AlaDes
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Just out of curiosity, what is your method? I am always game for learning new ways of doing things more efficiently.
"Foolproof" disc cloning software
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I have a license for Paragon Disk Copy Pro, bought years ago. I've also sometimes use Macrium Reflect which is much quicker but resizing partitions during cloning is not quite so automatic, and Macrium fails an awful lot of the time (perhaps due to filesystem issues or the odd bad sector).
MudRock
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I usually have a few options on hand. Most consistent for me including drive shrink is MiniTool Partition Wizard.
I've tried almost all the others in this thread at one time or another save AOMEI (Which my understanding is under the hood the same thing as MiniTool Partition Wizard).
They almost all work reasonably well for the most part. Some work more consistently than others, but are relatively limited what it will (successfully) shrink.
I avoid anything Acronis however.
I've tried almost all the others in this thread at one time or another save AOMEI (Which my understanding is under the hood the same thing as MiniTool Partition Wizard).
They almost all work reasonably well for the most part. Some work more consistently than others, but are relatively limited what it will (successfully) shrink.
I avoid anything Acronis however.
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brandonkick
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Interestingly enough, I've never had Macrium Reflect fail me. Having said that, I've cloned approx 50 drives with it so maybe it's just a small sample size?
It's flawlessly handled going from a large HDD (say 1TB, with only 200GB actually used) down to a SSD around half the original HDD size). Resizing partitions isn't super intuitive, but it allows for it.
CloneZilla would be my go to if it could handle going from large HDD to smaller SSD, where it makes sense (actual used space from HDD well within the smaller size of the new SSD)
I'm interested to try some of these other tools though. That tool from Miray seems interesting.
It's flawlessly handled going from a large HDD (say 1TB, with only 200GB actually used) down to a SSD around half the original HDD size). Resizing partitions isn't super intuitive, but it allows for it.
CloneZilla would be my go to if it could handle going from large HDD to smaller SSD, where it makes sense (actual used space from HDD well within the smaller size of the new SSD)
I'm interested to try some of these other tools though. That tool from Miray seems interesting.
nlinecomputers
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Reflect can easily clone to smaller drivers though it requires a little bit of manual work.
The only times I've had it fail is on corrupted drives. At that point I run the corrupted drive through ddrescue for a clone to work with and then that clone back to Reflect for an image. I prefer having an image and then cloning down in size from the image.
Doc+Com
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Paragon has worked really well for me for the last 6-7 years. It can be slow but I have enough machines dedicated to recovery/cloning that speed is not a concern…but failure rate is.
I always run SFC and dism.exe on a drive before cloning.
One reoccurring issue I have come across after cloning is when a drive is unable to assign the boot partition a letter and fails to boot to the OS. I can usually fix this by going into drive manager and assigning a letter (any letter appears to work). I then reinstall the cloned drive and it will boot to Windows without further issue.
I always run SFC and dism.exe on a drive before cloning.
One reoccurring issue I have come across after cloning is when a drive is unable to assign the boot partition a letter and fails to boot to the OS. I can usually fix this by going into drive manager and assigning a letter (any letter appears to work). I then reinstall the cloned drive and it will boot to Windows without further issue.
On a system that will still run I'll do that as well if there's enough space left to do so.
I've even come across 0% free space
My tool of choice is Casper, since Casper XP. When it fails, there's a hardware problem with a drive.
But I do use manufacturer's customised Acronis where offered. The full version was never fool-proof when I tried it, OK more than 10 years ago. I hate wasting my time trying to do QC for producers when there are alternatives.
I've been using Paragon as well, for even longer. Slow but far fewer failures.
I don't agree with that step. Cloning only needs a drive with a working filesystem, not a working OS, and for sector-by-sector cloning it doesn't even need a working filesystem. Attempting to repair an OS before cloning means you could potentially stop the OS working (e.g. if there are bad sectors you're not aware of). Far better to do those things AFTER cloning to a known-good drive, and while you still have the original drive if something goes wrong. And besides, the new drive is often faster so those repair operations will be faster done there.
britechguy
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Absolutely agree with this. Any time any sort of impending or partial failure is suspected, it's far better to fire it up only to get it copied off to a known good drive. A failing drive could die at any time, and far better it dies while being copied/cloned/imaged than when running something like SFC or DISM where absolutely nothing will be available if a complete and sudden death occurs.
