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cloning drives caused MBR failure on both drives

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I have a PC running Windows 7 and am considering upgrading to Windows 10. Before doing this I wanted to have a clone of my hard drive in case I ran into problems with Windows 10 and wanted to go back to my previous Windows 7 system.

I performed a disk clone from True Image 2016 recovery disk and it seemed to run correctly and I had checked the box to shut down computer when complete.I then left it running and went to bed.

I was cloning to a similar size hard drive mounted in a USB enclosure. When I tried it in the morning I disconnected the USB drive and powered on the PC. It would not boot up. It said the MBR was not present.

I then installed the cloned disk in the PC and it had the same result. Would not boot.

I re-installed the original drive and booted with the Windows CD. It did manage to repair the MBR but I lost all my settings in programs, and passwords eetc.

Can anyone suggest what I may havw done wrong?

Thanks,

John

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When you clone a drive using the Recovery Media is essential which you did.  Checking the shutdown computer is also essential which you did.  Where I suspect you went wrong is that it sounds like you cloned from your installed to a drive mounted in an external caddy/enclosure.  In this step you should first remove the original drive(source) from the PC and replace it with the drive you wish to clone to (target).  Once that is done boot to the recovery media and run the clone with shutdown PC after operation complete checked.

After clone completes and PC shutsdown, remove the source disk and boot to the target disk.

Hi Enchantech,

Thanks for your reply to my question. I will attempt it again that way, I hope it works ok. I spent two days getting it back working properly after the last failed attempt.

I will reply after I try again.

John

John, even before a clone, Acronis recommends taking a full disk backup.  A full disk backup is your best friend should anything go wrong with cloning, a bad disk, failing hardware, etc.  You can always restore from a good backup, but a clone is "on the fly" and offers no failsafe if something goes wrong (like cloning in the wrong direction, or a corrupted bootloader when a clone is started from within Windows ****always clone from the recovery media instead ***** that fails to boot to Acronis).  Cloning can be very convenient, but it's not a backup... at least not until the clone is complete and verified to be working.  

Well I tried this clone procedure again following your instructions. I put the windows hard drive in a usb adapter and booted from the recovery dvd with my new blank drive installed in the pc. The usb adapter was plugged into a usb port. I started the clone procedure from the recovery dvd and used the usb drive as the source and the installed blank 1tb disk as the target. Both disks are the same size. It told me it would be about 3 hours. After about 2 hours - it said there was a sector problem and suggested doing a chkdisk and retrying. I didn't know how to do a chkdisk from the recovery dvd so I clicked on the retry button. It said about 2 hours remaining. I waited about 4 hours and the progress bar had not moved and it still said 2 hours remaining. I got tired of the waiting and pulled out the dvd and shut down the pc. When I tried to reboot it said the MBR was missing. I tried both hard drives and neither would reboot. I then booted again from the recovery dvd and did a restore of my full backup to the original hard drive. It started up this time.

So I am going to give up on this cloning attempt. I don't want to screw up my Windows 7 drive again. Too bad, since I wanted to try windows 10 on this disk but wanted to have a copy of it in case of problems or if my wife didn't like windows 10 since she is the main user of this PC.

Thanks for your assistance anyway.. I did a chckdisk after all this on both drives and didn't find any problems. 

Regards,

John

John, when you attempted to boot after bailing out of the clone, were both drives still attached?  Once the clone has started, both drives will have the same hardware ID and the bios will be confused when it is trying to load the "same" disk at the same time.  Not sure if this happened in your case, but if it did, that is the issue.  After a clone process (success or fail), it's important to only have one drive attached during the boot process.

Now that the the system is restored from the image, I would run chkdsk /r /f on both disks (original and the new test drive).  After that, if you're up for it you could then try a clone again and see if it completes or still gets stuck.  If it does get stuck, remove the new and secondary drive from the internal slot and replace with the original one, making sure only one is connected when you start and that the original is also in the original slot/connector before starting the OS boot and all should be well. 

Hi Bobbo,

Yes the only drive installed when I attempted the first boot after the failed clone, was the new target drive. When that didn't work I removed that drive and installed the original hard drive in the SATA slot internally with no other drive attached and tried another boot. It failed with no MBR found.

After I recovered the backup and got windows 7 running again I did a disk check on both the drives and it didn't show any errors.

Thank-you for all your help but I don't think I am going to try another clone attempt, I will stick to back-ups and forego trying the Widows 10 upgrade.

John

Roger that.  If backup and recovery is working fine, couldn't you just take a backup before the upgrade and save it somewhere safe.  Then proceed with your Win 10 upgrade (or restore the backup to another drive first and swap it out with the original to make sure it boots) and then upgrade it or the original to test Win10. 

Bobbo+3C0X1

Well I finally gave the clone disk another try and this time I managed to accomplish what I was trying to do. The method I used was probably not the best way but it worked. Here is what I did:

Cloned my windows 7 1 gb drive from the pc to a WD MyPassport Ultra portable 1 gb drive.and did a full backup to my NAS drive. Installed the new blank 1gb hard drive in the pc and cloned the WD portable drive image to the blank drive in the pc. The pc would not boot from the hard drive after this so I booted from the  Acronis Recovery dvd and did a restore from my full backup on my NAS drive. The pc now booted from the hard drive with wiindows 7 ok.

I then upgraded the windows 7 to windows 10 to try it out. I now con switch my hard drive back to the original windows 7 drive if I don't want to continue with windows 10.

This was what I wanted to accompliish.

John

Hey, it worked so that's the main thing.  I rarely clone these days and personally prefer the create a backup and restore said backup to a drive since it gives you a backup as a fallbackup (just in case).  In the few times I did clone, they have all been successful though, so not sure of the specific problem in this case without having hands on access.  Glad you were able to get the image onto the new drive without impacting the original and are now able to test Windows 10 upgrade safely!