut down I unplugged one drive and switched the cables to make the new drive the boot drive.

Well, here's the scary part - After the cloning process finished, there were no apparent issues. However, when I look at the drive properties of both, my clone drive (it's a newer 2TB drive) shows 285 GB used space. My C: drive (older 1TB drive) shows 351 GB used space.

Fearing that the clone process might have missed a few folders, or at the very least, missed some contents within some of them, I compared folder by folder on each drive. I did the comparison just now: the properties of each folder are pretty much identical. I did find a difference of roughly 1GB more on the C: drive when comparing the Windows directory. Also, the clone drive Windows directory has 2 extra folders. But that doesn't make up a difference of 66GB overall between drives.

I very seriously doubt that it missed anything. Redundant backups or old downloads may not have copied.

Did your old drive perhaps have a hidden partition where a backup copy of windows resided?

Maybe, but even hidden folders should be transferred across. But then I'd be using that word "assume".

I don't think the sw is deficient to not count the size and folders of even any hidden things. I'll have to look into it further. Maybe there's an Acronis forum somewhere I can pose this question.

There is https://forum.acronis.com/ but it doesn't look real active to me.