Windows 10: Macrium versus Acronis in cloning laptop drive. Seems a difference

Macrium versus Acronis in cloning laptop drive. Seems a difference

I have used Acronis for years. In order to clone a laptop drive I have been told to take out the internal laptop drive and attach via USB. Then put drive I want to clone TO in the laptop. Then I would boot with the Acronis USB media I had created. I would clone from the Source (external USB former internal laptop drive) to the laptop drive I just inserted. When done I would remove the USB cable and could boot directly from the drive in the laptop if desired. Have tried this and it works fine using Windows 8.1 (Do not have Win 10 at this time).

Macrium--from what I read in several places (I do not own software yet) you DO NOT have to take out the current internal laptop drive and attach as USB. You would simply attach a new or previous drive to the laptop via USB then run the clone option. This will create a bootable drive that when done I could insert in the laptop to boot.

Is this correct?

Thank you very much
Peter

:)

 

Strange "C Missing" in Restore window

Results of testing Acronis clone and Image restore.

Boot SSD 1 – verified that there is no C Missing.

Created a second restore point for this drive.

Wipe SSD 2.

Clone SSD 1 to SSD 2 using Acronis 2016 booted from Rescue USB.

Boot from SSD 2.

C Missing exists on SSD 2

System Protection turned OFF for C System.

System Protection ON for C Missing.

Wipe SSD 2.

Image SSD1 to External backup drive using Acronis 2016 booted from Rescue USB.

Restore image from external drive to SSD2 with Acronis 2016 booted from Rescue USB.

Boot SSD2.

System Protection turned OFF for C System.

System Protection turned ON for C Missing.



My Results of testing;

Macrium clone creates C Missing folder on cloned drive.

Macrium Image restore does NOT create C Missing on imaged drive



Acronis clone creates C Missing folder on cloned drive.

Acronis image restore creates C Missing on imaged drive.



Turning Protection OFF on C Missing removes it from System Protection window.

Must turn protection on for C System.

These are my results - Others may have different results.

 

Windows 10 won't boot "Repairing disk errors this might take more than an hour to complete"

Do you know of any drive cloning software that will let me clone a partition to another partition? I tired using both Macrium Reflect Free and Acronis True Image Western Digital Edition.

 

Welcome to the forum. It doesnt realy matter which way you do it at the end of the day its just a simple copy of one drive to another and any cloning software will work the same

 

And it will boot either way correct?
Never used Macrium which is why I ask.
Acronis insists that you put the disk to be cloned--TO- in the laptop and the -FROM- as USB connected. Macrium does not appear to have this restriction in my reading.

Thank you in advance.
Peter

 

Macrium is far superior product at least the paid version and AFAIK Acronis does not have a free version. In MR v7 all you have to do is use a drive connected via any method and click Clone Drive in MR. There is no need to remove the drive from your laptop.

 

Actually, this is not the case. Some inferior cloning softwares do not make identical clones, and do not copy all hidden partitions. Acronis and Macrium do make identical copies.

 

With Macrium, you can simply clone from internal to external drive, and then swap as you say. You do not even need to boot from a Macrium Rescue drive.

To do same with Acronis, if you are correct, you would need to boot from an Acronis drive to clone.

Take it from regulars here, Macrium is the preferred product by far for domestic users, and the free version is fine for most users.

 

I hate Acronis software for reasons I won't go into and will never use their products. I've used Macrium Reflect Free as recommended by many on this forum with no problems.

 

I converted over to MR 6.x, and am very satisfied.

I especially like the scheduling of a differential or total backup.
Slight learning curve, but after that, sweet !

 

The reason Acronis wants you to perform the clone as described by the OP, is that it reduces the chance that you re-boot your system with both drives attached which everybody knows causes problems to the cloned drive. You can run the Acronis clone process under windows just like Macrium. Now I have not done it in a couple of years, since switching to Macrium, but it did work. Maybe they have changed ( but I don't think so).

 

Yeah I think this is correct from memory but cannot be certain as I have not use Acronis for several years mainly due to being ripped off for upgrade costs only a few months after buying it. I was hacked off as the 2013 build (iirc) had more bugs than a jungle, and many users complained about it so they bought out a paid upgrade rather than a free fix under terms of licence saying it was outside warranty period (and I had only had it about 4 months).

Macrium Reflect became my de facto tool thereafter and never had a single restore failure across variety of pcs/tablets.

Frankly Acronis are not interested in individual users targeting the corporate market.