Disk cloning software

[scole of TSBT]

I have a disk containing a dual boot Win 7/Linux ubuntu. Last time I booted it to linux it had a ton of file system errors which it corrected and went on to boot finally complete startup and has been running since (1 day). I assume this occurred because of disk errors and it remapped the bad sectors. I didn't pay attention because I thought it was toast and had gone out to buy a replacement drive but when I returned it was up and running. Anyway, I want to clone this disk onto a new one. If I clone this disk, will some record or flags marking the bad sectors also be cloned (if bad and remapped sectors is what happened)? What's the best way to copy everything to the new drive?

[Bryan]

I use Acronis True Image ... the full version. Western Digital used to have an abbreviated version on their website for cloning new HDD.

I don't think it will map the bad sectors onto the new drive .... just the valid data.

[c303a]

Western Digital still has an edition for there HDD's. http://support.wdc.com/cat_Products.aspx?ID=6&lang=en. Just pick your hard drive and download. I use it and it coes a pretty good job.

[scole of TSBT]

I downloaded and running the Acronis Migrate Easy (trial). It popped up that it failed to read a few sectors and I told it to ignore. I assume that's the correct option?

[Bryan]

I downloaded and running the Acronis Migrate Easy (trial). It popped up that it failed to read a few sectors and I told it to ignore. I assume that's the correct option?

I'd guess there is no real choice. If the HDD can't read it then it can't read it. I guess you could try multiple times but it probably wouldn't make any difference.

[zombie67]

SpinRite seems to be what many folks use for disk recovery.

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[scole of TSBT]

After running the Migrate Easy trial for over 5 hours I decided to contact Acronis support to make sure replying "ignore all" would allow it to continue. I typed up the case in pretty good detail, posted it on the support chat and spent the first 20 minutes with Pandeep as he repeated everything I typed while I replied "yes....yes...yes..." (you know the routine), then lots of "thank you for your patience"...and finally he replied I could not clone a disk using the Migrate Easy trial. After assuring him the option was enabled, provided him with a link their support page which says the trial version has full functionality and it had indeed been running for 5 hours, he repeated disk cloning was not supported in the trial version and I had to use the full Acronis True Image product. I thanked him for wasting an hour of time and closed the page. The Migrate Easy disk cloning process was still running but the estimated time remaining kept slowly going up. After it went from 30 minutes to 1:30, I decided to stop it and try another option. I installed the trial version of True Image, but disk cloning is disabled in that version. Good grief! I tried Migrate Easy again on a different system. When it got the EXT2 partition, it got very slow again, but there were no sector read errors. It took a total of about 5 hours to clone a 1TB drive. It didn't save the boot loader though so I had to reinstall that. It's all up and running. If I had known all the trouble and time it would take I would have just cloned the NTFS partition and reinstalled linux. Whole thing would have taken less than 2 hours.

I tried the WD version of Acronis too. It installed and the selection process ran, but setting up the source and destination disks and clicking the proceed button, I expected to see a window displaying the status/progress. There was nothing the window closed, nothing else opened up and there were no processed running that I could see.

[Al]

After running the Migrate Easy trial for over 5 hours I decided to contact Acronis support to make sure replying "ignore all" would allow it to continue. I typed up the case in pretty good detail, posted it on the support chat and spent the first 20 minutes with Pandeep as he repeated everything I typed while I replied "yes....yes...yes..." (you know the routine), then lots of "thank you for your patience"...and finally he replied I could not clone a disk using the Migrate Easy trial. After assuring him the option was enabled, provided him with a link their support page which says the trial version has full functionality and it had indeed been running for 5 hours, he repeated disk cloning was not supported in the trial version and I had to use the full Acronis True Image product. I thanked him for wasting an hour of time and closed the page. The Migrate Easy disk cloning process was still running but the estimated time remaining kept slowly going up. After it went from 30 minutes to 1:30, I decided to stop it and try another option. I installed the trial version of True Image, but disk cloning is disabled in that version. Good grief! I tried Migrate Easy again on a different system. When it got the EXT2 partition, it got very slow again, but there were no sector read errors. It took a total of about 5 hours to clone a 1TB drive. It didn't save the boot loader though so I had to reinstall that. It's all up and running. If I had known all the trouble and time it would take I would have just cloned the NTFS partition and reinstalled linux. Whole thing would have taken less than 2 hours.

I tried the WD version of Acronis too. It installed and the selection process ran, but setting up the source and destination disks and clicking the proceed button, I expected to see a window displaying the status/progress. There was nothing the window closed, nothing else opened up and there were no processed running that I could see.
Sometimes it's better to punt... ;) You do know you'll never get those hours back...next time you'll have a plan and it won't include P(S)andeep! Glad you're back up!

[scole of TSBT]

What a coincidence. I just got an email from Sandeep (not Pandeep)...


Greetings, thank you for contacting Acronis Customer Central. My name is Sandeep.

This is a follow up email post chat conversation we had today where as you mentioned that you were facing issues with the cloning feature of Acronis Migrate easy 7 with trial version.

Since you had ignored the bad sectors that might be the reason why the estimated time was going up.

In case if you were cloning from within Windows and using Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 then the cloning will not work as it is not an supported operating system. In trail version you cannot clone through Acronis bootable media.
Do they have bots looking for forum posts about their products/support?

[c303a]

I hate most "support" sites. About all they know how to do is repeat what you said and read from a step by step instruction book. For instance....I went to a cable support person who told me to unplug my modem which I did. The next step was to unplug the power cord from the wall. What sense does that make. Since when does the power cord (a normal 3 prong cord) have to do with anything. I think they train thes people (or bots) to waste as much of your time as possible, then to tell you it has to be someone else's problem. I will say there are some very good support people out there but they are few and far between.