How to Perform Acronis Active Disk Cloning

What is Active Cloning in Acronis?

Active disk cloning in Acronis refers to the ability to clone a running Windows system without having to shut it down or restart your computer. Traditional cloning usually required you to reboot into a special environment because system files are constantly in use. However, with active cloning, Acronis can copy your entire drive, operating system, installed programs, settings, and files, while Windows is still running.

This process eliminates downtime, making it especially valuable for business users, gamers, and anyone who can't pause operations. In short, active disk cloning enables seamless, real-time duplication of your hard drive, whether you're upgrading to a faster SSD or replacing an old hard drive. Please follow the stepwise tutorial below to learn how to use Acronis to clone hard drive active and get an Acronis alternative when it doesn't work.

How to Perform Acronis Active Disk Cloning

How to clone disk with Acronis actively is relatively straightforward. Here is a step-by-step overview to guide you:

Preparations for disk cloning with Acronis:

• For Acronis active disk cloning, it is necessary to make sure that the source and target drives have the same logical sector size and that they should both be basic disks (e.g. MBR and GPT), not dynamic disks.
• Disable BitLocker encryption if it is installed on Windows system drives, otherwise, cloning may fail.
• Attach your new drive, either via a SATA connection or through a USB-to-SATA adapter if it's external.

Step 1. Download and install the Acronis disk cloning software on your computer. From the Tools section, select Clone Disk to start the cloning wizard.

Step 2. Under Choose clone mode, select Automatic to resize partitions automatically to fit the target drive.

Step 3. In the Source Disk section, choose the drive that contains your active Windows.

Step 4. Under Destination Disk, select your new drive to store the cloned data, and confirm the promption.

Step 5. Then, confirm all your selections and click Proceed to begin an active disk cloning with the Acronis cloning software.

That's all about how to let Acronis clone boot drive without downtime or interruptions.

Best Alternative Active Cloning Solution - AOMEI Cloner

More than one user has reported that they meet Acronis clone disk errors like Acronis True Image stuck on source disk, Acronis True Image disk cloning has failed, and so on.

To ensure a seamless cloning experience, you may need a disk cloning alternative solution to Acronis to clone active hard drive, such as AOMEI Cloner. This cloning software supports cloning HDD to SSD, HDD to HDD, SSD to M.2 SSD, dynamic disk cloning, as well as partition cloning.

Here are steps on how to use this Acronis active disk cloning alternative to clone your drive:

Step 1. Get started with downloading and running AOMEI Cloner, then go on to select Clone > Disk Clone.

Step 2. Pick your current running system drive as the source and the connected SSD/HDD as the destination.

Step 3. If you're migrating to an SSD, enable SSD Alignment. Click Start Clone to begin the process. You can continue working on your PC while the cloning happens in the background.

Important Notes:✎...

Leave this Sector By Sector Clone option unchecked if your target drive is smaller than the current system drive or if there are bad sectors on the system drive; otherwise, the cloning may fail.

You can use Edit Partitions to adjust the partition size on the destination disk according to your needs as well as convert disk type if it's different from the source disk.

FAQs about Acronis Active Disk Cloning

#1. Acronis Active disk cloning vs full image backup, what's the difference?

While both serve as methods to protect or migrate your data, they differ significantly:

• Active disk cloning: Creates an exact replica of your drive that’s immediately bootable. It's ideal for upgrading or replacing disks.
• Full image backup: Saves your entire drive into an image file. You must restore it before using it. It’s better suited for long-term backup storage rather than direct replacement.

#2. How long does Acronis take to clone a drive?

Cloning time depends on multiple factors, including size of the source drive, type of connection (SATA, NVMe, USB), and disk health and performance. Generally, cloning an average 500GB disk can take between 30 minutes to 2 hours.

#3. Why does Acronis take so long for disk cloning?

Several reasons can slow down cloning on Acronis:

• Disk errors or bad sectors on the source disk
• Large amount of fragmented data
• Slow connection between the drives
• Running background processes consuming system resources

#4. Why is my Acronis clone disk wizard stuck?

If Acronis Clone Disk Wizard is stuck, you can check the following aspects:

• Check if the destination disk has bad sectors.
• Ensure sufficient system memory and disk space.
• Update to the latest Acronis version.
• Temporarily disable antivirus programs that might interfere.

#5. Can you clone an active drive?

Of course, you can. An active drive here usually refers to the disk or partition that a computer uses to boot into its operating system. You are able to clone a drive while it's being used, no need to shut down Windows or even reboot, thanks to active disk cloning in Acronis and hot cloning in AOMEI Cloner.

Conclusion

Acronis active disk cloning makes it simple to migrate your system drive to another disk without downtime or rebooting. Additionally, AOMEI Cloner is a more intuitive, easy-to-use, and professional cloning software, and is also a great choice for active Windows system cloning when Acronis disk cloning is failed or gets stuck. It even allows you to clone only Windows OS to new drive and ensure a secure boot.