Help Using Acronis

Merry Xmas all,

I wanting to transfer my Win 7 OS hard drive over to a new hard drive that I have just installed into my system. I dont want to do a fresh install as i have way too many programs to re install.

Now the source drive is smaller than my destination drive, so space is not an issue.

Do i just do the auto clone and then unplug my original drive and boot from the new drive after cloning?

Can someone post a simple step by step on the asiest way of doing this procedure?

Thanks in advance

Clarification needed:

Do you mean that the source PARTITION on the original drive is smaller than the entire new drive?

Or are you referring to "drives" or "occupied space" or ??

Does the new drive now have no partitions? One partition? Two partitions? More?

A picture of Disk Management would help.

ignatzatsonic said:

Clarification needed:

Do you mean that the source PARTITION on the original drive is smaller than the entire new drive?

Or are you referring to "drives" or "occupied space" or ??

Does the new drive now have no partitions? One partition? Two partitions? More?

A picture of Disk Management would help.

Ok;

Old drive with OS: 74gb
New Drive: 300gb

New drive wont be partioned.

A hard drive will not work if it is not partitioned.

I still don't know the answers to my original questions.

Drives and partitions are not synonyms.

As I said, a picture of Disk Management would help.

ignatzatsonic said:

A hard drive will not work if it is not partitioned.

I still don't know the answers to my original questions.

Drives and partitions are not synonyms.

As I said, a picture of Disk Management would help.

My Apologies;

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/5277/39401954.png

I want to clone the 'windows' drive to the 'games drive' and run the OS from the games drive.

OK. Looks like 4 drives, with each having 1 partition.

You want to clone C to E.

C is 69 gigs, with 9 free. E is 279 gigs, virtually all free.

I have used Acronis for imaging and have read what I can on Acronis cloning. I have NEVER actually cloned with Acronis.

Looks to me like you should not have any issues.

You might want to defrag C before starting.

Go to Acronis, locate the cloning tool, choose automatic, then choose source and destination drive. These come up on successive screens. I have not gone beyond this point in my exploration of my own version of Acronis.

The next screens probably concern partitioning and you may be asked if you want to delete partitions on the destination drive. I’m not positive whether you should say yes or no and I’m not sure it matters in this case.

If you make the wrong choice, you could just redo it.

I’d guess one choice might leave you with a 69 gig partition on the new drive (which you wouldn’t want) and the other might give you a 279 gig partition on the new drive, which you would want.

Even if you make the wrong choice, you should be able to boot the new drive and then expand the 69 gig partition to 279 gigs with Windows 7 Disk Management, without using Acronis.

My best guess would be to tell Acronis to NOT delete partitions on the destination drive, hoping that it then just leaves you with about 60 gigs of occupied space on a 279 gig partition.

Don’t mess with or delete anything on the current C until you are satisfied that all went well.

Ok after I clone the drive, do i disconnect my current c: and boot the new drive?

Thanks so much BTW.

Yeah, I'd get it disconnected so as to leave no doubt as to what is supposed to boot.

Please report back with the choices you saw and choices you made.

If it does not boot, plug the old drive back in and report back with the sordid details.

First thing I would do if it boots is go to Disk Management and see if you see a single C drive with a single partition with about 60 occupied, 279 total, and no unallocated space.

Reboot a few times, play around, and get yourself satisfied that all is well. I wouldn't touch the old drive for days or weeks until you are POSITIVE all is well.

You really ought to back up any personal data now on C to your storage drive if you haven't already. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. It's just an extra precaution.

You might see a choice in Acronis about making the new partition active or primary. If you do, say yes.

Ok i will report back, thanks again.

Ok i followed your instructions to a T, and all is working well so far....

I just disconnected my original drive after cloning, and set my new drive as first boot priority.

All good.

Thanls again.