Uncloning a hard drive
I inadvertently cloned my C drive to my D drive ( both 250 Gig), now I do not see one drive in computer.
Is it possible to "unclone the D drive" and then be able to see the other drive?
Windows 7
Thanks
Don

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No, I do not see it in the Microsoft disk manager. I am presuming that I am running off my D drive instead of my C drive after the clone.
I did try the windows Restore, but still don't see one drive.
Don
I just ran the Belarc adviser and got this result:
Maxtor 6B250R0 [Hard drive] (251.00 GB) -- drive 0, s/n B503QTBH, rev BAH41G10, SMART Status: Healthy
Maxtor 6L250R0 ATA Device [Hard drive] -- disabled
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Disconnect the invisible disk. Can your system function normally?
Now disconnet the visible disk and reconnect the invisible disk at the same spot. Can the system function normally? If it doesn't boot, can you repair the startup using the Windows installation DVD or a recovery disk?
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Don,
From your PM, I see that you original boot disk can boot normally.
I guess you just want to have 2 working disks on your computer, one for the system and one for something else. So I guess we just need to reinitialize the other disk to a blank disk, then you will do whatever you want with it.
Therefore is what I would do next:
- use windows disk management to verify that your (old) working booting disk is disk 0 or disk 1 (or whatever number, take note of the disk number). To get to Windows disk management, right click on the computer icon on your desktop, choose manage, storage, disk management.
- reconnect the disconnected drive to another SATA port (leave the original disk in its working booting position)
- boot the computer,
- from an elevated command prompt, launch DISKPART
- type list disks
- you should see 2 disks.
- type select disk X where X is NOT the disk number you took note of earlier. We want to be sure we select the *other* disk,
- type clean
- type exit
The other disk is now completely blank.
Reboot the computer. You will need to go to windows disk management to initialize the blank disk, create whatever partition you want.
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My working Hard Disk is "0"
When I go to LISTDISK it only shows "0", no other disk listed.
I was trying to make a mirror image/bootable disk should my main hard drive fail, usually I did make mirror image, but this time unfortunately I used the clone method.
The backup hard drive is just not showing up,apparently disabled when I did the clone??
Don
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OK. Reboot the computer and press F2 or whatever key to get into the BIOS setup. There should be a section to see SATA disks. Does the BIOS detect the missing disk? Maybe the disk is connected to a secondary disk controller that is disabled?
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I have to press Delete for BIOS.
When I look at hard drive disks in BIOS there are 2 listed.
One is Master disk channel "0"
The other is slave disk channel "0"
I guess that is why my disk manager just shows channel "0" hard drive??
Now if only I can get to that slave disk and format it, and then find out how I can make a backup copy which is bootable should my main hard drive die I will be VERY happy.
Don
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It is good that BIOS sees both disks.
Do you have a Windows recovery console(XP) or a bootable Windows installation DVD / recovery disk (Vista, Win 7) that you can boot with, get to a command prompt and use DISKPART (XP, Vista, Win7)?
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I have the disk that I upgraded my system from XP to Windows 7 so I should be able to do that.
Keep in mind that I am a 73 year old who needs a lot of direction:-)
Don
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Great. Boot the computer on the Windows 7 upgrade disk, choose install, repair computer, you should get to a screen where you can choose "command prompt"
As you get into the command prompt, type diskpart, then list disk.
Verify that none of the disk are dynamic or GPT (the last 2 columns of the table listing the disks)
If you don't see the other disk, I am running out of ideas. Hopefully you will see it
Type select disk 1
Type clean (this will erase everything on the disk)
You can continue using diskpart to create your partitions. See the complete diskpart syntac here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465%28WS.10%29.aspx
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OK, I was able to clean the number 1 disk, not sure what to do after cleaning the disk! re partitions.
I did go into Hardware manager and did see both disks, so I uninstalled Disk 1 then installed it successfully as per the automatic installer.
Still not seeing the number 1 disk in computer listing ie "start" "computer" I just see the C drive and the cd/dvd/floppy drives.
Thanks much for your patience.
Don
PS When I now go to "disk part" "list disk" I see both disks 0 and 1, with 1 disk having the whole disk having no data :ie 233 GBPs free
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If I understand correctly Don, you have wiped your second drive and can still boot from your first disk.
When you look in Windows Explorer you can only see one disk but if you look in Windows Disk Management you see both drives, is that correct?
What probably now needs to be done si to initialise the second drive so thet Windows formats and issues the drive with a drive letter, once that is done you should see both disks in Windows Explorer and be able to access them both.
Why your clone failed might be because a PC and Windows can't cope with two drives that report themselves as Active with system files on them. What you need to do is disconnect the second drive on first reboot so that Windows is forced to only see the correct one that needs to be booted.
