Win 10 upgrade

[tsr2]

Today I am upgrading DW's ageing Dell laptop to Win 10.

I downloaded the Win10 Media Creation tool to USB a couple of weeks ago. I have a hard disk to back up to before the upgrade, which came from DD's laptop before it was replaced with an SSD.

DW's laptop has a Crucial SSD in it, so I am using Crucial's version of Acronis to clone it to the HDD as my backup. Before I showered it had been running for maybe half an hour and said 14h 51m remaining. After my shower it still says 14h 51m remaining. Based on previous experience, I guess it will actually take 5 or 6 hours.

[tsr2]

On a periodic check, after Acronis had been running for 8 hours, I found a dialogue saying that the computer needed to reboot or the operation would be cancelled. I let it go ahead and reboot. There was no further interaction and no obvious way to verify that the cloning operation had completed. Plugging the disk into a USB port it didn't appear in file explorer. Plugging it into a Linux box didn't mount anything either. Restarting Acronis and selecting the disk as a source was the only way I found to see anything on the target drive and that showed mostly unallocated space.

I was left with little confidence in my backup, so I am starting again.

[Itsallaguess]

I was left with little confidence in my backup, so I am starting again.

I lost faith completely with Acronis after using it for many years but ending with regular bouts of failures and non-verified back-ups, similar to your experience here.

Since moving to Macrium Reflect (free version for home use) I have not had a single issue at all, and as well as being much more reliable, I also found Macrium to be much, much faster than Acronis ever was..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[tsr2]

I lost faith completely with Acronis after using it for many years but ending with regular bouts of failures and non-verified back-ups, similar to your experience here.

Since moving to Macrium Reflect (free version for home use) I have not had a single issue at all, and as well as being much more reliable, I also found Macrium to be much, much faster than Acronis ever was.

If I'm not happy with this attempt, then my backup plan is to download Macrium Reflect. I've used Acronis for a couple of HDD->SSD upgrades and the first one went well, but subsequently it hasn't inspired confidence.

[kiloran]

I was left with little confidence in my backup, so I am starting again.

I lost faith completely with Acronis after using it for many years but ending with regular bouts of failures and non-verified back-ups, similar to your experience here.

Since moving to Macrium Reflect (free version for home use) I have not had a single issue at all, and as well as being much more reliable, I also found Macrium to be much, much faster than Acronis ever was..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Indeed. That exactly mirrors my experience.

--kiloran

[tsr2]

If I'm not happy with this attempt, then my backup plan is to download Macrium Reflect.

5 minutes after posting that I thought "I'm being stupid". I cancelled out of the Acronis cloning and downloaded Macrium, which is running now.

Because Acronis wasted so much of my time, I'm unlikely to get the upgrade done tonight.

[Infrasonic]

Obviously there's a few variables involved but my Macrium Reflect clones have all taken less than 30m, on a few machines with images from 35-80GB.
Scheduled backups are around the six minute mark.

An in place upgrade for W10 via MCT a few weeks ago took about two hours all told (with updates switched on).
W10 clean installs are quicker than that, around half an hour IME, although USB speed, CPU, hardware et al will make a difference there.

[tsr2]

Obviously there's a few variables involved but my Macrium Reflect clones have all taken less than 30m, on a few machines with images from 35-80GB.

I'm cloning a 1TB disk here. After about 3 hours it's just under half way.

[Infrasonic]

Obviously there's a few variables involved but my Macrium Reflect clones have all taken less than 30m, on a few machines with images from 35-80GB.

I'm cloning a 1TB disk here. After about 3 hours it's just under half way.

Aah OK.
For future reference there is a 'faster' way to clone W10 that I've never tried...https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/133 ... ost1638417

[tsr2]

I'm cloning a 1TB disk here. After about 3 hours it's just under half way.

In the end Macrium reported that the clone took 5h 40m.

The upgrade to Windows 10 had a false start, as my recollection was that I had to boot from the USB, but when I selected upgrade it told me you can;t upgrade from bootable media. I had to run the setup.exe on the USB stick from Windows 7. The upgrade was fairly straightforward and took about 1h 30m. I had a bit of a panic because all my wife's photos seemed to be missing. It turned out that it had sneakily logged the laptop in to my daughters account and I hadn't realised.

I have seen, on my mother's PC, that Windows 10 will assimilate a local account into an outlook.com account, without so much as by your leave, if you log into OneDrive. I'm not setting up OneDrive on this, we backup with SpiderOak, my wife has a Microsoft login with Skype. Is there any risk that it will do the same?

[Breelander]

I have seen, on my mother's PC, that Windows 10 will assimilate a local account into an outlook.com account, without so much as by your leave, if you log into OneDrive..

Not just OneDrive, signing in to the Store can do it too. In fact, the default is to switch your local account to a Microsoft account whenever you sign in with your MS account. You have to be very careful to look for the 'opt out'.

Fortunately it is relatively easy to switch an MS account back to a Local account.


How to Switch to a Local Account from a Microsoft Account in Windows 10

[tsr2]

In fact, the default is to switch your local account to a Microsoft account whenever you sign in with your MS account. You have to be very careful to look for the 'opt out'.

Thanks for that. I had a Google and found that, as it's Win10 Pro,I can set a security policy to block it. If you are on Win10 home, there's a registry hack.

[Breelander]

... If you are on Win10 home, there's a registry hack.

Which is also included in the link you gave. For those on Home that need it, see Option Two in that tutorial.