Acronis: will a clone of a clone work in my T41?

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tanstaafl · #1 Post by **tanstaafl** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 9:24 am

Hello, I'm hoping an Acronis expert out there can answer this question.

Suppose I use Acronis (I have v 10) to clone my T41's hard drive onto, say, a 3.5" external usb hard drive.

Now suppose that disaster strikes and my T41's hard drive fails.

Will the following work? I buy a new 2.5" drive for my T41, and use Acronis (and my desktop computer) to clone the 3.5" external usb contents onto the new 2.5" drive, then I stick the new clone-of-a-clone 2.5" drive into my T41. Will the T41 boot and work ok?

Thanks in advance for any help.

#2 Post by **carbon_unit** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 9:43 am

It will work if you clone to the new drive while it is in the T41. Do not clone to it when it is in a desktop computer as then it may not work.

dsvochak · #3 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 9:47 am

Will the following work?...

Maybe not, due to quirks in the way thinkpads read the geometry of the drive. Attaching a thinkpad drive to another machine and cloning could cause a problem.

If you create an Acronis full back up on the 3.5" USB drive, put the new 2.5" drive in the T41 and then restore the backup from the USB drive it should work perfectly.

I've used this method a number of times on a number of machines and had no problems.

DAH · #4 Post by **DAH** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:19 am

tanstaafl wrote:Hello, I'm hoping an Acronis expert out there can answer this question.

Suppose I use Acronis (I have v 10) to clone my T41's hard drive onto, say, a 3.5" external usb hard drive.

Now suppose that disaster strikes and my T41's hard drive fails.

Will the following work? I buy a new 2.5" drive for my T41, and use Acronis (and my desktop computer) to clone the 3.5" external usb contents onto the new 2.5" drive, then I stick the new clone-of-a-clone 2.5" drive into my T41. Will the T41 boot and work ok?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Just my two cents here, I believe you wish to make a backup of the drive with True Image, a *.tib file. You can store this file on your desk top. Once you have created this file you can use it to restore the file onto another hard drive of the same size.

I believe that if you wish to restore and clone you are more likely to run into problems. In your example above if you clone onto the 3.5" drive disconnect and never reconnect it ontil you wish to clone in theory it should work. Depending on the OS if the 3.5" drive is present during a boot, it will be written to, and changed. This changed drive will not longer be capable of being booted from. So a clone of it will not work, depending on the OS.

tanstaafl · #5 Post by **tanstaafl** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:44 pm

Thanks for these very helpful responses.

My problem is that I have no restore CDs for the T41, nor do I have a copy of Windows XP (nor is the recovery partition intact on the T41's drive). So if the T41 drive fails it is unclear to me how to use an image to restore the drive since I don't have an OS to put on the new drive to get the T41 to boot.

My initial idea was to buy another 2.5" drive and use Acronis to maintain a clone of the T41's drive. The idea is that if the T41's drive ever fails then I can just pop the cloned drive in as a replacement without having to use any restore software or procedures. But to buy a new 160gb drive is around a hundred dollars, and I was hoping to avoid this expense by using a spare 3.5" drive that I already have.

I am not as familiar with Acronis as I should be. Would another option be to create a bootable Acronis CD along with an image file of the T41 drive on an external usb drive? Then if the T41 hard drive fails, could I buy a new 2.5" drive, put it in the T41, boot the T41 from the Acronis CD, connect the external usb drive to the T41, and restore the contents to the new drive in the T41?

Again, thanks a lot for the help.

dsvochak · #6 Post by **dsvochak** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:09 pm

I'm sorry I wasn't as clear as I should have been. The procedure you describe in your last post is exactly the process I meant to describe.

That process is what I've done a number of times. For more information, you may want to read the "Hard Drive Cloning how to" ( http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27721) which is somewhat outdated but still generally ok.

Nebzar · #7 Post by **Nebzar** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:24 pm

tanstaafl wrote:Would another option be to create a bootable Acronis CD along with an image file of the T41 drive on an external usb drive? Then if the T41 hard drive fails, could I buy a new 2.5" drive, put it in the T41, boot the T41 from the Acronis CD, connect the external usb drive to the T41, and restore the contents to the new drive in the T41?

Exactly, this procedure is absolutely correct and will work. Just be sure that the version of TrueImage on the bootable CD is the same (or newer) than the one you use to make the drive image. For example, TrueImage v. 10 does not recognize drive images made with v. 11.

Regards
Neb

Acronis: will a clone of a clone work in my T41?

Acronis: will a clone of a clone work in my T41?

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