If you're lucky, you will get everything off to a known good drive you can hit to your heart's content afterward.
I have to ask as this group is the most informed -
Has anybody ever had dism.exe fix or correct anything you were trying to resolve? (Maybe I should start a poll thread for chuckles....) Yes, I've seen it say it corrected something (it did this once long ago) while running but I've never, in all my years, had it fix a problem I was trying to correct.
nlinecomputers
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Yes, but only a couple of times. 98% of the time it does nothing at all or nothing that fixes the problem.
britechguy
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Yes, I have. I can't give you accurate percentages, but it has saved me having to do an actual Windows repair install on a number of occasions. I always try DISM followed by SFC first, a repair install second if DISM/SFC didn't work, then a completely clean reinstall if neither of the preceding worked for what I needed it to fix.
Nuke and pave is a very last resort for me in almost all cases because users have years of tweaks they've made to their Windows ecosystem and tons of programs that they may, or may not, have any records regarding license keys, sources, etc., that I do not want to have to mess around with if there is any possibility of not having to do so. The repair install that appeared with Windows 10 has been a godsend in this regard.
On this topic, I tried to do this in Windows 11 the other day, using a 22H2 install USB, and it wouldn't let me. Response was something like 'unable to proceed with Windows setup, a newer version is already installed'. So it looks like the repair install days are numbered...
britechguy
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Not really. The message you got is what you get if the ISO (or install media) is an older version than the one currently running. You can't do a repair install on 22H2 using 21H2 media.
I've had that message on occasions where I accidentally used the incorrect ISO or install thumb drive.
[And, yes, I know you said you are using a 22H2 ISO, but from when? This ISO has been reissued a number of times since its first build. You always need "the freshest" copy of the ISO or MCT media when doing a repair install.]
Not recently created. Next time I need to try a repair install I'll get the latest ISO and try it.
I should say though, I've done dozens of repair installs with Windows 10 in the past and have never encountered this, and I generally don't bother getting new ISOs until there's a whole new version available.
So I take it from your response that you've done a repair install with Windows 11? If so that's good news.
britechguy
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Yes, I have, including the one on my own machine that's being cranky about completing in post: Win11 Repair Install with fresh ISO fails with code 0xC1900101-0x30017. Potential fixes, anyone?
Doc+Com
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Sorry, but I thought it would be obvious to all that read my post that you would confirm the drive was devoid of issues before even attempting cloning a drive.
I found that Paragon would sometimes report file system errors during a clone and that cancelling the clone, running SFC/dism would fix the issue…hence the reason to complete it before the clone.
I don’t use time as a standard to complete a cloning, especially when I know that my chances of an uninterrupted successful clone are pretty high.
Oh, and I always create an image of any drive I’m working with prior to any work done to the drive.
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You can get an idea of the health of a drive, but you can't confirm a drive is devoid of issues without running a full surface scan diagnostic. If reading the entire surface of the drive it might as well be for a sector-by-sector clone instead of a test.
That's if not doing a sector-by-sector copy, my Paragon software calls that HDD Raw Copy.
If I have confidence in the drive I do an ordinary filesystem clone, and allow Paragon to repair the filesystem if needed. If I don't have confidence in the drive I stop the filesystem clone and do a sector-by-sector clone. I use HDDSuperClone in Linux to do that.
But any sign of filesystem corruption means there might be an unknown hardware problem. You might be better off letting Paragon repair the filesystem, otherwise a sector-by-sector clone.
I'm not sure which command (SFC, dism) repairs the filesystem, but if it does it would likely be doing other things as well. So working the drive unnecessarily, because those other things don't even effect a filesystem clone.
britechguy
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Only reviving this topic because this time, at least as far as the process starting correctly, it did with NTI Echo after I had initialized the disk and created a single volume formatted NTFS on the target drive for cloning. I did this with Windows Disk Manager.
It failed in the same way BEFORE I had done this, with the same error about the partition table mentioned in January. I really don't know why cloning software, and not just NTI, doesn't look at how the source disk is set up and then do the necessary initialization and volume formatting on the target drive when that's needed. It seems to me that should be a part of the process, particularly since you're often cloning to a "fresh out of the wrapper" drive. Many also don't mention in any of the initial dialogs that the detected drive is not initialized, and you need to do that before proceeding, or the clone will fail.
