Okay, I did (seemingly) all the wrong things, and need help
Short story: Running out of space on my two drives and 7 partitions, and bought new WD drives of a higher capacity. Ran Acronis from Windows doing a clone of the 2nd drive (NOW I know that cloning from Windows is bad, told it I didn't want to shut down thinking I could look at the logs/status and I came back to see it rebooted to Windows with three drives still attached - two originals and the cloned 2nd drive) Thinking I was doing good, shut down, swapped out the secondary drive, rebooted, and then cloned the primary drive (after swapping the t cloned drive out). It booted back to Windows with three drives attached (originals, and the cloned primary drive).
Started noticing that I couldn't see the D and E partitions on the cloned primary drive. I pulled the original drives out, put the two cloned in, booted up, and it sees only the C drive as well (Windows missing D&E on the primary drive, not seeing the secondary drive at all, but Acronis sees the partitions, etc.) Drivers for the two hard drives get installed for the new drives, forces a reboot and and now constantly reboots.
Started from scratch, trying to clone the 1st drive with the NOW created backup media disk, and when the cloned drive boots up, I only see the C: partition, not D&E, but then I see drivers are being installed for that drive, and makes me reboot, but it too goes into endless reboot cycles.
I'm not understanding what I'm doing wrong. I initially thought I needed only 1 primary partition, so 2nd time around changed D to logical partition, and E already was a logical partition.
I'm scared to touch my original disks, afraid that I'll have the same problems (given I started the clone within Windows and it booted back up to Windows with both drives attached, and am wondering if the 2nd attempt at a cloned copy via backup media is simply a copy of a messed up original.)
Boy, from a software useability point of view... I would say that the software SHOULD NOT ALLOW someone to do a clone operation from Windows. Force them to build a backup media disk to boot from and do the operations from there.
Also, when I see an option to shutdown and I don't click it, don't assume I want the restart either! And the software should state after a cloning operation is complete (and before it shuts down) that you should remove the original drive.
I don't say all this as a whiny end-user, but as a past software developer.
Between these two clone efforts, I tried booting on a Windows media disk to try a windows repair, which failed the 1st time (before I tried a clone again). On the 2nd clone attempt seeing a constant reboot (flash of a blue screen), I went into a command prompt window and tried the redo the MBR and boot sector as well as a bcdedit command, all of which did nothing to help my problem.
So I'm looking for some help with regards to getting a clone copy to work. I did not make a backup of my originals, and I don't want to touch my originals (which I think are messed up at this point) until I nail down a process that works and is repeatable on the cloned drives first.
Help me Obi-Wa... uh, I just need help badly.
Thanks!
Ju, welcome to these User Forums.
Please see forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this - sorry if this seems as we are rubbing salt in an already painful wound!
Do you have any full backup images of your original drives from before attempting to clone them? If you do, then this should be your quickest way to recover the drives if this is needed.
Beyond that, you really need to know whether the original drives are good or not?
If you have a second computer and can attach each original drive to that computer via a USB-SATA dock or adapter, then check the drives in that way to see if your original data is still present or not? This is safer than trying to boot from those drives in the original computer as you are just attaching the drive(s) in a passive mode where no changes should be made.
In reply to Ju, welcome to these User… by truwrikodrorow…
Steve,
I read that document you referred to AFTER I tried running an Acronis Clone operation from inside windows, hence the title relating to my having done nearly everything wrong. (I don't have a backup either) You have a good sticky document there Steve, but is there something you wanted me to look at in there besides me reading how I violated a bunch of good advice to get where I'm at? I'm open to it if you have solutions in there, other than saying don't do X (which I did already). I addressed that in my observations about the need for good and logical operations. (ie, don't allow someone to do cloning of a disk from inside Windows, and when you don't have Shutdown the computer selected, don't reboot instead. Wait for actions by a user.)
So, let me add more details (I don't know if it's helpful or not)
After reporting my problem here, I bought the Minitool Partition Wizard Pro, and found the embedded Acronis ext3 bootloader amongst my partitions, and also a number of small 3Mb partitions (which I think may have also come from Acronis). I repaired the partitions using Minitool, and booted. It came up in Windows probably from a prior restore point, and I could see the partitions, but then it went and loaded the driver for the HDD, and said I needed to reboot, and I found myself staring at a windows repair process that didn't work.
I believe all this occurred because that unchecked Shutdown button turned into an auto-restart after the clone, and it booted up with the original and cloned drive still attached to the system, and I think it confused the operating system (I think your docs mention that too). Anyway, after properly shutting down and trying to power up the system with one drive taken off, I experienced a bootup of the cloned drive, but missing 2 partitions (just saw C drive).
I eventually got to a command prompt after seeing I had a 0x490 error (bad driver), and tried to do a sfc /scannow and it complains that I have an update in process (or startup repair) and that it needs to finish before I can do a sfc command. I tried doing a dism.exe command, and that didn't seem to work. So, I'd like to find a way to reboot, with it running okay (and yes, that driver will try to install again for this HDD, and ask for a reboot)... but... how do I do a backup (and keep the Windows stuff and put it on another disk from within Windows?? I have waaay to much to be able to reinstall again. And copies of my license info for much of the software is on the hard drives that were both messed up by Acronis (from within Windows)
I don't know if that is helpful or not.But I'm still stuck at a disk with the data on it, but unreachable through windows.
Ju, I have no easy option to offer to you for this situation.
I can only recommend attempting to recover what data you can from the corrupted HDD drives and copying this to some other location to use later.
After doing the above, then a clean install of Windows will be needed along with the re-installation of your software applications.
I am sorry that you have no backup to fall back upon, I assume that this includes having no Microsoft Windows backup or system image that could be used either?