Cloning Fails with Dell Inspiron 15/5000

WD Software & Mobile Apps WD Software
1

Bought WD Black 750GB - 7200rpm - WD7500BPKX laptop drive and downloaded the ‘free’ Acronis that goes with it.
Acronis wants the ‘WD’ placed into the Dell Laptop and the original (working but making a small noise) outside in a ‘cloning’ device that allows SATA to be read and powered… a cloning kit for SATA and all other drives. Used it successfully many times.

On boot, if I hit F12 for boot manager (before doing any of this) and have a thumb drive in the usb drive, then I get the offer to boot from USB. Shut down machine.

Install the WD Black after removing the noisy Dell 1TB same size hard drive. Place that in the ‘clone kit’ and wire for power and to the SATA connector…the Dell will not boot as a SATA based USB enclosed drive so I am not sure exactly where to go with this. I believe the drive will die soon. And ‘now’ there is no offer to boot from USB with F12 probably because the original old and noisy SATA drive is not being found in that ‘kit’ USB device. I can put the WD in there but now I get the warning about ‘changing’ the WD into the laptop so it is properly formatted for booting later. Hmmm.

Appreciate any thoughts our help.
Thanks
Doc

2

Hello,

Test the old drive on the USB adapter on a different PC to see if the unit is detected.

Is the new unit being detected when you connect that internally?

3

Sorry for the lengthy delay.
Yes, the ‘new’ WD black ‘is’ detected in the ‘laptop’ but has no ‘OS’ installed/cloned so that is as far as it goes. The ‘old’ noisy suspect 1TB 7200 Dell HD seems not to be detected in the USB rig. Not sure why. Will try to test further. Believing I won’t be able to use Acronis to do this… I used to have the ‘new’ HD attached externally, clone the old / internal HD on the laptop and then shut down, swap and voila! Just not sure why this ‘new’ way is requiring (guess SATA connectivity) the swap out… but appreciate the help.