# Solved: Acronis won't recognize my new hard drive



## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

I purchased a new internal hard drive, put it in a hard drive enclosure, attached it to the usb and ran the Acronis program. Received message that I have to have a Western Digital hard drive in order to use the product. I took the hard drive out of the enclosure and put it directly in the laptop and put the original hard drive in the enclosure and attached to computer via usb but would only boot up to a black page asking me if I want to go to the safe mode, etc, or to the last known good configuration. No matter what I choose it brings me back to the same page and I realize that my computer is not booting up from my hard drive connected to the usb port. Before I take the new hard drive out of the computer I need to know what I can do to get Acronis to recognize the new drive and to get my computer to boot from the hard drive attached to the usb.

Also, in the Acronis literature it keeps saying that I'll be prompted to make a boot disk but that never happened. How do I go about getting that?


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

Are you trying to clone the old to the new or just make an image? I think you must be using the Western Digital version of Acronis...which is free but only works with WD drives (to clone or image from) I think. Also, you cannot boot to the USB drive in the enclosure...eSATA might work. You could get the free trial version of True Image Acronis which should be able to image any drive but its restricted from cloning. Also see the EaseUS image tool which is free...as well as many others.

So you will need to put the old drive back in the computer and use a image/clone program that is not restricted...or maybe you can find a western digital drive and attach that by usb and it would work for the other drives?? I don't know just how restricted it is.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

The WD Free version of Acronis Tru Image (Known as Disk Wizard) will work if only one of the drives is a WD Drive. Sam with the Seagate version of Disk Wizard (at least one drive must be a Seagate or Maxtor drive).


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

Hi Fairnooks, Yes I'm trying to clone the old drive to the new. I purchase a Western Digital Hard Drive and went to their site to get the Acronis to clone (that's what it said it did at the site) but I got the message from Acronis that a Western Digital hard drive must be present to use the product. I checked My Computer and the New hard drive was there but Acronis didn't see it. 

I don't know what imaging is. All I wanted to do clone my old drive to a bigger drive.


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

One of the drives is the new Western Digital plugged into the usb port but Acronis doesn't recognize it. Here's the Western Digital Hard Drive page for the Acronis download. As you can see it clearly mentions cloning. http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

Should I just use the separate Acronis trial version.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

Problem may be that it won't recognize the new drive attached thru the USB Port. Are you doing this on a laptop or a desktop computer?


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

sorry just re-read your op it is a laptop.


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

After going through all the trouble of installing the trial version I got the message that cloning is not available in the trial version. Rats!!!


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

According to the Users Manual, Cloning is available in the Free WD Version of the software. If you DL the Users manual, it is on Page 73.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

Are you using the free trial from Acronis or are you using the WD version from the WD website. If the free trial from Acronis, try Downloading the WD Version from the site you linked to in post# 5


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

Hi Dusty, I tried the version available on WD's website and the Acronis application doesn't recognize the WD disk. I got the message 'you must have at least one WD disk attached to your computer'. I downloaded the trial version of Acronis off the Acronis website and the trial version doesn't allow cloning. Looks like I'm going to get stuck buying a product I'll probably only use once in my lifetime. That sucks big time.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

Actually, I use Acronis True Image at least 2 times a week on 9 of my computers. Here is the whole thing about it. Data you do not have at least 2 copies of is data that a) you do not care about and, b) you are going to wish you DID have a back up of when your hard drive dies.

If you make an image of your hard drive, then later it dies, you can install then new hard drive then restore the image and be up and runing in about 15 - 20 minutes. I keep a clean image of my hard drive (updated now and then with SPs and driver updates) then I keep a twice weekly back up that includes all my data and installed programs. If my HDD dies I install the new one and have very little lost data, and am up and running in less than a half an hour.

Yes I have 2 HDD's just for back ups of each computer and 2 HDDs just for the clean image of each computer. And they are stored in a Firesafe when not in use.


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

I keep important documents in an external drive. I was going to keep the old hard drive, with all my programs, in case of an emergency so I wouldn't need Acronis permanently.


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Use the WD version of Acronis .. Install the new HDD internally ..
Here's how to make the Boot CD ..


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

anamandy said:


> I don't know what imaging is.


An Acronis Image is a Data file stored in an external Hard Drive .. (a picture of your Hard Drive partitions)
You can make an Acronis Image .. Then use the Image to build a new drive .. Or rewrite a specific partition.

Almost the same as Cloning .. But there's a data file in the middle of the process...
Only needs one Hard Drive at a time .. and the Image in an external.
Imaging can be your best friend .. If you learn how to use one


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

Thanks, but I'm confused enough already.


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

Did you initialize and format the new drive? It should be able to read the type of drive thru USB no problem, at least my device manager has them labeled as Maxtor or Seagates, etc.

But anyway, the cloning process may somehow still be restricted even with a boot disc with the trial version, which I mentioned in the second post. So imaging might be your only option. Imaging is taking a snapshot of your drive as it is at the time and then you can "reconstitute" it onto the same drive if a virus get in and wreaks havoc or onto a new drive such as in your case. You will need another external drive of some sort to put the image on since you can't put it on the new one intended for the image/clone.


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

Hi Fairnooks, I didn't initialize or format the new drive because both Western Digital and Acronis recommend against that. In My Computer the disk did show up though.


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## anamandy (Jan 10, 2003)

anamandy said:


> I purchased a new internal hard drive, put it in a hard drive enclosure, attached it to the usb and ran the Acronis program. Received message that I have to have a Western Digital hard drive in order to use the product. I took the hard drive out of the enclosure and put it directly in the laptop and put the original hard drive in the enclosure and attached to computer via usb but would only boot up to a black page asking me if I want to go to the safe mode, etc, or to the last known good configuration. No matter what I choose it brings me back to the same page and I realize that my computer is not booting up from my hard drive connected to the usb port. Before I take the new hard drive out of the computer I need to know what I can do to get Acronis to recognize the new drive and to get my computer to boot from the hard drive attached to the usb.
> 
> Also, in the Acronis literature it keeps saying that I'll be prompted to make a boot disk but that never happened. How do I go about getting that?


I contacted Western Digital and apparently the free Acronis Cloning application only works for a desktop hard drive. I purchase Acronis True Image 2011 and it worked like a charm. The hard drive works great.


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