Windows 10: I bought a Seagate external hard drive and it won't let me use Acronis

Going to try that now mate. Thanks for the help. Jeezo is there an easier way to replace the HDD HP Pavilion 15-n290sa HDD Replacement/SSD Upgrade Guide - YouTube

 

Taking the bottom off the computer to get to the hard drive is not as hard as it looks. Just make sure to carefully pry the bottom off once all the screws are out. A little triangular cell phone opening tool works great (looks like a guitar pick). Now that I've done it on two different laptops it only takes a minute after the screws are out. Do NOT put Loctite on the screws when you put them back in! I made that mistake once (because I found the screws loose) and ended up sealing all the screws in and that computer will never come apart again without a drill *cry

The old Dell hard drive itself will definitely work, but the Windows 7 on it may or may not boot in the new computer. So I still highly recommend having a Windows 10 installation DVD or USB flash drive (which everyone should have for their computer anyway). If the Windows 7 does not boot, you can still do a clean install of Windows 10 to the hard drive. If Windows 7 does boot, you can upgrade it to Windows 10.

 

Good grief that's nearly a full dismantle. On my oldish Toshiba, it's all of two screws and slide off a small cover to get the drive out. Doesn't look like HP intended to make it easy to replace a drive!

Re: The Dell's drive, depending on how old it is it may not be a Sata drive. 250GB would seem to be more of an IDE laptop drive size, I'd check first.

 

I had a few Acronis backups. Including my niece and nephew's. I still have have my niece and nephew's and they don't even use it lol. And mines is gone typical. I deleted mine thinking that there would be enough room for my backup and it wasn't. Hence new external hard drive and my computer hard drive is gone. I've had no luck at all since moving house. Thanks again for the help mate. I deleted the WinRE partition and I then put my external hard drive in and it asked me to undo the deletion so I did. Doing Macrium backup again. Nightmare!

 

I believe that you could use Macrium to backup only the C-Drive (the OS) then do a clean install of Windows 10. Then you can use the backup to restore your old OS partition, with all of your data and apps, over the newly installed OS partition. Before you try that, lets hear what some our more learned gurus have to say about this.

 

OK thank you not at home just now. I forgot to change Macrium advanced settings. So that will definitely have failed. I think the c drive has bad sectors too. So I don't know what will be backed up. As it was taking forever. You'll see in my last screenshot of Macrium,Acronis disk director sorted out the WinRE section. I cancelled it as it was taking forever to backup. And it was on c drive I cancelled it and it came up with over 1000 errors/cluster errors. I'll change it back to avoid bad errors. I only changed Macrium back to not ignore bad sectors to see if disk director sorted out all the problems. But obviously not. C drive has problems. So I think I'll go for the 1tb Toshiba hybrid drive as it's a good price for it.

Thanks again for the help.

 

I think it was 4 year's ago. 6 year's max. maybe even get the Dell repaired. Video card is away on it if I remember correctly. I remember him testing it on another computer. My screen showed up. You guy's will know better.

Thanks again for the help.

 

Is this a Seagate drive error? or is it my c drive? Just before I buy a new hard drive. And I can just right click on c drive and format it. Before I give it in to be fixed as I am not even going to attempt it after watching youtube video. And thanks everyone that has helped me.

Oh by the way it's been on all night and it's only at that. Unbelievable!!!

 

The good news is that a clean install of Win10 and Macrium will likely do away with the VSS writer issue. You should probably not install both Acronis and Macrium at the same time just to be sure that's not at the root of the VSS issue. Acronis installs things that are very difficult to remove and using their Cleanup tool will trash the VSS writers. It did on my system and I was saved only by having a backup image from which to restore my system. I would definitely use Macrium and not Acronis. Good luck with the new drive.
Bob

 

So I definitely need a new drive is what I am saying. Bob correct?

 

Yes, the VSS error is referring to the drive(s) that you are backup up FROM and not the drive that you are backing up TO. VSS is used to produce a "snapshot" of the drive layout (a map) at a moment in time to use as a reference. Did the backup process ever complete? I thought I read that it ran all night and you eventually stopped it, correct?

Regarding the existing drive you could reformat it or you could just ask whoever is installing the new SSD (if you decide to go that way) to give you back the old drive. When you get it home you could take a hammer to it and physically destroy it. Be sure to wear safety glasses and gloves in case pieces fly. Don't want you going blind on us! All you need to do is to drive a screwdriver through the platter so it can never be read again.
With the errors on it, it might not even format but there is always the possibility that whoever has physical possession of the drive might be able to run recovery software and read some of the data even if its been reformatted. If you have sensitive financial or medical info on it you don't want to take a chance of that happening.

Did you decide on an SSD or conventional hard disk (we call that a "spinner")? Interesting enough, I'm going to my local computer shop in the morning and buy a larger SSD for one of my PC's. All this talk got me to thinking I need one with more capacity.
Bob

 

Have you tried the Fix VSS problems from within Macrium ?
VSS Error:0x8000ffff - Backup aborted! - Failed To Create Volume Snapshot. - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

They also have stand alone Vssfix.
Scroll down to ... Re-register the VSS components.
Make sure you get the one for your platform (32 or 64)
Troubleshooting Microsoft VSS errors - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

 

Yes ran all night and is still running. I can't believe it. I had a full backup of the drives with seagate software. And decided to delete it and go for my favourite software Acronis and it all went pear shape from there.

Yes I have sensitive information about my health etc. So I'll just watch him. He's fine though. I want to see how fast he does it. I went for Toshiba hybrid ssd. As I can't afford a complete ssd Toshiba H200 High performance 1TB hybrid solid state hard drive sshd (Bulk) 2.5 inch SATA 6.0 Gb/s. £64.99. It will give me an idea of what an ssd drive would be like.

Don't know how it works being a hybrid. Is part of the drive ssd and the rest isn't. What I just said doesn't make sense and when you choose it on Amazon. 1TB and the next part I picked ssd. So I haven't a clue how that works. But I have bought it and should be up and running with it on Saturday or Monday.

Macrium is still running. I am going back to my Acronis with my new drive. No need for a flash drive etc etc. And is a lot faster than Macrium although seagate software was pretty fast too. So messaging you from my smart phone. As I have Macrium at high priority. 7.4lb/s lol. I realise I can't really compare them because of the drive. But when I did it with Macrium a year or so ago. Acronis was much more faster than Macrium. I would just like to thank everyone who posted on the subject to help me and I will let you know how good it is when I get it installed. Thanks again for the help.

 

Hi Eagle51,
All good ideas but the OP has tons of errors on the HD that she's trying to back up. Task a look at the earlier posts.

BTW, I tried both of those fixes when I was having VSS problems after I used the Acronis Cleanup Tool and neither of them helped me. Fortunately I had a backup to save me!

 

Toshiba hard drive review is that good?