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Clone from spindle drive to ssd (same sizes) is not working

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Hello,

 

   I have cloned numerous spindle drives to SSD drives using Acronis (past and latest 2020 versions) and never had the issue I am experiencing now. I have a HP 15-ba009dx notebook with a 5400/500 GB drive on it. The laptop is too damn slow to install Acronis on and clone from there, so I am cloning from a Sabrent external hard drive dock (original 5400 spindle drive with Windows 10 on it) to a  WEME IDE/SSD to USB3 adapter (new Crucial MX500 SSD). I am running Acronis 2020 (latest version) off of my Dell tower with both of the aforementioned adapters plugged into it (USB3).

When the cloning process has finished, upon bootup of the newly installed Crucial SSD on the HP 15-ba009dx, I immediately see the repair process begin. From there, I am taken to the Window 10 repair page where none of the repair options work (believe me, I've tried them all numerous times). I checked the BIOS and see that it is set to UEFI and that the boot device is Windows 10, yet I can never get it to boot. 

What concerns me is the fact that this Window 10 OS was upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 (I see the Windows.old dir) and am wondering if the boot order is messed up due to this.

When the SSD was outside the HP laptop (in the WEME IDE/SSD to USB3 adapter I changed the boot order on my Dell tower to boot directly off of it. I got the same repair screen and, once again, none of the Window repair options worked. 

If anyone can shed any light on this odd behavior I would much appreciate it. 

Thank you in advance.

1 Users found this helpful

Cloning laptop drives on a desktop PC using external drive adapters is almost guaranteed to cause more issues than is worth the trouble, especially with ATI running in Windows!

Acronis have tried to be too clever in trying to make cloning intelligent and now apply Universal Restore actions when changed hardware is detected, as well as defaulting to the BIOS mode scheme of the Host PC (MBR or GPT) regardless of how the source drive is prepared!

This is complicated with laptop drives where the recommendation is always to put the new drive inside the laptop to use as the clone target.

If you say the laptop is too slow to install Acronis on, then you should create the Acronis Rescue Media and boot the laptop from that media to perform the clone, with the original source drive connected externally to the laptop.

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.

See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: 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 

Thank you for this information! I have yet to try your suggestion, but it certainly makes sense. I will definitely try your recommendation next and will let you know.

Thank you Steve! :)

I haven't followed through with your instructions just yet. Prior to reading your post I re-installed the original drive and realized it, too, is not booting now! (HP goes right into recovery mode and eventually into the troubleshooting choice boxes). It was booting just fine when I originally fired it up. That really confuses me!

Several days ago - in an attempt to get the cloned SSD drive to boot within the laptop I did change the BIOS to include both Legacy and UEFI to see if that would remedy the issue as this did work on a Lenovo E545 I was working on in the past. 

Not sure if I made things worse (original drive no longer booting) by changing the BIOS setting (I also turned off Secure Boot then turned it back on) and making the other BIOS change I previously mentioned back to strictly UEFI.

So, in my mind, it now seems that even if I do follow your instruction: "Acronis Rescue Media and boot the laptop from that media to perform the clone, with the original source drive connected externally to the laptop" it will not work as, previously mentioned, even the original drive will no longer boot when placed back into the laptop.

I am thinking of a clean-slate OS at this point (I do have a .tib of the drive. I tried to restore to the new drive several days ago as well to no avail).

Any advice at this point would certainly be appreciated.

If your laptop uses UEFI with Secure Boot to boot correctly, then the boot device should be shown as 'Windows Boot Manager' in the BIOS boot settings.

I would suggest checking the above with your original laptop drive installed and let Windows repair run if it needs to correct anything changed by having the BIOS set incorrectly to Legacy / CSM.

If that fails, then assuming that your .tib backup is of the full working disk drive, then boot the PC from the Acronis Rescue Media in UEFI Boot mode and try restoring the .tib backup to your new disk drive installed in the laptop.

"If your laptop uses UEFI with Secure Boot to boot correctly, then the boot device should be shown as 'Windows Boot Manager' in the BIOS boot settings.

I would suggest checking the above with your original laptop drive installed and let Windows repair run if it needs to correct anything changed by having the BIOS set incorrectly to Legacy / CSM."

I'll attempt this today and let you know the end result. Thank you! I will go to the .tib restore from there if Windows repair fails.

Hi Steve - I tried both methods suggested to no avail. I ended up wiping the SSD and installing Windows Home from scratch. This was a first for me. For years I haven't had a single issue with the Acronis clone process. Next time I will definitely replace the existing internal hard drive with a SSD replacement and clone from the external (formerly internal original) drive and clone via Acronis Rescue Media in UEFI Boot mode.

Thank you for your assistance throughout this process. Much appreciated!