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Colin is right. Here are the steps.
With both disks in, launch ATI. Go to the tools and utilities section, and select "add new disk". ATI will show you both disks. One should be greyed out (the boot disk). The other one should be shown as unallocated. Select that disk. Go through the wizard. Close ATI.
Now your disk should be visible in Window Explorer.
What do you want to do next?
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I didn't know what an ATI is so I fumbled around and found a place to get it into disk manager, right clicked and did a bit more fumbling around and got it initialized, then formatted it , and now I have a clean "D" disk YYAAAAYYYY :-)
Now if you could answer a question for me: What is the right way to make a bootable backup on my second disk so that if my primary disk fails I have a backup?
That is why I originally got the Acrons software, but I don't like doing an incremental backup, because it leaves so much on the second disk.
Thanks again for all your help
Don
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Don Norwood wrote:What is the right way to make a bootable backup on my second disk so that if my primary disk fails I have a backup?
The best way is to create a full disk backup, selecting the checkbox for the entire disk (not just individual partitions). That ensures that you have everything you need, and you won't need to understand how the disk is laid out with possible hidden partitions. A full disk backup captures everything, and is the simplest, safest backup method. You can save many such full disk backups to a single external HD.
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Whilst I prefer Tuttles method over direct cloning in most instances, if you really do want to just clone so you can swap hard drives if the worst comes to the worst, the method would be.
1. Attach both drives to your system.
2. Boot from the recovery CD.
3. Clone the source drive to the destination drive.
4. Remove recovery CD, switch PC off.
5. Disconnect destination drive data and power cable.
6. Reboot PC.
If main drive fails, just switch off PC, disconnect and remove current drive, connect cloned drive, reboot.
This method works best if you have removable caddies for your drive, that way you don't have to worry about switching the PC off and fiddling about inside.
The downside of only making clones (assuming you only have one spare drive) is that it becomes out of date very quickly, whereas by making images you can either make a series of complete images or a complete image plus incremental/differential differences. This allows you to recover your system to a point closer to your current system state.
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So I suppose my biggest mistake was not disconnecting my slave clone after finishing the clone?
Does it matter if I disconnect the slave until required or will it be ok after the boot to the regular "C" hard drive to connect the slave hard disk back up and be able to back it up again every 2-3 weeks?
Thanks
Don
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Don Norwood wrote:So I suppose my biggest mistake was not disconnecting my slave clone after finishing the clone?
Exactly. You *have* to disconnect the clone before rebooting the system.
Does it matter if I disconnect the slave until required or will it be ok after the boot to the regular "C" hard drive to connect the slave hard disk back up and be able to back it up again every 2-3 weeks?
Thanks
Don
Leave the clone disconnected until you need it, or until you want to reclone. Do always the clones from the recovery CD.
As Tutle suggested, you'd be better off doing a disk and partition backup. YOu could keep some history. If one day you clone a bad system, you won't have backup...
A disk and partition backup is as good as a clone from a performance and fidelity perspective.
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I decided to do a backup this time, figuring I could always boot with the Windows 7 disk!
So I start the backup, just when it should start I get an E00640068 error
Failed to create scheduled task
Error#1722 The RPC server is unavailable 0XFFFQ
Don
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Don Norwood wrote:I decided to do a backup this time, figuring I could always boot with the Windows 7 disk!
In fact you have to try to boot on the Acronis recovery CD and to restore a couple of files from your backup. With this test, you are much more confident you can restore when you need to.
So I start the backup, just when it should start I get an E00640068 error
Failed to create scheduled task
Error#1722 The RPC server is unavailable 0XFFFQ
Don
This looks like a Windows configuration error. Run services.msc and look for the Remote Procedure Call services, RPC locator or RPC Endpoint mapper. Are all these services enabled? The RPC locator service doesn't need to be started. The other ones yes.
If everything is OK, you have an installation issue with Acronis. Uninstall the program, reboot, reinstall.
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Pat,
Your help has been much appreciated ;-0
I had no luck with the RPC, so I repaired the Acronis installation and that did the trick( YYAAAYY)
I have now got a backup on myD drive.
Thanks again for your patience and assistance
Don
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Dear All,
Any one help me following issue ;
I have wrongly clone my external hard drive, i want restore the external hard drive into my original hard drive with old data. i have use many data recovery soft for recover data but all software recover main cloned hard drive data only. i dont have any images or back of my external hard drive for restore.
Can any one help me for restore my cloned hard drive with data to my previous external hard drive
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Bapu,
Do you mean you cloned your external drive to your original drive, or you cloned you original drive to your external drive by mistake?
If you cloned your external drive to your original drive, then all data on the original drive has been lost, if you just cloned your original drive to your external one, then all your data should still be on the original drive.
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