-pops- Posted January 8, 2009 Report Share Posted January 8, 2009 As regulars will know, I am a fan of Acronis but yesterday I had something happen which greatly curbed my enthusiasm.My main machine is getting on in years and had started giving blue screens occasionally and some messages in the Event Viewer indicating the "C" drive was slowly failing.As I like this machine and don't want to get or build a replacement, I considered a new "C" drive would cure everything. I found a suitable drive, installed it as a slave and proceeded to use the Acronis Drive Clone facility to transfer the contents on the "C" drive to the new one. As people who have done this will know, it is not a straightforward procedure and it involves a reboot part way through the process and then another reboot when the transfer has taken place.OK I set the process in motion and the computer rebooted at the correct point, wrote me a page of information with a "CONGRATULATIONS" header and told me to press any key to shutdown - note that the time to carry this out was a few seconds, not nearly enough to transfer a shopping list, never mind a whole O/S and files. At this point, I didn't do a Homer Simpson and look for the Any Key but pressed a variety of them to no result at all. The machine just sat there congratulating me. The only way I could get anything to happen was the press one of the large keys on the computer case (reset or start). The machine duly restarted and booted into WXP - the same as it always does. I checked the new drive where the clone should be. Nothing, Nix, Zilch. The drive was as clean as it was when I first started.I went through the whole procedure a second time. Exactly the same result.I can't be bothered these days to do deep investigations into faulty software (or hardware, even) so I thought I'd give XXClone a try having heard some good reports about it in the past.Well, I couldn't be more pleased. The whole process is straightforward (no mid session reboots needed) and reasonably quick, certainly no more time than doing a normal full backup of the system.I swapped the drives over and on startup there were a couple of little things to confirm what I had done and the machine was as good as new.I am very pleased with XXClone and note, I used the free version http://www.xxclone.com/Why do computer items congratulate you when they have installed/loaded correctly (or not as is the case here)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted January 8, 2009 Report Share Posted January 8, 2009 Why do computer items congratulate you when they have installed/loaded correctly (or not as is the case here)?I have long suspected they was congratulating themselves, although your experience described above would suggest that in this case self congratulation was totally out of order.Doubtless someone will come back and tell us how reliable Acronis is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D4\/!d Posted January 8, 2009 Report Share Posted January 8, 2009 A couple of questions are nagging me, pops.Had you previously formatted the new drive?Was the copy of Acronis one of the new versions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted January 8, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2009 Yes, the drive was formatted. XXClone managed quite easily to load the clone on to the same drive.The Acronis version is #9.I should point out it is only the Disk Clone facility that I am commenting about. The backup images continue to be OK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 Cloning is the obvious way but...Why not just restore your normal backup image to it? p.s. I'm still using Drive Image 7. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 Is Acronis Disk Clone part of Acronis True Image?If so, do you have the latest version of 9.0 (build 3,854)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted January 9, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 The reason I used cloning rather than restore from image is that: 1. I thought it would be easier just to attach another drive and copy the files across. In the end, with XXClone, it turned out to be so.2. There would be no risk (however small it may be) of corruption when decompressing the image.Pat, I got it wrong, on this machine the Acronis is version 8, not 9 as I wrote above. Disk Clone is part of the Acronis DI package. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CurlyWhirly Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 p.s. I'm still using Drive Image 7. :DI've been using it (and Drive Image 2002) for around 6 years and it never let me down and saved me pulling my hair out on a few occasions :DI would buy a Drive Image product for my new Vista PC but it's not compatible with Vista and, in any case, has been discontinued :( I'm a bit wary about Acronis as it's a Symantec product and I had enough of Norton when I first had my PC in 2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted January 9, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 I'm a bit wary about Acronis as it's a Symantec product and I had enough of Norton when I first had my PC in 2001 Is it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CurlyWhirly Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 I'm a bit wary about Acronis as it's a Symantec product and I had enough of Norton when I first had my PC in 2001 Is it? Sorry I got mixed up.What I mean is that Norton is owned by Symantec Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 On my old computer I used Acronis 8 on a newly fitted hard drive and just simply put in the back up. I will however download the program tried out by pops and save it on a memory stick. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 This is the one that I downloaded, is this the one that you used? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted January 9, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 This is the one that I downloaded, is this the one that you used?Yep! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted January 9, 2009 Report Share Posted January 9, 2009 This is the one that I downloaded, is this the one that you used?Yep!Thanks, I will put it onto my downloads CD. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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