Basic Disk Cloning - ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR 11 ADVANCED SERVER User Manual

7.2

Basic disk cloning

This operation is available for basic MBR disks.
The cloning operation transfers all the source disk data to a target disk. The source disk volumes can
be cloned to the target disk "as is", or resized automatically with respect to the target disk size.
You may want to use cloning in the following cases:

If you are about to replace an old hard disk with a new one without reinstalling operating
systems and applications on the new disk.
 If you want to transfer all the volumes and their contents from the existing disk to a larger one.
 If you want to have an exact copy of one disk on another disk.
Important: If you use an Acronis backup product, such as Acronis True Image Home, avoid cloning a disk that
contains the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM) component of that product. Otherwise, the machine
might not be able to boot from the target disk.
To clone a basic disk
1. Do any of the following:
 Right-click the basic disk you want to clone (i.e. a source disk), and then click Clone basic
disk.

Select Clone basic disk from the Actions pane. The program displays a list of partitioned
disks and asks you to select the source disk, from which data will be transferred to another
disk.
2. In the Select a disk as target for the cloning operation window, select a basic disk as target for
the cloning operation. The program enables you to select a target disk if its size is sufficient to
hold all the data from the source disk without any loss. If there is some data on the target disk,
you will receive a warning stating that this data will be lost after the cloning.
3. In the Select a cloning method window, select the cloning method:

As is – information from the source disk is transferred to the target "As is". So, if the target
disk is the same size and even larger, it is possible to transfer all the information there
exactly as it is stored at the source. When cloning to a larger target disk, the remaining space
becomes unallocated.

Use proportional volume resizing (for the supported file systems (p. 10)) – recommended
when the target disk is larger, or smaller than the source. The program will automatically
increase or decrease the (if possible) size of the volumes with respect to the target disk size.
Thus, no unallocated space appears on the target disk.
Note for smaller target disks: the program analyzes the target disk to establish whether its size will be
sufficient to hold all the data from the source disk without any loss. If such transfer with proportional
resizing of the source disk volumes is possible, then you will be allowed to proceed. If due to the size
limitations safe transfer of all the source disk data to the target disk is impossible even with the
proportional resizing of the volumes, then the Clone basic disk operation will be impossible and you will
not be able to continue.
4. If you are about to clone a disk containing the system volume, pay attention to the Advanced
options, described later in this section.
5. Click Finish to add the pending disk cloning operation
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been
performed.
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