Two questions about the drive cloning FAQ

[ark]

I have a T60 with a 160GB 5400RPM drive. I see that Lenovo has just released a 320GB 7200RPM drive, so I think it's probably time to upgrade--especially as my 160GB is nearly full.

The procedure from the FAQ seems clear enough. I already have an Ultrabay drive adaptor, so it looks like I should

1) Install the drive in the Ultrabay adaptor and be sure it's recognized in Disk Manager.
2) Download and install the Acronis demo version.
3) Run it.
4) Shut down the machine, swap drives, and boot.

However, I could not find the answer to two questions:

1) Which of the many Acronis products on their website do I download?
2) Will this procedure create a C: partition on the new disk that is larger than the one on my old disk? Or is there something else I need to do to ensure that happens?

While we're are it, is there anything else I need to know?

[basketb]

I have a T60 with a 160GB 5400RPM drive. I see that Lenovo has just released a 320GB 7200RPM drive, so I think it's probably time to upgrade--especially as my 160GB is nearly full. ...

You probably know this, but you can install any 2.5" SATA drive in the T60. It does not have to be from Lenovo. Right now, Lenovo charges 3 times as much as, e.g., newegg for a comparable drive ($279 vs. $90).

...
The procedure from the FAQ seems clear enough. I already have an Ultrabay drive adaptor, so it looks like I should

1) Install the drive in the Ultrabay adaptor and be sure it's recognized in Disk Manager.
2) Download and install the Acronis demo version.
3) Run it.
4) Shut down the machine, swap drives, and boot....

(disclaimer I actually haven't read that FAQ, or if I did, it's so long ago that I don't remember but...) This is exactly what I did when I needed to clone a drive.

...
However, I could not find the answer to two questions:

1) Which of the many Acronis products on their website do I download?
2) Will this procedure create a C: partition on the new disk that is larger than the one on my old disk? Or is there something else I need to do to ensure that happens?

While we're are it, is there anything else I need to know?

1) I have not used their latest product(s), but I used their trial version of the then current home edition (this only works for Windows (and not Linux) but that's all I needed).
2) If I remember correctly, you get two options:

• a) Let Acronis figure out the size of the new C: partition (and the size of the hidden recovery partition) automatically. This is nice but the disadvantage is that the recovery partition also grows (presumably twice its original size), which is a waste of space.
  b) Configure it manually. Choose the same size as on the old drive for the recovery partition and allocate the rest for the C: partition.

3) I am not aware of anything else that is required as the above always worked for me. But, some people have reported that the new clone drive did not boot for some reason and a solution seems to be to change the the BIOS setting for SATA to compatible mode. You may want to do a search on this for further details.

[ark]

I have to say that this review is rather scary -- someone used the Acronis product and rendered his computer unbootable. The review recommends Shadow Protect as an alternative.

I suppose that the Acronis reviewer got into trouble by asking it to do something beyond just creating a drive image. Nevertheless, I wonder if someone with more experience than I can comment on the relative merits of these two products.

Incidentally, after a closer look, I believe that for disk cloning, at least with Acronis, it would make more sense to use Migrate Easy, which appears to be designed for this specific purpose.

[ark]

OK, so I have the new disk and am trying to run Acronis Migrate Easy. Doesn't work. It gets to where it wants me to reboot the machine and then it hangs after boot.

Looking around online I find that Acronis knows about the problem; their fix is either to put the disk to which you wish to copy on USB or to remove all other USB devices. I've tried both; neither works.

They also say you can use the standalone version but the standalone trial version refuses, saying you have to buy the full version for it to work.

Has anyone else used Migrate Easy successfully? Any other ideas for what to try? I'm reluctant to pay for software whose vendor knows it doesn't work.

[ark]

I contacted Acronis, who said that their current version of True Image can also clone drives. So I downloaded the trial version of True Image and asked it to clone the drive. It failed.

What happened was that it asked me to select the drive to copy from, and as soon as I clicked the "next" button, a little dialog box popped up that said "Processing..." and would not go away. It did not even give me the chance to tell it the destination drive.

I have sent a note to Acronis tech support, but I am not optimistic as this is the second of their products that simply does not work.

[ojosch]

I usually just boot from a Linux install disc and boot into the recovery console and run a DD command that copies the drive bit-for-bit to the other drive. Then you usually have to repair the partition boundaries to be correct for the new disc's size so it wont be corrupt, and then run checkdisk as last step then it should boot fine. Please let me know if you would like the DD commands to run in order to perform this operation