Cloning drive using USB

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

 Hi.
I’m new here and would like some advice. Please direct me to the right place if this is not the correct forum. I have an Acer laptop on which the HDD (Seagate) is getting full and have purchased a 1TB WD replacement. I’ve downloaded the WD version of Acronis and want to clone the original drive to the new one using a USB port, then replacing the drive.

First of all, it would not let me install this Acronis version until I plugged the new drive into a USB port, saying there was no WD drive on the system. When I plugged in the new drive, I was able to install Acronis, but when I clicked the “Clone” button I got “Analyzing”, then the same message again. What could be the cause? I’ve cloned a drive before on a Seagate HDD on my Dell WinXP desktop, but that had 2 drive bays.

A little bit of disclosure: I don’t have a actual USB-SATA cable, but was using a USB-IDE interface with a SATA-IDE adapter. Could it be this adapter that’s preventing me from cloning? That’s what I’m suspecting, so I’ve ordered a straight USB-SATA cable. Also, I seem to remember seeing something about USB not always working. Has that been solved?

If I can’t get this cloning done via USB, could I use the DVD drive interface if I pull the DVD drive out? Is there such a cable?

2

Hello,

Have you tried connecting the WD drive to the motherboard and then trying to clone it?

3

How would I connect it to the motherboard on a laptop?

4

Just to follow up.

I got an actual SATA-USB cable and made a bit more progress, but not enough.

It requires me to restart the computer for the cloning to proceed.

When restarting, I get the text  “Starting Acronis Loader” or something like that.

Then I get a black screen that scrolls a bunch of stuff ending up with this:

](http://i.imgur.com/V8cRrw5.jpg[/IMG])

At the bottom it says “Fixing recursive fault, but reboot is needed!”

The only way I can reboot from there is by manually powering off and on again and then the cloning does not proceed. When I do it again I get the same thing all over again. What’s wrong? What else can I try?

5

Just following up. I’m now running off the new cloned 1TB drive with no problems. I ended up using Macrium Reflect to clone the drive.

6

To use the Acronis software, you would normally connect the WD inside the laptop, link the old Seagate via USB SATA caddy and boot to USB if your BIOS supports it - run Acronis and clone.   Or create a viable boot CD with the clone software on it, and just link the 2 drives and boot/clone.

personally I use a boot CD created by HD Clone Pro and a USB 3.0 caddy.

7

Thanks, IainNIX, although I didn’t catch that in the instructions, but it still doesn’t explain why it wouldn’t clone to the USB in my case and kept asking for reboots. Also, my CD drive was broken at the time. The reason I chose the Acronis WD Edition was that it was suggested where I purchased the new WD drive and I’d also used the Seagate edition previously on my desktop.

8

yes the manufacturer locked versions can be a pain, hence why i opted for a separate package for use @ work.