Recovering a backup onto a new disk using Acronis Rescue Media

Published by JP Novak on February 2, 2022 and last updated on October 3, 2022

This page is part of a tutorial describing how I copied the content of a disk onto an other one using an Acronis True Image backup.

We saw in the previous steps of this tutorial how I created an Acronis Rescue Media USB Flash drive and how I backed up of a disk drive using Acronis True Image. We are going to see now step by step how I recovered this backup onto a new disk.

1) The original HDD wasn’t needed anymore, so I shutdowned the computer and I removed the power plug from the power supply (for your safety and the safety of the computer components, be sure to always shut down the computer and to remove the power plug from the power supply or the outlet before opening a computer case). Then I opened the computer case and I removed the HDD I had backed up previously. I connected the new disk: a 500GB NVME Samsung 970 EVO SSD but it could have been an other HDD. I closed the computer case and I reconnected the power supply. I inserted the Acronis Rescue Media USB Flash drive into one of the USB ports and I switched on the computer. The idea was to boot from the USB Flash drive so I pressed the F11 key (the key used for that purpose on my computer) to change the boot order.

Please note that the key used to enter the boot menu depends on the motherboard UEFI Setup (or BIOS). That information that is generally displayed during a few seconds before loading the operating system. You might have to consult the motherboard documentation in order to see how to change the boot order if you are not familiar with the UEFI Setup (or BIOS).

2) The computer started to boot using the USB Acronis Recovery Media and displayed a small menu with three options:

I selected the first option as I wanted to launch Acronis True Image to recover a backup:

3) The rescue media loaded a mini operating system to start Acronis True Image:

4) And after a few seconds Acronis True Image HD was up and running:

5) Many useful tools and utilities were available but I wanted to recover the backup created previously so I selected the “Recovery” menu and the “Recover” option:

6) That started the recovery wizard. The first step was to select a backup from which to recover so I clicked the “Browse” button to search for the HDD backup file:

7) The backup was located in the DB4 volume associated with the C: letter (the volume letters used here could be different from those used in Windows) and in the folder that I had previously created and named “Backups_Acronis_True_image”. I selected the backup file and clicked the “OK” button:

8) The wizard displayed the backup details including the creation date. There was no other options available so I clicked the “Next” button:

9) The next step consisted in choosing the “Recovery method”, I wanted to recover the whole disk so I selected “Recover whole disks and partitions”:

10) The next step displayed the list of disk partitions included in the backup. You can select or deselect the partions you want or do not want to recover. I wanted to recover the whole disk so I activated the “Disk 1” check box to select all the partitions and I clicked the “Next” button:

11) After a few seconds the recovery wizard displayed a list of available disks in order to select the destination disk. I wanted to recover the backup of the original HDD onto the empty NVMe Samsung SSD 970 SSD that appeared as “Disk 3” and as “Not Initialized” because it had no partitions nor data. I selected it and clicked the “Next” button. Be aware that the recovery process will erase and delete the data of the destination disk, so be sure to select the correct one.

12) The next step was a summary of the recovery process:

13) I clicked the “Options” button to see them:

But I didn’t need any of them so I clicked the “Proceed” button to start the recovery process.

14) The first few steps of the recovery process were so quick that I couldn’t see them, the fourth one, the longest one consisted in recovering the partition data:

The recovery process can takes a lot of time so the “Operation Progress” window included two checkbox to either restart or shut down the computer at the end of the process.

15) After a few seconds, the progress bar appeared with an estimation of the remaining time (7 minutes when I took the first screenshot):

The estimation was rather accurate and the recovery process took something like 10 minutes.

16) Once again the last steps of the recovery process were too quick to able to see them and I simply got the “Recover operation succeeded” message to confirm the success of the operation:

17) I removed the USB Acronis Recovery Media and restarted the computer. I entered in the UEFI Setup to verify that the Samsung SSD was now the first boot drive. I saved the changes and exited the UEFI Setup and the computer restarted. This time, it took only a few seconds to have Windows 10 Pro up and running   (it required more than a minutes with the original HDD). The SSD was now the C: drive and everything was running smoothly.

Conclusion:

The whole process including the creation of the Acronis Rescue Media Flash disk, the backup of the original HDD and the recovery onto the SSD took something like 1 hour (including the time I needed to take the screenshots) so it was still rather quick. As a comparison, the cloning process took something like 20 minutes with the same disks. An additional benefit was that I now had a backup of my C: drive in case of need. Keep in mind that the time needed to create and to recover the backup depended mostly on the source and target disks speeds and on the volume of data to be transferred so it could have required more or less time with a different setup. My computer was now a far quicker to use with the SSD and the whole cloning process was rather simple using Acronis True Image HD.