Clone HDD's failing often

JohnDoe1980 said:
I appreciate the help for sure. So my first attempt on this drive today, I booted into a winPE environment off usb and opened Acronis True Image. I selected the source drive (500GB HDD), then selected the target drive (256GB Nvme m.2 SSD). It gave me a message about converting to GPT. I went ahead and clicked proceed. About an hour later I got a message about not being able to write something to disk (which happened the last three times as well) and I clicked "ignore all", then the clone completed. Then, with the new drive already being installed, I rebooted the system and got the winload.efi error. By the way, the 3 previous clones with the error about not being able to write something to disk, they worked fine anyways.

Next, I did the exact same thing, except with a regular SSD of 480GB. After the clone and installing into the new system, I got the same winload.efi error on boot. So I think something is going on with the source drive.

I am able to access the original HDD (source drive) through explorer and see the files in it.

Now, on another note, since this has failed twice on me, I decided to go with Fabs Backup. I'm sure you are probably familiar with it. Fabs only copied about 800MB worth of data even though everything in the user folder was selected. This is not the first time this has happened with Fabs. So I had to manually copy over everything from the user folder. I installed a fresh copy of win10 on the new drive on the new PC and restored data from Fabs, but as you know, this doesn't restore everything, like program files and some settings. I would much have preferred a working clone.

Also, a new problem. I installed a copy of windows on the new drive but had also left the second SSD I tried still connected via sata. Windows installation went fine but when I shut down the computer, disconnected the second SSD then booted again, I got "no bootable device" error. I then reconnected the second SSD and booted and got a screen asking me to choose which win10 installation and there were two listed. Volume 6 and volume 3. I picked 6 and it went into windows. I rebooted and picked 3 and got the BSOD as before so I know which one is which. I have seen this problem before and forgot what the fix for it is. I think it has something to do with boot information being stored on both drives. I was going to sell the second drive as a data drive alongside the 256GB Nvme but I'm worried that if I wipe the 480GB SSD (second drive) that I wont be able to boot to the new drive. Is any of this making sense?

So that's where I'm at with all this.
Click to expand...
I followed this and it didn't work
 
JohnDoe1980 said:
I installed a copy of windows on the new drive but had also left the second SSD I tried still connected via sata.
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This is a mistake. Windows has a bad habit of placing the boot sector on the WRONG DRIVE when you present it with an option. Always disconnect additional drives during the installation. You can add them back later (preferably after formatting them in case the last installation had a boot sector on that drive.
 
HCHTech said:
This is a mistake. Windows has a bad habit of placing the boot sector on the WRONG DRIVE when you present it with an option. Always disconnect additional drives during the installation. You can add them back later (preferably after formatting them in case the last installation had a boot sector on that drive.
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Yea, I figured. I just reinstalled windows on the the drive I want to use with the other drive disconnected. Hoping that works.
 
GPT is required for Windows 11 compatibility, probably why Acronis is suggesting that now.

If the old drive is MBR, the OS on it is likely installed with legacy BIOS (aka CSM) enabled or on an old PC that doesn't have UEFI support (e.g. Intel 3rd gen and older). All modern PCs now default to UEFI BIOS, some still have optional legacy BIOS (CSM mode) but that isn't supported by Windows 11.

A drive with OS installed with legacy BIOS will not boot in a UEFI system, even if MBR is converted to UEFI. I don't know of any way to convert an installed OS to UEFI.
 
JohnDoe1980 said:
Used Fabs to restore data. No program files though. :/
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It was never designed to move programs. You always have to reinstall programs after a clean install.
As for clones or in my case images, I will only go from an mbr system to mbr. UEFI to UEFI. Everything else is a clean install with data transfer only and programs installed fresh.
 
fincoder said:
GPT is required for Windows 11 compatibility, probably why Acronis is suggesting that now.

If the old drive is MBR, the OS on it is likely installed with legacy BIOS (aka CSM) enabled or on an old PC that doesn't have UEFI support (e.g. Intel 3rd gen and older). All modern PCs now default to UEFI BIOS, some still have optional legacy BIOS (CSM mode) but that isn't supported by Windows 11.

A drive with OS installed with legacy BIOS will not boot in a UEFI system, even if MBR is converted to UEFI. I don't know of any way to convert an installed OS to UEFI.
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You can use MBR2GPT to do this cant you? I'm sure i have done this before https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt
 
FWIW - I used to struggle with cloning long ago and developed a procedure that works for me. I use Reflect to make an image and store it on my DAS. That image is my security if anything goes wrong I am backed up. Using an image means I can also downsize to any drive large enough for it to fit on. If the original drive won't image under Windows (drive integrity failed) then it goes on a Linux machine and ddrescue is used to make a 1:1 checked and corrected copy on another drive. Then that corrected drive gets imaged with Reflect and that image used to clone down to a smaller drive. I can't remember the last time I had problems using this procedure.
 
