Thinkpads Forum

Just to verify what I have heard elsewhere.... you CAN use Acronis to CLONE if you do it to an Ultrabay mounted drive? Can someone verify?

I really don't want to go the Ultrabay route if I don't have to. But, it sounds like no one has figured out how to CLONE to an external drive (resulting in a bootable drive), regardless of the method or software used?

I can verify, testify, or whatever.

I have used the last couple of versions of acronis TIH (including v.11) to successfully clone the primary C drive left in the TP in it's usual and normal position in the primary drive slot, to an identical drive located in the ultrabay using the ultrabay hard drive adapter. In fact, cloning this way has never failed to work for me and it is my primary means of backing up. I do it weekly with no problems. I have on occasion been required to swap my cloned backup into the primary drive slot and they always boot up just fine.

The first time the clone boots up in the primary slot, a little acronis utility runs that I assume writes the necessary master boot file (or whatever it is called). After that it boots totally normally and that utility doesn't run again. Before the utility runs, the cloned drive can be used in the ultrabay to copy files from and then it still can be placed in the primary drive slot and the utility will still run and convert it into the primary boot drive.

Btw, the ultrabay hard drive adapter is not very expensive and it allows you to very conveniently run two hard drives in your system without any cables, as well as do the cloning described above.

pae77 (and others):

Have you tried to do the same to a USB drive? What happened?

Any idea why what causes it not to work?

Any ideas on getting it to work this way?

No. I have never tried to do this with a USB connected drive and have no idea why it shouldn't work. All I know is that it works perfectly with the target drive in the Ultrabay.

I believe the Thinkpad reads the drive geometry differently mounted in the Thinkpad in the drive bay or Ultrabay as opposed to being attached by USB.

"But, for another (still T61) I tried to CLONE the drive to an identical one in a USB enclosure. But, the resultant clone will not boot. "

Just used Seagates Acronis OEM version (Seagate DiskWizard) and CLONED the internal drive to an external USB. Cloned to a larger drive and set that up with the extra space as an extra partition. Swapped the drive when Acronis was done--and it works, no problem in Vista. (I haven't tried the BigBlue boots yet.)

One caveat, with some external drive shells apparently the Acronis OEM versions can't read the drive ID, so you won' t be able to use them without Really Special support. Buying an external drive, in the shell, with the software, would be far simpler for the average user.

Seagate agreed with me that the Acronis OEM help files are not translated correctly, that CLONE is the way to go--despite the warnings otherwise.

Acronis sounds Greek to me. What are they natives of ??