Simple cloning does not work. The USB drive does not boot and Windows fix procedures did not help. Thank you for any help you can give. Windows does not support booting into Windows for USB disk drives. Please see KB document: which gives much more information on cloning including a video tutorial of the process. Thank you for taking the time to educate me. Plese forgive my ignorance. I am the CEO of a small company, and IT work falls on me by default, not because I am averse in it. Just one question, or maybe 2 or 3 actually. If I create the DVD Rescue Media, does this bring over all of the information needed to make my programs work? I am assuming, no matter what, that I wouldn't clone back to the internal hard drive in any case. It either wouldn't work or it might mess something up. I use Laplink for most of my copy work. Thank you for your help and patience. Cloning, in a nutshell, is used only to create a duplicate copy of an entire disk drive, including all partitions, to a second disk drive of a similar size. This is mainly used when you want to replace the source drive with a new one, or to upgrade from a 'spinning' HDD to a solid-state SSD drive etc. Backup images are used more to protect your data on your existing drives and keep these backups updated on a regular schedule - these are written into a container file akin to a zip type file which is then stored like any other file on your backup destination drive. The key advantage of using backups is that you can store multiple backup files on your storage drive providing it is of a sufficient capacity. The Acronis Rescue Media is the primary means by which you can recover your system in the event of any problem that prevents you booting into the Windows OS system - the rescue media provides a totally standalone environment based on the Linux OS from which to perform the recovery back to a new totally blank or existing disk drive. Tools like Laplink are great for copying files and folders but cannot be used to copy the actual Windows OS unless you have a product with the same capabilities of Acronis True Image. When using ATIH to Recover your system, it will recover your complete Windows OS to a bare metal disk drive without the need to reinstall the Windows OS and all your programs and data etc. Hello again Steve, I think what you are telling me is that the only way I can really do what I want is with an Internal Hard Drive. I clone the Source Drive to the Second Internal Drive and if some disaster happens to my Source Drive, I am covered. Essentially that is what I have now, except that I had to upgrade the one drive to Win7 and leave the other with WinXP. Dropbox, which links our computers across 3 locations, no longer works with WinXP. What I wanted to do was Clone the XP to the Portable HD, and Clone the Win7 to the second Internal Hard Drive. There are a some programs on the XP Drive that are just too much trouble to move. I guess since all of the other computers we use are Win7, my best bet is to just Clone one of the other computers, all laptops, using the special cable arrangement to do that. I'll just ask one more question and then not bother you again. We have a bunch of similar laptops, all Dells. If I clone one, and one of the others gets a bad HD, can I clone that back-up to the other unit with a new hard drive, or is Microsoft preventing that? Just as an FYI, I use Laplink every day to copy to alternating Portable Hard Drives the complete Dropbox Directory, just in case. That's kind of what you were describing in your suggestion. My fear is always that one of our computers will get a virus and wipe out everybody elses. This, at least gives us a simpler way to get things back, easier than searching through Dropbox deletions. Thanks again for your help. Hi ASJ, You can indeed clone with an external hard drive. The key though is to take the original internal hard drive and put it in the external case. Then put the new hard drive where the original used to be. Start the clone, making sure to select the external USB as the source and the new disk that is internal as the destination. When the clone is done, disconnect the USB drive the original and try to boot the newly cloned drive - should work. The reason Acronis wants you to do it exactly this way is because Microsoft does not allow you to boot a full Windows OS from a USB drive... To answer your other question about cloning one system and using that clone in other computers... HOWEVER, Microsoft licensing will depend on the type of license on your computer. If you have an Enterprise license, you're good to go. If you have an OEM license the one that came with your computer , that is tied to the original hardware the motherboard and although it should boot, may show the license is not activated. You would then have to call Microsoft and convince them to activate the license. Acronis is great for backup and restore and cloning. However, in your case, you might actually be better off using a hard drive duplicator dock. They aren't a backup solution, but as far as cloning goes, they can really make life easier: You don't even need a PC to clone, it can be done completely through the cloning dock... Appreciate you guidance on the Dual Bay Docking Station. Sounds like the route for me. Would the connection from the PC to the docking station through the USB be bootable? My guess is probably not, but just thought I'd ask. I'm assuming the cloning can be done from the PC to the station through the USB without removing the Internal Hard Drive from the PC, correct? Thank you for all your help on this. Unfortunately, no to both questions. The dock is USB 3. With the USB 3. The clonubg functionality of these docks are completely isolated to the docks themselves. There are 2 bays - source and destination. To clone, you must put the original in the source and the new drive in the destination. The docks cannot be used to clone a drive that is currently connected to the PC via some other internal or USB connection... In somce cases, it's easier to use Acronis since it works with the internal drives, in other cases, it may be easier to pull the drives and clone externally and then put the drive back in a system perhaps not physically easier, but perhaps more likely for a successful clone which can save you time and headaches. Hello Bobbo, You've sold me. I'm ordering up the docking option and another HD. A clone gives me the total back-up that I want. A clean hard drive with no programs leaves one with a thankless job. Recently I upgraded on of my computers to Win 10. I wanted to go back to Win 7. Should have been easy, right? The Microsoft Techie tried to help me with no better success. I decided to stay with the Win 10 to avoid all of the program hassle. Your help puts me where I have to be. I wish I had asked sooner--before I wasted a lot of time trying to make the portable HD's bootable. Thank you very much for your guidance. Glad to help out! If I were in the same boat, I'd want the help too : When you do get the dock - test it out before you really get in a real world situation. Should work just fine as long as you're cloning to the same size drive size or a larger one... Tehnology always gest us though. If you have any systems using the smaller m. But alas, we now also have faster m. For the time being, there's no cloning dock option for them, but perhaps we'll something in the not too distant future. This is why it's nice to have different clone and backup options like Acronis and a duplicator :.