Porthos said:
It was never designed to move programs. You always have to reinstall programs after a clean install.
As for clones or in my case images, I will only go from an mbr system to mbr. UEFI to UEFI. Everything else is a clean install with data transfer only and programs installed fresh.
Click to expand...
So yea, that's what I've been doing, (MBR to MBR and GPT to GPT) etc.. But since using Acronis, it's been converting MBR to GPT on the target disk even if the source is MBR and it's been working except for my last clone.
 
I don't understand why you'd want or need to go from MBR to GPT, assuming you're just changing out a drive in an existing machine.
 
timeshifter said:
I don't understand why you'd want or need to go from MBR to GPT, assuming you're just changing out a drive in an existing machine.
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The reason for the conversion is so that they are the same type, IE if I have a GPT source drive and an MBR target drive, I would want to convert the target drive to match.
 
The one thing I didn't do here was stay MBR to MBR as I mentioned I've been using Acronis which converts the target to GPT. I was converting when using Aomei Backupper and had a 50% fail rate. Anyways, I used Fabs and installed what I could, showed the client. They are happy with it. Not too much extra set-up needs to be done but I would like to have my clones be more successful.
 
I have an idea of what might be happening, so please read fully and don't skip, because it might help.

Many cloning software are very temperamental and often try to "see" what is the host PC, controllers etc to get the best clone.

Are you cloning on a bench PC? As in, not the customer PC but a PC you use for technical tasks? If so, stop doing that unless you have a generic environment that you can safely clone in.

If you are cloning on the client PC, have the source drive connected via USB. It removes the drive as a possible boot device that may push flags in BIOS or EFI that your cloning software may determine for what partition map is needed.

Also if on a client system that supports legacy vs UEFI, make sure you clone in the mode your final install will be. In other words, don't change the system config just so your tools will boot. Make sure you have versions of your tools that will boot regardless of BIOS, EFI, SecureBoot etc.

Do you use the basic or "home" version of Macroum or Acronis? Just as a friendly reminder, they are not licensed for technician use, and don't perform the same as the higher editions. The higher workstation class products have way more features, and often have a fully licensed WindowsPE that the cloning runs from. They have options like crazy to make your life easier and allow you to control the clone.

Did I hit the nail on anything or maybe I'm off the mark? I've struggled before too, so I recognize some of this.
 
NviGate Systems said:
I have an idea of what might be happening, so please read fully and don't skip, because it might help.

Many cloning software are very temperamental and often try to "see" what is the host PC, controllers etc to get the best clone.

Are you cloning on a bench PC? As in, not the customer PC but a PC you use for technical tasks? If so, stop doing that unless you have a generic environment that you can safely clone in.

If you are cloning on the client PC, have the source drive connected via USB. It removes the drive as a possible boot device that may push flags in BIOS or EFI that your cloning software may determine for what partition map is needed.

Also if on a client system that supports legacy vs UEFI, make sure you clone in the mode your final install will be. In other words, don't change the system config just so your tools will boot. Make sure you have versions of your tools that will boot regardless of BIOS, EFI, SecureBoot etc.

Do you use the basic or "home" version of Macroum or Acronis? Just as a friendly reminder, they are not licensed for technician use, and don't perform the same as the higher editions. The higher workstation class products have way more features, and often have a fully licensed WindowsPE that the cloning runs from. They have options like crazy to make your life easier and allow you to control the clone.

Did I hit the nail on anything or maybe I'm off the mark? I've struggled before too, so I recognize some of this.
Click to expand...
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post with some good information that I might be able to use.

I usually clone from my tech bench by booting into Hirens BootCD PE and run Aomei Backupper but sometimes I will, for instance my clone yesterday that came with an m.2 drive installed, boot into hirens, with the source drive connected via sata (I was thinking doing it via USB might not be as quick and reliable.. maybe I was wrong)... I never clone from windows.

I'm not sure which version of Acronis I'm using and I haven't yet used Macrium, though I do have it in my winPE USB boot drive.
 
I think both Hirens and your tech bench are the problem.

First, Hirens has a rather non favorable position in these forums both for technical and legal reasons. They may have cleaned things up, but it's still not something I would run in a shop. Typically Hirens boots the various options available through many chained loaders, which, although not a problem per se, it can cause issues in specific cases.

If your tech bench has a disk and is configured as EFI or GPT, that could explain why Acronis is trying to convert the disks, it thinks they will be used on your tech bench.

I'd suggest cloning on the systems themselves with a *dedicated*, licensed boot disc/USB for a commercial cloning program or the cloning tool provided by the SSD maker if they provide one. Yes it takes extra bench space but for now until you get more experience, it will hopefully lead to more reliable outcomes.
 
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