Windows 7: Acronis would not restore to new hard drive

I've been having a problem and suspected the hard drive. I have another hard drive the same size (1TB) as the suspect drive. I made an Acronis backup (2013) to a USB connected hard drive.

I then disconnected the other hard drive, so only the new (formatted but blank) drive was the only hard drive (other than the USB drive) connected, and connected to the same I/O port on the motherboard. I then booted with the Acronis 2013 rescue disc. I selected the backup to restore from the USB drive but that was as far as I could get, Acronis would not allow "restoring" the backup to the new drive. No matter what I did, that was as far as I could get. I was never able to get to the point of selecting the "target" drive to restore to.

I also booted with an Acronis 2012 rescue disc and had the same problem.

I was able to "clone" the hard drive by booting into Win 7 and starting Acronis 2013. But this scares me if there is some type of problem that Acronis won't restore from a backup. That is my sole purpose of having Acronis. Maybe I should consider Macrium?

I have used backups in the past with Acronis but its been a couple of years and versions since I tried it.

?????

Jack

Hi Jack, if your version of Acronis has the 'One Click' backup feature, use it, it will solve your problem & must be run from the installed program.

Its not the backup that is the problem. The problem is restoring to a hard drive using the Acronis rescue disc.

(BTW, 2013 is set up different than your 2010 for backups).

Hi Jack, does your version have the 'One Click Backup' feature. It creates a system image.

No, its quite a bit different. I make full hard drive (all partitions) backups. I don't use the incremental option.

I have tried other versions of Acronis but as my current version & method works well, I saw no reason to upgrade.
Here is my Modus Operandi:-
-
My 2 pc's have rather small hdd's (1 in each), My C: Drive's are 45gb with nothing I can't replace put in it. I have 4 large external hdd's where I store everything I don't want to lose. I also have copies on D: Drive (Partitions) for quick access to them.
I use Acronis 2010 and only do 'One Click' back-ups which is a 'Systembackup'. All done to separate folders, named as the back-up date.
e.g. if I intend testing a program, I do a back-up first, then if its to be removed, I do a 'Restore'. This is one of two ways to remove a program completely & safely, without damaging my pc's registry. The other way is a clean install.
Back-ups & Restores are done within Windows as recommended by Acronis.

I got 2013 as its needed for Win8, which I have on another PC.

UPDATE: From the Acronis forum, it looks like I need the Acronis "Plus Pack" to get WIN PE as the basic Acronis Rescue Disc (Linux) apparently does not support my motherboard.

However, I have a 30 day trial version of Macrium and it does use Win PE for the OS on its bootable rescue disc. I'll create a backup with Macrium and see if Win PE is the solution.

It will probably be at least tomorrow before I can do that.

Jack

At present, I have no intention of getting Win8 and never used Macrium. Good luck.

Looks like the Acronis Plus Pack that includes Win PE is the answer. I unistalled 2013 and installed my old 2012 that included the Plus Pack. Created a new Acronis bootable rescue disc from the Plus Pack version, booted with that and was able to select a target drive. I didn't actually do the backup but with the non-Plus Pack versions that use Linux for the bootable rescue disc I could never get to the point of selecting a target drive as they were not recognized.

I'm marking this solved.

Jack

As it turns out there is more to it than just having the Acronis True Image Plus Pack. The Windows 7 deployment pack must be download from Microsoft and installed to get the Win PE and then another convoluted procedure to be able to use a bootable media with Acronis for recovery.

This is more than I care to do, at least right now as I need to get back to my recording studio tasks.