How to Clone Dynamic Disk with Acronis and Alternative

What Is a Dynamic Disk?

Before you can clone, you need to understand what a dynamic disk is. It is different from the basic disks that store data in fixed partitions, dynamic disks have the following more advanced features:

• Spanned volumes
• Striped volumes (RAID 0)
• Mirrored volumes (RAID 1)
• RAID-5 volumes

📢Note: These advanced features allow for flexible storage management and redundancy, but can complicate backup and cloning operations.

Details about Acronis Dynamic Disk Clone

Acronis True Image can support certain types of dynamic volumes, especially simple and mirrored volumes, however, it does not support cloning of dynamic disks that have complex configurations, for example:

• Spanned volumes
• Striped volumes (RAID 0)
• RAID-5 volumes

When you try to clone the unsupported dynamic disk, Acronis may either throw an error or fail to detect the volume entirely.

How to Clone a Dynamic Disk with Acronis

Follow the steps below to clone dynamic disk that contains simple volumes.

Step 1. Open Acronis True Image, navigate to Tools > Clone Disk.

Step 2. Choose Automatic or Manual mode.

Step 3. Select your source dynamic volume and the target disk, and click Next.

Step 4. In the Finish tab, all the settings will be displayed, and click Proceed if everything is OK.

Choose the Best Acronis Alternative: AOMEI Cloner

Due to the limitations of Acronis dynamic disk clone, many users will seek more comprehensive solutions. AOMEI Cloner is one of them, which can clone any type of dynamic disk volume.

💗Why choose AOMEI Cloner?
It offers several cloning options, including disk cloning, partition cloning, and system cloning. Also, it supports cloning from larger disks to smaller SSDs.
It provides a user-friendly interface and advanced features to ensure that the entire system is cloned with minimal risk of data loss.
It provides an SSD alignment option, which automatically aligns partitions during cloning for maximum SSD performance.
It works with GPT/UEFI, MBR, NVMe, and SATA drives, and has wide compatibility.

Download and install AOMEI Cloner to try out now!

The easiest dynamic disk clone software for Windows PC & Server

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Cloner, navigate to Clone > Disk Clone.

Step 2. Choose the source dynamic disk, and select the target disk, then click Next.

Step 3. Preview the operation to clone the hard drive to SSD, you can check SSD Alignment, and click Start Clone.

📌Tip: AOMEI Cloner also provides:

• Sector By Sector Clone: It can clone all sectors of a drive, including bad and empty sectors. However, this operation requires the size of the target drive to be equal to or larger than the size of the source drive.
• Edit Partition: It offers to convert the target disk from MBR(GPT) to GPT(MBR), add unused space to all partitions, and manually resize partitions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: Why can’t Acronis detect my dynamic disk?

A: Acronis doesn’t support all dynamic volume types. Unsupported configurations like striped or spanned volumes may be invisible.

Q2: Can I clone a dynamic disk to SSD?

A: Yes, both Acronis and AOMEI Cloner support cloning to SSDs.

Q3: Can I convert a dynamic disk to basic before cloning with Acronis?

A: Yes, converting a dynamic disk to basic will delete all volumes and data. So, please always back up your data before converting. Alternatively, software like AOMEI Cloner can be used to support dynamic disks natively.

Conclusion

If you have a simple dynamic volume, Acronis True Image is an excellent choice. But if you have complex dynamic volumes or need a cloning tool that supports all volumes, AOMEI Cloner is the best choice. Its versatility makes up for Acronis' lack of options, and you can choose the backup software according to your needs.