Cloning OS drive (woes...)

strumpusplunket · 29 Dec 2016 at 16:11

I'm sitting here having spent almost all of today trying to get clones of my OS drives on two PCs to boot. Tearing my hair out now.

First PC, upgrading from 250 to 500GB SSD. Ran Macrium reflect. No dice. Just wouldn't boot. Tried again with different settings. Again, no good. Tried Easus Todo Backup. Finally! It booted. It seems to take a bit longer to boot up than it did, and Chrome had lost my settings, but it's working and sfc /scannow reports no problems with the boot record.

Ok. So, it should then be straightforward to move the C: drive on the second PC from its home on a 120GB SSD to this 250GB one. Surely, I'd just use the same program and settings? Well, you'd think so, but computer says no. Well, it says "reboot and select proper boot device" actually, but same outcome.

It would have been quicker and less frustrating to reinstall Windows and all my programs at this rate. People make out like this is an easy operation and less hassle than a full reinstall, so what am I doing wrong? Is there some secret to this I'm missing? Some arcane operation I need to perform to get the PC to recognise my cloned drive as a bootable disk?

bledd · 29 Dec 2016 at 16:52

Explain how you used Macrium. I've used it hundreds of times on hundreds of PCs and never had an issue.

strumpusplunket · 29 Dec 2016 at 17:01

I just clicked the "clone this drive" link under the OS drive on main Reflect screen then selected the new drive as the destination. The cloned drive was displaying as I thought it should in both Disk Manager and Reflect afterwards, but the PC just wouldn't boot from it. For some reason, just using basically the same options in Easus Backup worked. But then that didn't work for the next PC.

strumpusplunket · 29 Dec 2016 at 17:55

Well, I did get the second PC to boot from the cloned drive in the end by selecting forensic instead of intelligent clone. My joy was shortlived though, as there was clearly some corruption and the PC would hang when doing any significant reads or writes to the drive.

Just gave up and installed the 250GB SSD as a second drive. CBA anymore...

So it seems the only program I've managed to get cloning to work with stress-free is Acronis, but I hear they've made some backwards steps with the latest versions?

rolypolyman · 1 Jan 2017 at 01:21

Just used Driveclone Free to clone Win 10 Pro OS from a 1TB HDD to a 250GB SSD. Installed the ssd first and let windows give it a drive letter E then cloned the C: drive which was only around 75GB which went onto the ssd with no issues. I then shut down, disconnected the HDD and booted up with just the ssd and the computer immediately booted from the ssd and made it the C: drive. Checked all was ok and then shutdown and re-connected the HDD booted up and the ssd is still the C: drive and windows has made the HDD the E: drive and all is well. This is the second time I have followed this procedure and its worked a treat, both times using W10 Pro. Happy new year!!! to all.

Oh and then I reformatted the HDD with no issues at all. All very easy and stress free.

Destination · 1 Jan 2017 at 08:13

Op in each system, is your mbr on the c drive?

jpaul · 1 Jan 2017 at 08:47

bledd said:
Explain how you used Macrium. I've used it hundreds of times on hundreds of PCs and never had an issue.

+1 - if you post some screen shots of macrium as the clone is confirmed
(when I first used it the distinction between cloning the disk versus partitions was not as clear as I thought it should be )

lurkio · 1 Jan 2017 at 11:30

strumpusplunket said:
Well, I did get the second PC to boot from the cloned drive in the end by selecting forensic instead of intelligent clone. My joy was shortlived though, as there was clearly some corruption and the PC would hang when doing any significant reads or writes to the drive.

Just gave up and installed the 250GB SSD as a second drive. CBA anymore...

So it seems the only program I've managed to get cloning to work with stress-free is Acronis, but I hear they've made some backwards steps with the latest versions?

Yep I have used acronis to clone drives loads of times without any issue