Acronis True Image

I installed a legitimate copy of Acronis True Image 2018 to clone a spinny disk across to an SSD. It was on an XP machine - and has to stay that way. The Acronis Website says it is XP compatible.

After cloning, SSD installed and I had numerous problems, mouse failure, no audio, DVD drive disappeared, would not shut down ... So, re-cloned and teh same issues.

The SSD manufacturer suggested I try True Image 2015 - did that, and all is fine.

So, I now want to raise the issue with Acronis, but cannot find any support phone numbers. Does anyone have a contact number for them.

They don't seem to want to let you contact them .... But they do have Community Forums listed on their Support page once you log into your Acronis Account. Forum link from that page.

There is an interesting topic dating from Feb 2 May this year, though wierd :-

I recently bought a Crucial MX100 256GB SSD and it came with Acronis True Image HD 2014. I used many tools before it (Clonezilla, Easeus, Reflect) and none of them worked. I then tried Acronis and it couldn't clone either.

I defragged the disk and still nothing. I do have enough space on the SSD for the data on the HDD.

The reply, which may have a useful link re cloning problems, is:-

Please see KB 2201: Support for OEM Versions of Acronis Products which deals with the type of Acronis product you have received bundled with your Crucial SSD drive.

See also forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this which was written based on users like yourself coming to these forums with OEM products and getting into trouble when doing cloning without understanding the consequences that can be present.

After reading the above, we will need more information to understand exactly what you are trying to do here?

What is the size of your source HDD drive, what size of used data and free space on the drive?
How is the HDD drive connected within your computer - is this the same as the new Crucial SSD drive will be connected?
What version of Windows OS are you using?
How are you trying to this clone, what options are you taking etc? Screen shots always help tell a better story.

The "How not to do this" link gives a forum post:-

Acronis True Image products allow Cloning to be started from within the Windows Acronis application but this can result in an unbootable system or worse, a total loss of all data including the Windows OS if certain rules are not followed when doing a Clone operation.

ALWAYS make a full disk & partitions backup of the source drive to be cloned BEFORE attempting to clone!
If a Clone goes wrong then this is your safety net and the means of recovering your drive / system.

ALWAYS create and TEST the Acronis bootable Rescue Media to ensure that this will work on your system and will see all of your internal / external disk drives.
NOTE: If the standard Rescue Media (which is based on a Linux Kernel OS) does not boot your computer into the Acronis Recovery environment, then starting a Clone or Recovery from Windows will also not work on your computer as this too uses the same Linux Kernel OS. The Windows PE version of the Rescue Media will be required in this case.

DO NOT attempt to clone to a drive which has existing data that you wish to keep. ALL DATA on the target drive for a Clone will be wiped!

DO NOT attempt to boot into Windows with the cloned Source and Target drives both connected. Cloning duplicates the drive signature which will confuse Windows at best and could potentially cause both drives to be corrupted.

It is Highly Recommended to check both the Source and Target drives for any errors before attempting to clone - any bad sectors can cause the clone to fail. Use CHKDSK /F /R to check NTFS drives. Use a utility program such as Hard Disk Sentinel, Crystal Disk Info or the tools provided by the disk manufacturer such as SeaTools from Seagate etc. Also try to avoid using front USB ports when cloning where possible.

CHECK if you have any form of disk encryption active / enabled on your system such as BitLocker or any other available encryption product.

DO NOT attempt to start a clone from within Windows UNLESS ENCRYPTION HAS BEEN DISABLED! You could lose your system if you do so!
NOTE: Acronis True Image running within Windows sees your disk drives are being NOT ENCRYPTED and will back them up as such. Acronis Rescue Media knows nothing of Encryption and cannot backup encrypted data nor restore a backup to an encrypted disk drive. Any backup created in Windows will be restored as unencrypted and the user will need to reactivate / reenable encryption after the restore is complete.

It is Highly Recommended that any Clone operation should ONLY be attempted when using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media, and should not be started from within Windows.
This is a Safer approach as it does not require that any changes be made to the Windows Boot Loader configuration files, which starting a clone from within Windows makes in order to create the Linux Kernel recovery environment.

Acronis Backup and Restore is Highly Recommended as a complete alternative to using Cloning - this is safer for a number of reasons:
A Backup can be used multiple times as needed - Cloning is a one-shot at success!
The source drive can be removed and stored safely while a Restore is written to the target drive - Cloning has to involve both source and target drives to work, and can damage/corrupt both when it goes wrong!
Backup and Restore is more flexible in what types of drives can be used, i.e. can backup and recover to Dynamic drives, RAID etc - Cloning can only operate with Basic drives.

KB documents: 56634: Acronis True Image: Cloning Disks and 1540: Difference between Backup and Disk Clone contain very important information on these subjects and should be read before embarking on these actions.

KB document: 56619: Acronis True Image: Compatibility with BitLocker deals with the topic of encryption and is equally valid for any other encryption product besides BitLocker.

I haven't given the last two links there as I could go on for ever, but the discussion that follows seems to agree that cloning is a bad idea, full stop.

Recommended instead is to do a full disc backup to another medium and restore it to the target. As explained in the body of the post.

Edit: Incorrect date at the start of para 2 corrected.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 02-May-18 18:26:12)

Interesting ... a pity that a lot of those warning and suggestions are not included with the software! I did go through some if the topics - but depends on the search term as to what is returned and did not see any of those you found.

I have a Win10 machine to do next ... maybe I will try to do the full back up and recovery actions before I do that.

Oops. I may have confused your searching, as I gave an incorrect date of Feb this year. (Now corrected). It should read 2 May. To get to what I quoted:-

1) Follow the initial link to the forums.
2) Expand the top topic - Acronis True Image Discussions.
3) Within that click the words "Acronis True Image 2018 Forum".
4) Scroll through the headings of topics posted (initiated?) on 2 May for the one titled "Acronis won't clone my HDD to my new SSD".
5) Click on that title.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 02-May-18 18:39:04)

Thanks. I will definitely play it safe with the Win10 machine though. Need to get a clean USB drive to back up to.

The XP machine is significantly faster to boot and noticeably faster when running.

It is practically impossible to get hold of Acronis. Shameful company considering they charge premium price for their software.