Acronis Migrate Easy - anyone still using this app for disk cloning?

[teckneeculler]

I used Acronis Migrate Easy for 10-12 years, back in the XP and early W7 days.

It never failed me when cloning an ailing HDD to a brand new drive, even if the the new drive was smaller than the original.

But I haven't cloned a drive for sometime now and I'm curious if anyone has used the app lately.

For all I know it might not operate properly on say, 2TB drives.

 

[fireberd]

I used to use Acronis True Image for disc images (backups). It failed me twice (two different times and PC's) and I didn't give it a third time. I moved to Macrium Reflect about 3 years ago. It has not failed me. I'm currently using the free Macrium Reflect V7 and recently (last week) did a clone as I upgraded to a larger SSD. Worked perfectly.

 

[remm]

I agree with Fireberd. I used Acronis back in the XP days and it also failed me out of the blue, after using it successfully for a couple years. I switched to Macrium Reflect free and have migrated several times between systems (at least 10 counting my laptops and friends' systems), either to new computers, or on the same computer to a new hard drive. Never had a failure or even a glitch.

I don't know if the paid version has a migration feature built in, but with the free version I make the BU with Macrium... then restore to the new computer/hardware with Macrium (using their Recovery bootable USB stick)... then boot from a USB Paragon tools stick to inject drivers for the migrated OS so it will boot from C. After it boots from C I manually update any drivers necessary by going to the manuf websites. You might also have to re-install your Windows key to make Windows genuine again.

But the whole process is painless. I'm a +1 for Macrium. (If you go this route be sure to make a bootable USB drive inside Macrium from their Tools -> Other menu...) Disclaimer: I have never worked with drives larger than 2TB so I'd check that Macrium handles these, but I'd be shocked if it didn't at this point.

 

[teckneeculler]

Thanks for your comments, guys.

Cloning is a far simpler process, IMHO, than imaging and migrating etc etc.

I think I started using the method when customers' HDDs began failing, or needed more space, and it was so easy to just slave both old and new drives into a workshop machine and just hit the 'Clone' button. Voila. Byte-for-byte copy of an old drive onto a new one. In such a case, the operating system in the workshop machine is just acting as a non-involved third party.

But it's a different ballgame when cloning a running OS drive onto a new drive, in the existing computer case. This time the OS is cloning itself.

Neither does the clone process work as well when cloning a subsidiary storage drive, from the main box to a USB docked drive. I've just tried this with a full version of Macrium Reflect 7. A 2TB Seagate storage drive began showing bad sectors (three weeks after warranty expiry!) so I attempted to clone it to a brand new 2TB Seagate in a USB dock.

It didn't complete, and I've no idea why. I ended up just 'copying' the failing drive's contents, and that worked - sort of. Every folder is now date-stamped 6th December 2017, which is a damn nuisance.

So I'm considering re-doing the job, as a proper clone process with both drives slaved into another computer.

I'd try Acronis Migrate Easy, but I was just re-reading the manual and it doesn't even mention SATA drives, only IDE.

Seems to me, after searching the net for cloning info, that the process seems to have been superseded by imaging. It's a shame, IMHO.

 

[remm]

I have never cloned with Macrium (as I don't clone), but a tool I use for many other things that also clones is MiniTool Partition Wizard. A comparison of the free vs paid versions is here. It does support GPT as well as MBR but there are some things the free version does not do (as seen in the comparison). I have used this program for many things (not cloning) but it has always been reliable, FWIW.

 

[RoWin7]

I clone with the free Macrium, a much smaller C partition and a D (data) partition. The machine goes into something similar to a DOS mode, and that's how it can clone itself. Have you checked the program's Help file or the Macrium forum to see why it stopped midway?

I could be wrong, but if you just copy, rather than clone, it won't be bootable. Please correct me if it's not so.

 

[teckneeculler]

remm and RoWin7: Thanks for your comments.

Re the copy\clone alternatives, my subject drive is only a data store, so it doesn't need to boot.

But a week later, after the copy process on 6th December, odd things are still happening. I rarely reboot this main tower of mine, so often don't discover little glitches until I restart it. The first 'problem' was that a dozen or so shortcuts weren't displaying the image icons I'd selected. So I had to ratify their paths. Then, last night, I went to play some videos on my lounge TV media player (which is hard wired to my network) and found that I had to re-organize sharing permissions, as the 'share with everyone' configuration that I use hadn't been copied from drive to drive. Stuff like that. Annoying but no big deal. But which wouldn't have happened if I'd cloned instead of copied.

As I said, cloning is way easier and more accurate, but to do it properly, you need a separate desktop. Preferably without sides, with SATA, data, USB and and power cables trailing all over the place

Then you connect the source and target drives (the target drive can be straight out of the box, ie, no partition or formatting) and they become just obedient, semi-anesthetized passengers on the host machine.

Actually, I've been doing some research since I first posted and I've found that there are quite a few apps that are specifically configured, and described as, for cloning. The ones that appear to be most suitable (from their GUI's and documentation) are: Casper, HDClone, Paragon Drive Copy, HandyBackup, R-Drive Image, Drive Snapshot and Acronis Disk Director 12. Re this last, both Seagate and Western Digital offer copies of an Acronis app - probably Disk Director or True Image - that's been modified to be a branded offering of each manufacturer. For instance, the Seagate version is called 'DiscWizard (lol, note the 'C' in 'Disc' instead of a 'K', which is supposed to refer to only to hard disK drives) while the WD version is more openly named 'Acronis True Image WD Edition Software'. That one is 404MB and the Seagate 274MB, so they may both be based on different platforms. Both appear to be free, but require you to have Seagate or WD hard drives in the mix.

I'll experiment with all of these, because I'd like to nail the best cloning software method before senile decay causes me to lose interest entirely.
I'll return when I have more info.

Cheers all.

PS: Download Acronis True Image For Free (Only For Seagate Western Digital Users)

 

[Infinite reboot]

I registered here after finding much help over the years so here is my first input. Today I toiled for several hours on a reinstall of a media box that I have used for years. Various reasons for the fresh install too boring to detail.
I installed Win 7 x64 to an unused Crucial M4 with the intention of a test install before I trashed the cranky but functional existing install on a Samsung 840 Pro, I have much TV to record over the next three weeks.
Somewhere along the way a combination of mission creep and time overcame the original plan. I completed the vanilla Windows install and updated it to now and took the plain wrapper version of the ATI drivers via windows update as well. Looked at the clock and decided I did not want bed time at 3 am so elected to clone or migrate to the drive I wanted the OS on. I already had a good install that would do what was required so It would save me time to just migrate/clone. I live well out in the sticks and my DL speed is 2 megs at best.
I used to have Miray HD clone but i cant find it and I doubt I can recover the license file so I took a peek and found the trial version of Acronis Migrate easy. While it was chugging away with the target disk on a USB port and the freshly minted Crucial M4 on a SATA port I took a look at what others had joy or problems with and landed here.
It worked a treat. I had a wobble when it would not boot after swapping the Samsung 840 over to the SATA port and then realised it was trying to boot the WD data store. Bios fiddle and it came up.
Free and gratis when you need a one time use, happy am I.