Original disk not booting after cloning.
Hi there, first post so bear with me.
Recently had a mechanical disk failure which left me with no backups and a major headache. I was forced to replace the hard disk and reload everything. Luckily I had my personal files duplicated in various locations and was able to rebuild the system. I then decided to upgrade to an SSD and clone the disk as well as performing regular backups to an independent disk, belt and braces affair!
The computer is an old Lenovo H430 with Windows 7 upgraded to Ultimate. Old but works (worked!) well and is more than adequate for my use. I had cloned the disk in the past with Acronis 2017 and had no problems so I didn't envisage any issues. When rebuilding the disk I had upgraded to Acronis 2021 and actually used it to clone and replace the HDD on another system which had worked OK. For this I had created a recovery usb for the other computer which unfortunately didn't work and I had to create a Linux recovery USB which did the job.
Consequently I did not see any issues I might have cloning to an SSD of the same size and so went ahead. I used the automatic settings and it went ahead and cloned the disk.
Coming back to the computer later I noticed that it had attempted a restart and was giving me an 'Error 1962: No operating system found' I attempted to restart a number of times with the same result. At which point my confidence in the cloned dropped somewhat but I went ahead and replaced the original with the clone and was very surprised when it booted up and went through the reloading of the drivers etc. This at least was something, at least I had still had a working system.
In an effort to repair the original disk I made a basic recovery disk with Acronis and swapped out the disks once more. The computer booted up fine from the USB and gave me the option to restore the disk from the backups I had made on another Disk on the same computer. This I did, including in the restore all partitions etc. Unfortunately this did not rectify the problem so I once again replaced the HDD with the clone thinking to try another tack.
Immagine my horror to find that the clone now had the same issue, yet it had been functioning perfectly when I removed it. I might add that both disks are accessible when reading them on another computer so they are fine, they simply will not boot Windows.
My question is; does Acronis do something to the EFI when producing a recovery USB? and if so how do I rectify it? It seems very strange that these disks failed shortly after this process.
If not I would greatly appreciate if anyone has any idea what might have happened to both these disks. I now have a large paperweight on my desk that I may have to spend another two days rebuilding.
Regards
Ben
Hi Steve
Appreciate the time you took to read my post and give it some thought. I was just about to post an update.
Each time I tried to boot from either the HDD or the SSD, the Bios automatically sensed and selected the appropriate Disk as I was using the Disk 0 connections. Initially after the cloning the SSD would work perfectly but the HDD would not, this was tried a few times swapping out the SSD with the HDD. It was only after I created a rescue USB with Acronis True Image on the SSD that it failed to boot.
In my earlier post I mentioned that I had attempted to Restore the HDD from a backup using the Acronis Rescue USB which had failed. I have subsequently discovered that it was successful but on another hard disk mounted on the computer. When installed this as the boot disk, it worked perfectly.
I have now restored both the HDD and SSD using the same method and now both disks are fully functional and I am actually at where I had hoped to be. The SSD is installed in the computer and I have a fully functional clone as backup.
The Acronis backup files I used were created literally a couple of hours before the cloning and rescue media creation. So I still have the feeling that something was changed during these processes to make the disks unbootable.
When I have time I intend to uninstall True Image 2021 and install 2017 and try a cloning again to see what differences there might be. Maybe 2021 is geared more towards Windows 10 and not 7?
Strangely enough during various solutions I was attempting I have discovered that if you install Windows 7 64 bit on a disk that is MBR formatted it will follow that partition form. If the disk is formatted GPT it will install with an EFI system partition. Both my current disks are GPT with EFI, but when I installed Windows on a disk I had that was MBR, that's what it stayed as.
If I come acress anything else I will add it. Thanks for your input.