UNABLE TO CLONE DISK
(I posted this on Reddit but noticed that it seemed pretty inactive so I posted on here too)
I’ve been trying to clone my hdd disk to my new ssd drive for the past 3 days nonstop
I’ve used various of softwares and each had numerous attempts which all have been unsuccessful, til finally picked up on acronis.
Acronis has been the closest thing to put an end to this
Note: My grammar will get worse as you go
—PROBLEM BELOW—
I’ve done “clone disk” which I was never prompted an error but instead after selecting source disk was stuck on the spinning clock, just endlessly loading what feels like nothing
I’ve also tried “Rescue media builder”, doing Linux and WinPe on a usb stick consisting of 7gb and doing the shift-restart to open the usb.
All was going fine till after selecting source disk I was prompted with “unable to lock this drive, try Linux instead” something along the lines of that.
So I went to do the Linux build and after the same process, I clicked on clone disk and I get prompted with something like “you need to have more than one disk”, I have 3 internal disks, 2 hdd and 1 ssd, I noticed it was only detecting the usb disk that had the Linux build.
and so with that, am out of options
—PROBLEM ABOVE—
I ask for someone to please tell me if am either missing something or doing something wrong and if so, which I am, please guide me step by step
Using the latest version.
Desktop
I initially had windows 11 insider build when I was doing this but since thinking that might’ve been the problem I reverted back to windows 10, but that didn’t fix anything, it only really made things worse
The capacity for both my source and target drive are 1tb and the amount of space left is 87.2gb. The target drive (ssd) is new and has the same amount of max storage as the source drive so there’s nothing in it
Not entirely sure about the source drive but I KNOW the target drive is 2.5” and I think the source drive is 3.5”. They both use SATA
I would do a backup but I don’t have an external drive that’s the same size capacity as my source drive, unless I do a backup on the target drive and restore from there? Tho I doubt it’ll work
Also I’ve recently changed from using RAID to AHCI if that has any relevance
Javier, thanks for the further information.
Windows 11 is not supported by any version of ATI at this time as is a Beta OS, but Windows 10 is fine.
The capacity for both my source and target drive are 1tb and the amount of space left is 87.2gb. The target drive (ssd) is new and has the same amount of max storage as the source drive so there’s nothing in it
If you only have 87.2GB free space on your source drive then you will not see any benefit from changing over to the SSD as you have less than 10% free space and a normal recommendation is to try to have 20% free space on the SSD to allow for over-provisioning and best performance.
I would do a backup but I don’t have an external drive that’s the same size capacity as my source drive, unless I do a backup on the target drive and restore from there? Tho I doubt it’ll work
A backup drive would not need to be the same capacity as the source drive assuming that you have a mix of files on the source drive that can allow ATI to achieve an expected compression ratio of at least 20%. If you have lots of files such as videos, photos, music on the drive that are already highly compressed, then these would not be further compressed by ATI.
You cannot backup to the new SSD target drive then recover back to it!
I closed acronis and for some reason, I now have 111gb free space (still gonna free up some space anyway)
so If I were to do a backup, the backup wont have the same size as the source drive? if that's the case, then I can probably do a backup on my 2nd HDD drive that consists the same amount of storage capacity and has 634gb free of space.
Also do you think TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) has anything do with this? since from what I've read it does involve encrypting a few things and since acronis doesn't seem to like encryption stuff
(I honestly don't know, am just desperate at this point)
Javier, it sound like there were some temporary files open if your free space has increased.
For my own main laptop, my C: drive backup is typically about 85GB size for a source data size of 118GB where this is just Windows and installed applications with no user data on that drive. I segregate my data so that it lives in a different partition to the OS & programs and gets backed up separately according to frequency of change.
TPM 2.0 should not make any difference unless you have BitLocker turned on for the whole source disk and are attempting to clone using Linux based rescue media (which has no support for BitLocker!). My laptop also has TPM 2.0 (without BitLocker enabled) and all is fine.
well, alright.
I'm gonna try to backup my source drive into my second HDD drive then try to restore from WinPE based rescue media to the target drive (Hopefully it doesn't give me that one error), and by the way, how can I check if BitLocker is on?
I'm assuming its normal for acronis to take huge amounts of time "Calculating the data size"? 30 min have passed and nothing has changed
Edit: OH nevermind, its going now
I’ve done a back up and tried to recover from rescue media and unsurprisingly it didn’t work.
it prompted me with an error saying “Operation failed”, after reaching the last step and clicking on “proceed”.
