Acronis True Image WD Edition: 2016 does not support WD Black Dual Drive

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I recently purchased a new in box WD Black Dual Drive. The provided utility could not find the software download page (not surprising ad the drive was discontinued a couple of years ago) so I went to the WD legacy products support page to download the Acronis True Image WD Edition and Dual Drive Installation software. I installed Acronis but when I connected the Dual Drive to an HP Envy 17T USB port using the included USB → SATA cable and started True Image, a message noted that it couldn’t identify a valid WD drive. The HP laptop properly identified the drive as a USB device as did the WD version of Data Lifeguard. When I checked the list of devices supported by Acronis True Image WD Edition: 2016, the WD Black Dual Drive was not listed.

It appears that the Acronis True Image WD Edition: 2015 version that first added Windows 10 support also retained support for the Black Dual Drive, but I have been unable to locate that version. In addition, I don’t know if the Black Dual Drive Installation Utility, required to unlock the HHD portion of the Dual Drive, operates correctly in WIndows 10.

Can anyone out there direct me to a copy of Acronis True Image WD Edition 2015 or suggest another method for partitioning, formatting, imaging and installing the new Dual Drive? The original HP boot drive is teetering on the edge of failure so I REALLY need to find a resolution ASAP.

THANKS!

2

Not too very long ago I installed my old Black² into a Zotac Zbox BI320. I connected the drive to my Windows desktop PC and used WD’s Data Lifeguard to wipe the drive so it would reset. It takes a long time to do (HOURS). I did this because the drive had been used in another PC and I wanted a fresh start. After it was done, I believe this is what I did.

Connected the Black² to the Zotac in it’s internal drive bay.
Installed Windows 10 from a USB stick (Just let Windows handle partitioning)
Once Windows was done installing I used the WD Black² Installer For Windows. To my surprise it actually worked! I had attempted this before and that software would not complete using Windows 10. But it did this time and all is well for over 2 months and a few Windows updates!

So, unless you are trying to clone your existing drive, you shouldn’t need True image. So what might work if you want to clone (which I wouldn’t do, but that’s just me) Is to just go ahead and install Windows 10 with the drive installed in the HP’s drive bay (NOT USB) and use the WD Black² software to get it partitioned correctly. Which should establish a partition of ~111GB and maybe some other small ones and one ~900+GB. Put your old drive back in the HP and use Acronis to clone it to that ~111GB partition on the Black².

You can get both these files HERE