Restoring Sector-by-Sector Images Using Acronis True Image Home 2011

I wanted to clone an encrypted hard disk drive (HDD) onto a solid state drive (SSD) and use the SSD going forward for speed. I would use a registered (purchased) copy of Acronis True Image Home 2011.

So I made a Rescue Image (from the Tools menu on Acronis True Image Home 2011 on my home PC) on a USB stick and booted up the machine I wanted to backup from the USB stick Acronis True Image Home 2011 Rescue Disk.

I backed up my encrypted disk and partitions using sector-by-sector backup (as is the only way for an encrypted partition). I did the back up onto a USB portable disk drive.

Then I powered down the desktop and swapped in the SSD. Powered up the desktop and attempted a restore. During the restore process I selected “sector by sector” restore. Then I kept getting the following message while attempting to specify where to restore to:

“There may not be enough free space on the system partition to boot up your operating system after recovery”

This was driving me crazy! I actually tried another whole backup just to double check I had selected sector-by-sector backup.

I got the same message on restore when I selected “sector-by-sector restore”.

Time to try something different. I tried restoring but I didn’t select “sector-by-sector” restore. I just tried a plain ordinary default restore.

Now this appears to have copied the partitions but NOT the Master Boot Record on a Dell Optiplex 755. Frustrating. I will have to try the clone on different hardware. I didn’t have any of these troubles on a Dell Latitude D630 laptop.