Boot Record question...

I use Acronis to image my hard drive so I can restore it to an earlier time and this has worked great for years.

But, I need to install a newer hard drive (original is a few years old, so this is a preventive measure), and I've noticed that Acronis does not transfer the boot record when you install a brand new hard drive and try to use the image to restore on a freshly formatted drive.

It will show that the image restoration has been successful and Windows and all my progs are there, but when you try to boot up the computer an error message shows on black screen saying no boot record and it won't boot up.

The way I've handled this in the past is to go ahead and do a new Windows install... and once I'm done, the boot record is of course there at that point, and then I use my Acronis image to restore the drive back how it was and all is good to go.

I was just wondering if there is a way to get the boot record onto a freshly formatted drive without having to actually install Windows, maybe there is a quicker way to do this.

If anybody knows of a way to do this, please let me know thanks!

Rockrz said:

I use Acronis to image my hard drive so I can restore it to an earlier time and this has worked great for years.

But, I need to install a newer hard drive (original is a few years old, so this is a preventive measure), and I've noticed that Acronis does not transfer the boot record when you install a brand new hard drive and try to use the image to restore on a freshly formatted drive.

It will show that the image restoration has been successful and Windows and all my progs are there, but when you try to boot up the computer an error message shows on black screen saying no boot record and it won't boot up.

The way I've handled this in the past is to go ahead and do a new Windows install... and once I'm done, the boot record is of course there at that point, and then I use my Acronis image to restore the drive back how it was and all is good to go.

I was just wondering if there is a way to get the boot record onto a freshly formatted drive without having to actually install Windows, maybe there is a quicker way to do this.

If anybody knows of a way to do this, please let me know thanks!

I know next to nothing about Acronis, but would think it is useless if it works as you described.

Can you post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management showing the old drive and its partitions?

Have you rejected the following methods:

Using software that may come with your new drive to do the transfer

Using an application such as Macrium rather than Acronis.

Cloning to the new drive rather than using imaging with something other than Acronis.

No, Acronis works perfectly to restore the hard drive and has not failed even once in over 8 years so moving to another prog is not an option.

I'll simply do what I have been doing which is install Windows in order to get the boot record on the drive... and then use Acronis to restore and all will work perfectly after that.

I just thought there was a way to get the boot record on to a drive but maybe there isn't without actually installing Windows.

Rockrz said:

No, Acronis works perfectly to restore the hard drive and has not failed even once in over 8 years so moving to another prog is not an option.

I'll simply do what I have been doing which is install Windows in order to get the boot record on the drive... and then use Acronis to restore and all will work perfectly after that.

I just thought there was a way to get the boot record on to a drive but maybe there isn't without actually installing Windows.

OK, stay with Acronis.

It's a decent program but I never heard of someone having the type of issue you are having, so I'd guess you aren't quite using it correctly. But there's no need to use it correctly if you can work around the issue in the way you describe.

I'll post this over on the Acronis forum and see what they say...

You're right... I was not noticing that when I set up the recovery, there is an option to select that will include the MBR and I did not know that, so looks like I found the solution that will save me some time. Thanks!