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January 8th, 2016 16:00

Installing a 2nd XPS 8700 Drive

Hey Support Forum,

I'm going to use Acronis to create a clone of my HD for catastrophic recovery purposes. I have a new identify HD to what's in there right now. I need to be pointed to information on installing it in "slave mode". After install, I suspect I'll be promoted to reformat it to get it ready?

After running the cloning process - I would probably need to unplug it to keep from having 2 identical boot disks.  I thought for cloning I could just use an external HD (ie WD Passport) and a USB Boot disk to do this but Acronis chat says no.

My question is just about master/slave settings, reformatting it and any other considerations.

10 Elder

 • 

46K Posts

January 9th, 2016 12:00

Hey Support Forum,

I'm going to use Acronis to create a clone of my HD for catastrophic recovery purposes. I have a new identify HD to what's in there right now. I need to be pointed to information on installing it in "slave mode". After install, I suspect I'll be promoted to reformat it to get it ready?

After running the cloning process - I would probably need to unplug it to keep from having 2 identical boot disks.  I thought for cloning I could just use an external HD (ie WD Passport) and a USB Boot disk to do this but Acronis chat says no.

My question is just about master/slave settings, reformatting it and any other considerations.

 JimDistinctionComm

NOTE:  Slave/master settings are not used with SATA drives.

See page 40 of the owner's manual here

   http://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_xps_desktop/xps-8700_Owner%27s%20Manual_en-us.pdf

Also this thread about installing a second hard drive in an XPS 8700 should help:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19521716/20443876#20443876

After installing the SATA drive, go to Disk Management, to format the drive and assign it a drive letter, to have windows recognize it.

I use the same system of cloning the primary hard drive to the secondary drive weekly for a backup, but I leave the secondary drive running and not disconnected.

The following thread may also, be useful:

   http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/p/19579493/20620496.aspx#20620496

Bev.

1.2K Posts

January 9th, 2016 12:00

Acronis is pretty smart. Plug in the new drive, (power and SATA) fire up acronis and it will know which the boot drive is, because you only have one. Select target drive. pick the options to do a full copy/clone of all partitions.

After the clone you can either un-plug one of the HDDs, or pick one as the default. I"d unplug it.

I would also get some other backup strategy in place other than a full HDD clone and follow the three/two/one rule for backups.

three copies of your data.
Use two different formats
Store one in a different location

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