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HDD migration to SSD audio crackle issues

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Hi all,

Just cloned my HDD to a new SSD (via True Image 2019), and I'm finding that I'm getting audio crackles. I have some USB headphones. I've tried updating the GPU driver (GTX 970), the headphones driver (Plantronics GameCom 780), updated the Realtek driver, I've had a look in the BIOS, tried changing the Windows power settings etc. Nothing has worked.

I see quite a few google results regarding migrations to SSDs. My next options would be to try a clean install (don't have a Win10 disk) and then some kind of file migration (which seems to negate cloning the HDD).

Has anyone dealt with and resolved these issues?

Thanks,

E

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Evan, welcome to these public User Forums.

I am not aware of any issues that would cause the audio issues you mention.

Cloning should result in an identical duplicate copy of the source HDD drive on the target SSD but this depends a little on how the drives are connected for the clone operation.

The recommended method for cloning is to remove the source HDD and replace it by the SSD, then boot the computer from the Acronis bootable Rescue Media to perform the clone.

With ATI 2018 and 2019, there is an option to perform cloning from within Windows using the same Microsoft VSS snapshot method used for backups - see Acronis True Image 2019: Active Cloning in Windows | Knowledge Base

With active cloning differences can occur due to the way the target drive is connected, i.e. if a different drive connection interface is used, additional device drivers are required for the adapter being used etc.

I've seen a few threads about this.  In some cases, simply re-cloning resolves the issue by itself.  In other cases, instead of a clone, taking a full disk backup and then restoring that backup (instead of cloning) has resolved it too.

I think the issue might be that in some instances, Universal restore is applied to the cloning process and that messes with the system drivers as Universal Restore is designed to generalize drivers ... usually, impacting audio (where it is disabled, but there is a fix for that), but not sure about just crackling.

I would try to backup and restore the original drive instead of cloning and see if that makes a difference in this case.

Here are some of those other forum references about Universal Restore being applied to cloning (usually in Windows 7).  

https://forum.acronis.com/comment/399145#comment-399145

https://forum.acronis.com/comment/490921#comment-490921

https://forum.acronis.com/comment/488404#comment-488404

 

Steve Smith wrote:

Evan, welcome to these public User Forums.

I am not aware of any issues that would cause the audio issues you mention.

Cloning should result in an identical duplicate copy of the source HDD drive on the target SSD but this depends a little on how the drives are connected for the clone operation.

The recommended method for cloning is to remove the source HDD and replace it by the SSD, then boot the computer from the Acronis bootable Rescue Media to perform the clone.

With ATI 2018 and 2019, there is an option to perform cloning from within Windows using the same Microsoft VSS snapshot method used for backups - see Acronis True Image 2019: Active Cloning in Windows | Knowledge Base

With active cloning differences can occur due to the way the target drive is connected, i.e. if a different drive connection interface is used, additional device drivers are required for the adapter being used etc.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the comments. I have since tried cloning to another regular HDD and found the same issues. I have plugged the original HDD back in, and have now found that the audio stuttering issue is present there as well, so something else is causing it. I was playing around with some of the audio settings/enhancements just prior to cloning, so that may be the cause. I've since reset them and tried reinstalling drivers, but nothing has worked so far.

Evan

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

I've seen a few threads about this.  In some cases, simply re-cloning resolves the issue by itself.  In other cases, instead of a clone, taking a full disk backup and then restoring that backup (instead of cloning) has resolved it too.

I think the issue might be that in some instances, Universal restore is applied to the cloning process and that messes with the system drivers as Universal Restore is designed to generalize drivers ... usually, impacting audio (where it is disabled, but there is a fix for that), but not sure about just crackling.

I would try to backup and restore the original drive instead of cloning and see if that makes a difference in this case.

Here are some of those other forum references about Universal Restore being applied to cloning (usually in Windows 7).  

https://forum.acronis.com/comment/399145#comment-399145

https://forum.acronis.com/comment/490921#comment-490921

https://forum.acronis.com/comment/488404#comment-488404

 Hi,

Thanks for the comments. I think the issues are more widespread than just the clone, as the same audio stuttering is now on the original HDD (where it wasn't an issue immediately before cloning to the SSD). I tried to be careful and keep myself grounded, but maybe I bumped something during installing the new drives.

Evan

Evan, if the problem impacts on the original HDD too, then it should not be related at all to the Acronis application or cloning operation.

Do you have a backup of the HDD from before this audio problem started or before you "was playing around with some of the audio settings/enhancements just prior to cloning"?  If so, then recovering your HDD back to that point in time may be the answer here.