Acronis True Image

[Falcor87]

I just received my x120e but I want to replace the hard drive, I am attempting to clone the factory drive as follows:

Using the clone tool in Acronis True Image, I have the source (factory) drive in my machine and the target drive in an external usb enclosure.  After finalizing the settings windows reboots to the clone screen where the progress is documented in text.

Everything appears to be going well until about 70% everytime I have attempted.  At this point the screen always turns off for some reason.

I'm not sure if the process is still continuing without the screen on or what, each time I have left it for a little while and then done a hard shutdown.  Then when I inspect the target drive it always has one small system partition and then the rest unallocated space.

Anyone have any idea what is going on?  Is there an easier way to clone the factory drive onto the new drive?

It is currently running right now and has gone to the black screen, I am going to let it run for an hour or so and see if it comes back.

Thanks!

[Vince69]

Hello mate,

The easiest way is to burn the recovery discs. just burn them, install you new hdd and reinstall your system using the discs. It will reinstall the recovery partition on your hdd.

[richk]

I always have had better luck with the acronis stand-alone process that runs outside windows. You need to "create bootable media". I also have better luck if the target drive is in the thinkpad. I put the current disk into the enclosure, the new drive into the main bay, and boot from the acronis CD.

[andyP Community SuperMod]

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richk wrote:
 I put the current disk into the enclosure, the new drive into the main bay, and boot from the acronis CD.

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Me too.  In fact I would go as far to say that this point is mission critical.

[HiVolt]

What I did when I first received my x120e, i pulled out the stock 250GB 5400rpm drive without even turning on the system. I cloned it using Acronis True Image to a new OCZ Vertex2 SSD, then proceeded with the setup of the Win7 preload from the new SSD.

I used a USB hard drive dock as well as a 2.5" usb external drive enclosure.

[XTsX120e]

Ok i have tried the same thing with the same results. The system keeps going to a black screen after the reboot. It almost looks like the system tries to boot off of the usb drive.

I will try putting the new drive in the system and cloning using bootable media.

I really wanted to try creating the recovery onto a usb stick but from what i have read, it appears i will need a usb stick larger then 8gb.

Can anyone confirm that the recovery creation will fit onto a 8gb drive? I need someone that has done it, not that they think so because i only get one shot at creating the recovery image.

Thanks

[gwf12]

XTs120e: clone with the source in the usb enclosure, target in the system, and before doing that, go into BIOS and check the booting sequence, change if needed to boot from the HD first.

Regarding USB drive and recovery, the image varies somewhat from system to system but seems to be 6-10 GB in size, so I would not try to use an 8 GB stick. In fact, for a one-time deal, I would not try a USB stick at all, as these sometimes end up not-bootable. Bet way seems to be an extrnal USB drive (got an old one lying around that you no longer need?)

[XTsX120e]

Thanks for the tips

Ok I tried creating bootable media on usb with acronis, with no luck. Seems to be not bootable.

I tried to make the usb bootable and put the iso, but no luck as most os's that are usb bootable are mostly linux based.

So i gave up on that idea, to keep finding a solution.

Has anyone created bootable onto usb to have the Acronis program?

So I grabbe Paragom Software and cloned it this way.

Seemed to go good, but fully tested yet, as i had to sleep, hehee

While the software was cloning, i wasnt impressed with the major screen flicker, because in windows i have no flicker at all.

Neways, after the drive was cloned, I opened it up in windows and looked like a mirror image except for the drive letters/volume names.

I then tried booting from usb external drive and it would attempt booting into start screen and it would reboot. and give startup diagnostics options or normal boot.  I had to sleep so i never got to swap the drive into the system and try it, but will after work and see how that goes.

[thecrafter]

I'm also in the same dillema. Would be much easier if the x120e came with an optical drive =/ I'd buy an external but aside from this one time use, I don't use CDs/DVDs at all, so I don't want to throw money away

[wildone81]

If you have another computer lying around, why not just connect both to it and use whatever you want to do the copying?  Admittedly, this only really works if you have a desktop system running that has at least 2 free SATA ports and is optionally is a running system, but if you do have such things, then it's fairly easy to just use whatever you want in whatever environment you feel comfortable with to get the job done.  That's probably what I'll do once the SSD arrives to avoid spending any extra money, and I can customize the partition layout however I want, though I'm not sure how Windows will see the drive letters after the fact.