How to restore broken Win10 after failed clone
Please be gentle - I have now read all the "never clone" posts but I made a mistake.
I bought an SSD with plan to clone old HDD across to it then format & use HDD as data drive.
I used Acronis 2021 to create a full backup of drive and a I made a separate copy of all Docs folder.
I used Acronis 2021 to make bootable backup media.
I plugged in the SSD and started a clone operation from the boot disc to the SSD. About 6 hours in it hung. I waited about 30 more hours (to be sure) than had no choice but to exit. Windows will not boot at all now.
Tried using the Acronis USB I created earlier. When I tried to launch the tools just got an error message. When tried to restore from backup, got error message.
Have managed to access Windows 10 recovery console. Start-up repair fails. If I use command prompt I find Windows directory now on D: not C: as was at start of the process. When I try reset PC (keeping files) I get error.
Any suggestions on how to recover a working PC from this mess? As you can imagine I am not a fan of Acronis at the moment with clone, recovery and restore operations all failing on a 2021 version. I am not sure where my Windows disc is and would prefer not to have to reinstall my Steam library so keeping files would be a real bonus.
Thanks for any help


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Thanks for the tips.
I am trying now and will post info as I get it.
Re-booting the system seems to take way longer than I would expect just to access the BIOS. I have been tapping the DEL key for 5 minutes and just moved onto a blank screen, not the BIOS. It would be a weird coincidence to get a motherboard failure at the same time as I was doing the clone. Will keep trying.
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David,
I would suggest removing all hard drives to see if the BIOS can be accessed as expected. A problem with the drive rather than a motherboard issue be the cause.
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David, I agree with Paul's advise.
A cautionary tail on device connections:
A few days ago I decided to replace the 10000rpm WD boot drive [SATA 3 but only 150Gb) with an SSD (240Gb) on a decidedly ancient PC - it's age indicated by the Intel Q6600 CPU (quad core). Took the usual precaution of creating a backup. Then, for reasons I cannot remember, decided to do a live clone [thought it low risk as I had a recent backup, and unused SSD drive - minimises risk of live clone; avoids booting into Linux recovery media].
The process seemed to work OK, so I shut down the PC, disconnected the old drive, powered up and #$#$$ it booted into the recovery media - panic stations. The I realised that there was a USB stick in the front USB port; removed it and the PC booted correctly. The USB stick which I had used to load some software also had ATI recovery media on it.
Given the age of the PC you may wonder why I bothered at it only has SATA 2 ports on the motherboard. First off, I forgot that it already had the SATA III 10000rpm HDD in it - I forgot that I had replaced the 160Gb SATA I (one of several seniors moments during the process). But decided to go ahead and see if I could get the PC to boot using a PCIe SATA 3 card - and it did (the card has a Marvel 91xx controller). Makes very big difference in boot time!
Ian
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Apologies - work is so busy at the moment I am only getting a bit of time to look at my own PC & progress is slow.
Paul, my next step is to remove everything. Thanks for that advice. If that looks promising I have a new plan - stop trying to fix the HDD and restore the backup to the SSD then put that into place. Fingers crossed.
Ian - I feel I could have written that myself. Just the kind of thing I do. Believe it or not, when getting down to attach a D-Sub cable to this PC (I was desperate and thinking there might be unavailable graphics card drivers so wanted to connect to the onboard controller just in case), I found that I had left the previous graphics card in place when I upgraded it last time (on-board graphics, 2012 graphics card & 2017 card in same system).
Once I get this sorted I feel some memory exercises are in order.
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