Drive Clone Fail

[Dust52]

So I bought a new SSD to replace my existing one because it's been getting full. Had to jump through a few hoops to get it it to read but that's a different story.

Basically, source drive is a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo (C drive) and I bought a Mushkin MKNSSDHL500GB M.2 which was now supposed to take over duty from the Samsung. I used Macrium Reflect and created a clone of my C drive - I didn't realise it would do it exactly with the partitions as they are on the C so when it was all done and the volume sizes were the same I was a bit confused. So I formatted the M.2 drive and all that's done is give me an "empty" drive with a whole bunch of partitions and part of the storage unusable.

I've attached a screenshot of how it shows in windows disc management as well as Macrium. What can I do to get the drive back to how it was and then obviously, not repeat the mistake?

 

[ponder]

Clone c to e. move the recovery partition to the end of the drive and resize e to take up the space.

 

[ponder]

Cloning a disk - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

knowledgebase.macrium.com

See points 4&5

 

[Dust52]

When I try to re-do the clone, the first bar loads to 99% and then crashes before the overall bar can even begin to make progress.

 

[insect]

Direct cloning can be tricky sometimes since there has to be a lot of variables exactly right for it to complete successfully.

You should do a chksdk /r on the source drive maybe its something in the file allocation table not aligning, since the error happens while reading the source, but I would go a slightly different route from there, bit longer, but chances of success are way higher and you end up with a nice full backup just in case that Mushkin fails.

I see you have a 2tb mech drive, run Macrium and tell it you want to image the Samsung C drive on the mechanical, let it finish, now your C drve is nicely backed up should anything go wrong in the future.

Next tell Macrium you want to restore an image, point it to the one you just made. It will open the image and show you the partitions also ask for a destination disk, select the mushkin and tell it to delete all the partitions on the mushkin so you have a blank drive. Now start at the beginning and drag all the partitions over to the mushkin, but stop at E, when you highlight it you will see a restored partition properties button below it, click on that, here you can adjust the drive space to use the entire drive, just put 527mb in the free space text field. Click ok and now just dag that last 527mb into the open space and start the restore.

Another way which should be fairly straight forward would be to leave every thing as it is, download aomei partition manager and merge the unallocated space.

 

[agentrfr]

Yeah, most of the clone programs are hot trash. Clonezilla has always served me well, even modern macs (after you sign the image with the new macos, but that is a different story)

Clonezilla will solve all your problems and it has a visual guide so you don't even have to use command line (okay maybe a little to verify settings before you start)

Spam me if you need help

 

[Dust52]

I had another quick go this morning before I left for work, the issue which now seems to be hassling the free programs is that with my messing about last night I think I made the Mushkin "dynamic" and the free programs want it to be "basic" - I'll have to have another crack at it when I get home.

 

[Jet-Fighter7700]

what do you think of Acronis? better worse than clonezilla?
used it a few times seemed to work, but certain version will only image with certain other versions.

thinking to make an image of my O/S SSD (256GB) at home, maybe migrate it to a bigger SSD( 480GB), what is the best to use?
advice?

 

[ponder]

Where it's a little tricky is when you want to clone to a smaller ssd than your source hdd. (documentation is poor and incorrect on the net) - went through this lately so can help here if somebody needs help - it is very possible to do.

In cases like that you could resize with gparted beforehand, has a easy gui.

 

[agentrfr]

Juse use c

what do you think of Acronis? better worse than clonezilla?
used it a few times seemed to work, but certain version will only image with certain other versions.

thinking to make an image of my O/S SSD (256GB) at home, maybe migrate it to a bigger SSD( 480GB), what is the best to use?
advice?

Just use clonezilla. I don't trust the other paid carp first needing you to install it then holding you hostage unless you pay

 

[PatchTuesday]

Macrium works well. Just copy partitions that you need and leave space behind c drive. You can extend into unused space from there.

