1

I cloned my hard drive with Acronis True Image.

Now, with the new drive connected as 'drive 0' and the old as 'drive 1' ...

  • new drive appears as e: Old drive is c:
  • boots to e:; command line prompt is e:\
  • It 'runs' but really all data files, etc are still referencing c:.

With just the new drive connected (as 'drive 0'), there's a long period of blue screen, saying "Preparing your desktop". This is followed by an empty blue screen. So, it doesn't work at all.

I'm at a loss. I did this once before, successfully. The only difference I can find in my notes is that (I think) I ran Acronis from c: (as opposed to from USB) when I cloned it.

Background notes:

  • New & old drives are the same size, 500 GB, both SATA
  • PC is a Dell 4700; O/S is Windows 7 Home Premium
  • When the new HDD was initially attached, I used Acronis "add drive" tool to 'install' it.
  • To clone, I booted Acronis from a flash drive. Cloning ran without errors.
Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
0

Changing the drive letter assignments in Windows 7 on the source and destination drives will resolve your problem; but first, we need to check their UUIDs, for cloning can result in the same UUID shared by cloned drives. Do that by opening a Command Prompt window, and run diskpart which replaced FDISK and does so much more.

At the diskpart prompt, enter list disk and note the drive numbers. Do sel disk 0 then detail disk to obtain the UUID of Disk 0, then do sel disk 1 then detail disk to obtain the UUID of Disk 1. If they are different, proceed with launching Disk Management as below.

Should the UUIDs be identical, then change the UUID of Disk 1 within diskpart with uniqueid disk ID=NEWSIGNATURE where NEWSIGNATURE is the hexadecimal value of the UUID of Disk 0, with one character (or more) changed.

Once you've checked the UUIDs, and changed one if need be, do exit to leave diskpart.

Invoke the Microsoft Management Console snap-in for Disk Management with

Win-R DISKMGMT.MSCEnter

Pick the drive now identified as C: and change it to something other than C:, D:,, or E: by right-clicking on it, choose the Change Drive Letter and Paths... option from the pop-up menu, and assign it to something else. Then, pick the drive now identified as E: and change it to C:.

This is illustrated in multiple online sources, such as PC World, Lifewire, and the Microsoft IT Pro Center.

Improve this answer
4
  • That didn't work. I changed c: to something else, but it wouldn't allow changing the other drive to c:. I did a restart (it seemed like a good idea at the time). That failed - similar to when booting w/ just the new drive. Maybe I need to wipe the new drive and start over?
    – George
    Commented Sep 4, 2018 at 18:05
  • Both disks may have same uuid after cloning. It can be checked and changed by diskpart.
    – Andrei
    Commented Sep 4, 2018 at 18:51
  • Procedure amended to explain how to deal with identical UUIDs. Many thanks to superuser.com/users/375849/andrei for noting that case.
    – K7AAY
    Commented Sep 4, 2018 at 20:35
  • 'diskpart' appears to show distinct ID's (37D31B4C, C953D57D) for the 2 drives. That said, am I correct thinking that the potential uuid issue is just WRT changing the drive letters? If so, should that even be necessary? ISTM, ppl clone all the time (even me, once), without having to do this.
    – George
    Commented Sep 4, 2018 at 21:10
0

(OP) I think this is probably it:

Acronis True Image WD Edition does not provide a booting feature.

Improve this answer
1
  • From the above: SOLUTION: Purchase the full version of Acronis True Image. The full version with the Universal Restore feature will provide the booting feature required for this task.
    – K7AAY
    Commented Sep 5, 2018 at 15:20

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .