Acronis Disk Director Home v.11: Will it clone my HDD to a Samsung 840 Pro?

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Yesterday was a mess of trouble for me. I wanted to use a benign test utility on my boot drive. The boot drive is the accelerated HDD component in an ISRT configuration. It seemed obvious that I needed to "unhinge" the HDD from caching, which is a pretty routine operation I've performed many times. But I was in a hurry; didn't wait for the IRST software to confirm finishing what it was doing -- didn't re-initialize the caching SSD.

At boot-up, the HDD failed to boot. It was a 600GB WD VelociRaptor. I won't go through the anxieties I went through, but all is well now. However, the WD VR drive has temporarily been replaced by a 1TB Samsung F3. This is a waste of good disk space, and the F3 serves better as a backup disk for my server.

I'm on the verge of ditching the ISRT arrangement. It had worked fine for the last three years with the same two components. I have now rescued the VR -- which apparently never completed the transition from "RAID" to "non-RAID." This we very easily fixed by another Win 7 machine, and the drive is again serviceable.

So leaving the VR out of the equation, I want to clone the Samsung boot drive to a 500GB Samsung 840 Pro. It's been sitting here . . . waiting to be used . . . for a bit too long.

I have a bootable media Disk Director 11 installation which had served me well since early 2012. I need to know if this will work properly to replace my current HDD boot drive with a Samsung 840 -- that is -- if the cloning operation will leave me satisfied and without further trouble.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
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Mar 4, 2000
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I had to clone my SSD this morning. I tried DD11 on a bootable thumb drive. COuld not find a cloning func tion. I used by TI 2014 an another bootable TD, andf it cloned easily in 8 minutes. So, my answer re DD11 is at this moment, probably "no."
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,052
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I had to clone my SSD this morning. I tried DD11 on a bootable thumb drive. COuld not find a cloning func tion. I used by TI 2014 an another bootable TD, andf it cloned easily in 8 minutes. So, my answer re DD11 is at this moment, probably "no."

Well, corky -- I'm almost apologetic for starting this thread, but I needed an answer. The apology is due because I eventually found the right material in the Acronis Knowledge Base. They guarantee that several of their products -- including Disk Director 11 -- handle SSDs properly.

The caveat that Acronis might not have mentioned is plain common sense. I had purchased DD11 in late 2011. It was only by whim when I opened the windows version of the software on my desktop, that I chose to download the "Update 2" for it. I'd say that's the safest thing to do before adding in a Samsung 840 -- just to be on the safe side.

I also looked into the bootable USB thumb drive idea, and that's "do-able." I had a bootable CD I'd made two years back, but I wanted one with Update 2. I had forgotten my menu choices in the Media Builder when I did that. The reliable approach is to use the "Linux-based" CD build.

I made the mistake of creating a CD based on Windows PE. It doesn't reveal any of the bootable drives in the system! Apparently, you have to carefully choose drivers to add in this second approach.

I must've discovered also that the Acronis software won't create a CD successfully from within its own menus. But didn't remember that, until I'd made two coffee-cup coasters and gone through a couple hoops because my optical drive was hanging.

Solution there: choose the option to make an ISO disk image, then burn it to disk with another utility (I use Roxio Creator).

How this would work with a USB drive was probably explained on a web-page I'd found the other day, but in too much hurry to read carefully or even try.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
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Mar 4, 2000
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. . . Solution there: choose the option to make an ISO disk image, then burn it to disk with another utility (I use Roxio Creator).
How this would work with a USB drive was probably explained on a web-page I'd found the other day, but in too much hurry to read carefully or even try.

That is exactly how I do it. I let AcroniS create the ISO file and go from there. Works for me! I carry three bootable Thumb Drives in my laptop case - 2 for Acronis TI 2014, and 1 For DD 11.

Gotta check on that update!
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,052
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That is exactly how I do it. I let AcroniS create the ISO file and go from there. Works for me! I carry three bootable Thumb Drives in my laptop case - 2 for Acronis TI 2014, and 1 For DD 11.

Gotta check on that update!

Hard to fault Acronis for the quirks and complexities, since . . . it eventually works the way it's supposed to.

If I mentioned "foggy memory" as I am getting older, I have very clear, stellar memories about optical drives since I first started using them around the mid-90s. I remember $120-a-pop DVD/RW drives I bought -- Sonys and NECs! -- which crapped out early in their careers. And I remember too many times making coffee-table coasters before I "finally got it right." Or the "big project" of making slipstream OS install disks with ISOBUSTER.

I only hear this second-hand, face to face as well as in the forums: systems ship now without optical drives. The up-side: hopefully I can "forget" all those memories. The down-side: I have to learn new "shee-**". There was a time when I was an "MS-DOS Master." I had all the commands and parameters in my head. So I need to look more closely now at all the wisdom for formatting USB flash drives (you can still make them FAT-32 as well as NTFS), and eliminating optical from the equation. If I do that, I will likely have an extra SATA port available in each and every box in the house.

I just hope -- given the experience you briefly described -- this doesn't lead to a second chapter of frustrating memories! :D