I have no clue what’s wrong with either my computer or my hard drives, it always seem to fail after everything
Javier, to try to understand this issue further the logs for the failed operation are needed, so that we can get an idea of why it is failing?
When using the rescue media, click on the Logs option (shown on the left side) and then when you see the log for the clone task, right-click on the top line (shows date / time etc) and you will see an option to 'Save as' allowing you to save the log to your disk drive or a USB stick etc.
Ah, sorry for not telling earlier then
Here's what it tells me in the logs in order:
"Operation Recover Starter."
"A format/resize error."
"Write Error."
"Failed to write the snapshot manager drive."
"Unknown status."
"A device which does not exist was specified"
"Recover operation failed."
Please can you post the actual log rather than just the error messages as above?
Right, sorry again.
log build=39216; product=Acronis True Image; task_name=Recover; uuid=3B572965-F4BD-470E-8D6F-FF5D05BB4AF8; version=25.8
Start= 06/07/2021 20:48:21
event code=0; id=1; level=2; message=Operation Recover started.;
module=100 date/time=06/07/2021 20:48:21
event code=8; id=2; level=4; message=A format/resize error.
module=534; date/time=06/07/2021 20:50:33
event code=4; id=3; level=4; message=Write error.
module=7; date/time=06/07/2021 20:50:33
event code=218; id=4; level=4; message=Failed to write the snapshot manager drive.
module=16; date/time=06/07/2021 20:50:33
event code=9; id=5; level=4; message=Unknown status.
module=0; date/time=06/07/2021 20:50:33
event code=65520; id=6; level=4; message=A device which does not exist was specified
module=0; date/time=06/07/2021 20:50:33
event code=252; id=7; level=4; message=Recover operation failed.;
module=0; date/time=06/07/2021 20:50:33
Start= 06/07/2021 20:48:21
Finish= 06/07/2021 20:50:33
Total Time= 00:02:12
The log shows several potential issues at work here:
The format/resize error normally indicates that there is insufficient free space that can be allocated for the operation being performed.
The Write error, write snapshot and unknown status are all caused by the following error 'a device which does not exist was specified', thus leading to the failed recovery.
The real clue here is that last error which suggests that the recovery is being started from within Windows and that a device which is present in the Windows environment is no longer found in the temporary Linux environment that is launched to perform the operation.
This is a case where you need to be booting from the Acronis Rescue Media and doing the Recovery after doing so.
If I understand correctly
It's suggesting that I've been trying to recover from within windows? that's not right, I've mainly been trying to recover from Acronis Rescue Media unless what am doing isn't Acronis Rescue Media?.
It is saying that 'a device which does not exist was specified', which is commonly caused when the operation is started from within Windows leading to a restart using a Linux OS environment.
I have never seen this for the Acronis Rescue Media unless perhaps if BitLocker encryption is involved to render the encrypted drive 'invisible' to the Acronis application.
The only other reason for this type of error is if a device selected during the Recovery steps is losing connection / dropping power or becoming unavailable in some way, which would most likely be a hardware issue.
I could maybe doing something wrong getting to Acronis Rescue Media and would like to ask to give guidance on how to get to Acronis Rescue Media (the proper way).
BitLocker could be the problem but how would I know if I have BitLocker on?
I doubt its a hardware issue as I've been within windows and had never seen the SSD drive (Target) disconnect randomly (if that's what you meant by "hardware issue")
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
BitLocker is only available in the Pro & Enterprise versions of Windows and you can open the BitLocker option in the Control Panel to see the status of this feature.
The device that doesn't exist when using the rescue media could be the source or target for the operation and could be due to a device driver issue as much as hardware.
I followed through the articles and it seems Im doing it right
I have windows home so It’s not bitlocker
It might just honestly be a hardware issue because I remember having no issue installing and cloning in Macrium Reflect that is until I got to 50% overall progress it suddenly just error’d and gave me the same message “a device which does not exist was specified”
Javier, if you are seeing the same error from both Macrium and Acronis, then this is confirming that the issue is outside of the software being used but is most likely going to be hardware.
Do you have any other drives you can test with?
Yep, just figured it out and finally got it to work, it was the SSD itself.
I was trying to install Windows 10 onto the target drive and it didn't work, I even brought out a Windows 10 disc and tried to install from there, but it also didn't work.
I switched the SSD for another SSD, and it worked.
I'm finally having the experience of an SSD, thank you for helping me figuring this out.
Javier, very glad to read of a successful outcome! Well done for sticking with this and changing the SSD to prove the issue with the other SSD.