I used Macrium on a daily basis for about a month, and learned you can shuffle partitions around as needed. All you need is unallocated space after C and you good

 

[Dust52]

I had another bash at it last night and then again this morning using the image written to my 2TB HDD and trying that. I think I've figured out why it won't re-format or do anything. It might be to do with boot order in BIOS but it keeps saying that part of the drive is in use, or because I'm trying to format my recovery drive.

If I can get around that, I reckon I'll be able to come right, any suggestions as to how I need to go about it?

 

[psivius]

Essentially it sounds as if you need to clean your M.2 disk. Open PowerShell. Type diskpart. Type list disk. Type select disk x ( x is the disk number from the output above). Double check you have selected the correct drive (if in doubt rather only have your boot drive and M.2 connected). Type clean. All partitions and data will be removed. Type exit to exit diskpart. You can now attempt to clone once again.

 

[Dust52]

Essentially it sounds as if you need to clean your M.2 disk. Open PowerShell. Type diskpart. Type list disk. Type select disk x ( x is the disk number from the output above). Double check you have selected the correct drive (if in doubt rather only have your boot drive and M.2 connected). Type clean. All partitions and data will be removed. Type exit to exit diskpart. You can now attempt to clone once again.

I just seem to be making it worse. When in BIOS and I change where to boot from, it doesn't want to let me boot from my Samsung SSD anymore, only the Mushkin in UEFI mode. The only way to get into Windows is the using the Windows override option in the BIOS. This is what happened when I tried the PowerShell method to clean the M.2 last night.

I need Windows to recognise that the boot, page file etc are still on the Samsung and not to default to the M.2.

 

[Arthur]

The most likely reason is that your previous (clone source) active C boot partition has been marked as inactive.

When Windows boots it checks all the drives for an active boot partition. If it encounters more than one it marks the first enumerated partition as active and marks all the others as inactive.

When you clone a boot partition, make sure you remove the target (clone destination) drive from the system before you reboot. Otherwise you might well end up with your original partition being unbootable.

This is inter alia why I never do a straight clone when imaging a drive. I rather write an image to another volume, physically remove the original boot drive, and then restore the image to the new drive.

 

[psivius]

So it would seem as if you have done a successful clone initially and you are currently booting from the Mushkin using BIOS override hence the above error message in Diskpart. Can you not just extend the primary partition to use the unallocated space in Macrium Reflect? I know Windows wont do it because of the Recovery partition between the primary partition and the unallocated space.

Alternatively what you now require is Windows PE environment. You could use DLC Boot or the latest Hirens Boot CD with UEFI support or even the Windows install media (use repair option and get to command prompt). Basically just a boot environment where you booted from a flash drive to run the Diskpart commands in.

 

[Dust52]

The most likely reason is that your previous (clone source) active C boot partition has been marked as inactive.

When Windows boots it checks all the drives for an active boot partition. If it encounters more than one it marks the first enumerated partition as active and marks all the others as inactive.

When you clone a boot partition, make sure you remove the target (clone destination) drive from the system before you reboot. Otherwise you might well end up with your original partition being unbootable.

This is inter alia why I never do a straight clone when imaging a drive. I rather write an image to another volume, physically remove the original boot drive, and then restore the image to the new drive.

Ah.... I didn't know this. I'm guessing that the BIOS would automatically assign the M.2 as the primary because it's not a SATA drive.

So it would seem as if you have done a successful clone initially and you are currently booting from the Mushkin using BIOS override hence the above error message in Diskpart. Can you not just extend the primary partition to use the unallocated space in Macrium Reflect? I know Windows wont do it because of the Recovery partition between the primary partition and the unallocated space.

Alternatively what you now require is Windows PE environment. You could use DLC Boot or the latest Hirens Boot CD with UEFI support or even the Windows install media (use repair option and get to command prompt). Basically just a boot environment where you booted from a flash drive to run the Diskpart commands in.

I couldn't expand to the unallocated space because it doesn't show up - when it did show up there was a partition between the primary and the unallocated space. This is what shows up in Macrium currently.



So if I understand this correctly, if I can boot from something other than the M.2, then I can clean it and reclone?