Disk cloning failed. See log for details
Hi
I am trying to update an HP laptop WIN10 (around 6yrs old).
It has a 2.5" HDD 500Gb
I want to change it to a SSD 240gb.
Only 87gb is used on the HDD so I think it should be fine?
I have done 3 other Laptops like this in the last year.
All with Crucial SSD's
All earlier upgrades I did were with new SSD's and using Acronis for Crucial, and it worked easy as.
Clone to the SSD plugged into a USB socket on the Laptop.
After Disk is cloned. Take out HDD, and plug in SSD and Laptop started up fine first time.
This time I am using a 240gb crucial that was previously used on one of those previous upgrades, so it has OS and data on it.
I quick formatted the SSD on the Laptop. Then I ran the acronis clone disk.
It gets to close to the end of the cloning process and says "cloning failed please see logs"
Where do I look at the logs.
OR has anyone got any ideas on what I'm doing. Have the new Crucial SSD's got some software on them that manages the process somehow and therefore I need to get my used SSD back to that new state??
I have disk checked both disks as mentioned in some posts I had seen online.
Thanks


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John, if you are using a 'used' SSD as the target for the clone, then I would suggest using the 'Add new disk' tool to prepare this rather than just doing a quick format. The tool can be found in the Tools and Utilities list from the programs menu, or in the Tools page of the GUI.
Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.
Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:
It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.
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thanks for your suggestions guys. I will try them next.
Steve - I don't understand your quoted comment re putting the target drive in the laptop first. How can I then do anything with the Laptop -ie. run the Acronis software as the Laptop wont boot with an empty disk in it.
Also my previous attempts did not do this. I just cloned with Target disk plugged into a USB port and it worked fine.
Also as a more general question... you have mentioned and many other posts do - to make sure and backup before cloning. You can tell I'm a total newbie but why is that? I haven't had any problems yet as I mentioned, and if the newly cloned disk failed, couldn't I just put the old disk back in and the machine would run again?
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John, all backup software, including Acronis, has to be able to recover to a new disk drive with no installed OS, and it does this by using bootable rescue media. This is how you should be doing the clone for the laptop, so that the operation is completely outside of Windows.
See KB 65508: Acronis True Image 2021: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media
Please see forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this - which was written after dealing with many cloning issues in the forums and which shows why having a backup is very important. Unfortunately we see far too many users coming for help after getting cloning wrong and ending up with a PC that is essentially a doorstop!
Some further reference documents:
KB 65520: Acronis True Image 2021: how to back up files or disks
KB 65468: Acronis True Image 2021: how to back up entire computer
KB 65539: Acronis True Image 2021: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media
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Thanks Steve
That's quite a bit of info for me since I'm not experienced with this stuff. I have brushed through it and will study it more latter.
2 main questions:
1. Is this a good step by step tutorial on how to do my laptop ( note; it talks about Acronis 2016- I'll have to check my version, although I would suspect its a later one since I downloaded it a couple of days ago)
How to clone a laptop hard drive | Knowledge Base (acronis.com)
2. There is quite a few mentions that if you clone to the target drive which is plugged into the machines USB connection (via SATA to USB adaptor) then the new disk wont be bootable - I have done 3 laptops recently via the USB with no problems??
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1. Is this a good step by step tutorial on how to do my laptop ( note; it talks about Acronis 2016- I'll have to check my version, although I would suspect its a later one since I downloaded it a couple of days ago)
How to clone a laptop hard drive | Knowledge Base (acronis.com)
John, this applies to a whole range of recent versions of ATI and is the same document I quoted the warning from earlier about cloning laptop drives. The actual version of ATI should be shown on the Account page in the application.
2. There is quite a few mentions that if you clone to the target drive which is plugged into the machines USB connection (via SATA to USB adaptor) then the new disk wont be bootable - I have done 3 laptops recently via the USB with no problems??
Like all processes, this really depends on how the PC itself handles changes of hardware along with the adapters being used to connect drives. You look to have been lucky with your previous laptop clones.
When you clone to an external drive connected using an adapter or docking station etc, then this can introduce new controller hardware which then causes additional device drivers to be installed which are then 'missing' when the cloned drive is installed internally in the laptop. In an ideal world, the clone would be a direct bit-for-bit copy of the source disk with zero changes, but the applications being used can try to be a little too 'clever' in order to deal with differences in disk size, make, layout etc!
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John, thanks for the log information.
The log shows that the clone is failing when trying to resize the original factory recovery partition on the laptop drive (from 20.26GB down to 18.19GB size).
Depending on the age of the laptop involved here, the factory recovery partition may well contain an older version of Windows that was installed when the laptop was bought, so may be worth considering deleting that partition if so!
The alternative here would be to use a partition manager tool to resize the main Windows partition to a smaller size such as say 190 GB (instead of the 203.5 GB that Acronis are resizing it to), so that there is extra free space available to help avoid needing to resize the factory recovery partition. Download a copy of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software to do the resizing.
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Yes it is older and would of had Win7 on it.
So I dont really need the backup?
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John, having a backup of the source drive before cloning is recommended because it is your safety net in case anything goes awry.
If the factory recovery partition (20GB size) is from when the laptop was supplied with Win 7, then you could just delete that partition and leave the space as unallocated prior to retrying the clone again.
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OK I'll try that.
Thanks again you've been very generous with your time :)
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OK so I got it going.
The key things for me were:
Finding logs via MVP assistant (after installing it)
Format/prepare the used drive by using "add disk" in acronis.
Steve pointing out from the logs that it was the recovery partition that the clone was failing on (20Gb)
So I deleted the partition. This was a bit tricky. I got rid of its letter 'D' which made it harder.
Then I used 'diskpart' to list the disks, and then list the partitions. I located the 20Gb partition and deleted it. Which is not allowed, therefore have to use override command to make it happen.
(this last part was very risky for me being a newbie following my nose - could do some good damage in diskpart if unlucky)
Earlier I made the bootable media on a thumb drive but never used it.
I ignored Steves advice to put the target drive in the machine cause I was lazy. I just cloned it with target plugged into a USB socket via a SATA adaptor. This is how Crucial advise to do it ;)
Then put SSD in the old HDD position inside the laptop and it booted, and all go.
Thanks again. I was prepared to break the laptop since its a spare, but Im glad it worked. yay!
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