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Issue with Disk Clone - wont destroy target data?

Thread needs solution

i cant figure out what I'm doing wrong.

i've booted from my recovery media, selected automatic cloning, selected source and destination drives, clicked ok to destroy data on the target drive and then it comes up with a "what to exclude" screen and complains that i need additional disk space on the target drive??

Why doesn't it go ahead?  It should clone the disk to the target drive and resize partitions automatically because the disks are different sizes.

Also, theres no utility to delete partitions on the target drive so I'm stuck.

help!

 

 

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Welcome to these User Forums.

What are the actual sizes of the source and target drives you are trying to clone here?

What is the size of used data on the source drive and is this smaller than the raw size of the target drive?

What types of drives are involved here?

I would recommend using a dedicated partition tool such as MiniTool Partition Wizard to completely remove all partitions from your target drive but ensure that you are selecting the correct drive before proceeding to avoid any mistakes and erasing the wrong drive!

Screen shots are helpful for these types of topics.

Please also see: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this - this was written for ATI 2017 and earlier but many of the points made are still relevant to any version of ATI, i.e. have a full disk backup on an external drive before attempting to clone your OS drive!

Note that with ATI 2018, you can do cloning while Windows is running by using the Microsoft VSS function to create snapshot data  but your target drive should be empty before starting, to avoid ATI requiring a restart (because of detecting a Windows OS on the target drive).

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Huh?  The target SSD is smaller capacity than the source HDD but there is much less data used than the target capacity.

i've already cloned this drive exactly the same way with TI2018 without any issue.  TI2018 resized the partitions proportionally, as advertised.  At that time the target SSD was unpartitioned and unformated.

Now it wont clone again and is complaining about insufficient space on the target!!  I'm trying to clone the disk, not back up data!  

Target data should be irrelevant, it should destroy (i.e: overwrite) the target data.  What the heck is happening?

And after spending $100 on TI2018 I dont expect to have to source some additional tool!!!

Does anyone know whats happening?  Anyone here encountered this?

 

 

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Hobbie,

I had the same experience with a previously cloned drive.  I ended up having to wipe the data from the target drive for the clone to work the second time around.  I suspect this is what you will need to do as well.

Hey thanks Enchantech.  What a PITA! 

Testimg testing testing! Need a use case for every scenario!

Now I have to figure out what, hopefully free, tool i can use to wipe the SSD. 

I have to do it with the drive in place as its a sealed laptop and I dont want to have to open it up again :( 

Another issue, at one point while I was mucking around trying to understand what TI was doing the laptop booted up to windows while the source drive was still attached via usb.  It may have booted off the USB?? I'm not sure. I noticed the disk activity light flashing on my USB cradle before I was able to shut it down.  I hope nothings screwed on the source system.

I paid $100 for the "best" disk management software - I thought.  Thanks Acronis- Not!  

There is actually a very good reason why Acronis wrote the program the way they did. Past versions of TI did wipe the target drive during a clone operation. Many users made the mistake of selecting the wrong target drive and wiped out their source drive. They found themselves in big trouble with no more Windows system. That's the main reason Steve wrote the how not to clone topic.

You can use diskpart.exe from the command line to wipe your target if you don't want to download a third party partitioning tool. If you do, be very careful, it's easy to make a mistake and wipe the wrong drive. I also recommend you use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. It identifies the drives nicely so it's hard to make a mistake and wipe the wrong drive.

I also recommend MiniTool

Ian

Thanks for the Mini Tool recommendations, I'll check it out.

@Mustang, I dk, immediately before it goes to that screen theres a message stating that theres partitions detected on the target and it asks "are you sure you want to destroy it" or similar and you have to click Ok to proceed. Seems clear enough.

Either way there needs to be an option to proceed.  Or otherwise the recovery app needs to provide a disk wipe tool so the user can get around it.