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Win10 cloned to SSD with Acronis True Image 2014 fails to boot.

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I have a 240GB Crucial MX-100 SSD.  It was originally purchased for and installed in a Dell Small Form Factor machine.  The Crucial came with a license for a version of Acronis True Image 2014, and I downloaded it and used it to clone the Win7 Pro installation on the 250GB SATA drive the Dell came with to the SSD, which I could then boot from.  I then upgraded the Win7 installation on the SSD to Win10 via MS's free upgrade offer.  Subsequently, I used Windows Disk Management to carve out a RAW slice on the SSD, and installed Ubuntu Linux from a bootable thumb drive.  The end result was a multi-boot system via Grub2, with a choice of Ubuntu, the Win10 installation on SSD, or the original Win7 installation on HD.  It worked fine.

The Dell subsequently had a power supply failure, and needed to be replaced.  The replacement was an HP Compaq Small Form Factor box.  It was faster, with a 3.1 ghz Intel i5-2400 CPU instead of the 2.6 ghz Xeon in the Dell, and the i5 was a supported CPU in Win10, so Windows saw and used all four cores.  It came with a Toshiba 500GB SATA drive as boot drive. I wanted to reuse parts from the Dell, so the Crucial SSD and the original Dell HD got installed as secondary drives.  The old Dell drive later got replaced by a 500GB Seagate drive.

Like the Dell, the HP was a Win7 Pro machine.  But I still had the Win10 Pro upgrade media on a thumb drive, so I was able to upgrade to Win10.

It took a while to discover how to wipe the Crucial and remove the existing partitions, so that I could attempt to clone the Windows installation to it and make it the boot drive.  Windows wouldn't do it, but a freeware tool called Mini Tool Partition Manager was able to remove the partitions and create one large unused volume.  I could then theoretically use Acronis to clone Win10 to SSD.

I've tried several times.  Acronis clones the Windows installation to the SSD, but I can't boot from it.

Looking at the disk layout in Disk Manager, I see the same partition layout on drive C: reproduced on the SSD, which Windows sees as E:.  But the cloning procedure  produces an SSD with the  beginning 350MB System partition assigned a drive letter, and the second partition where Win10 actually resides gets another drive letter, so booted from C:, Windows thinks the SSD is two volumes, E: and F:.  That's a WTF? moment - why is the first System partition getting assigned a drive letter?

Trying to boot from the SSD gets nowhere.  I can select SATA1 which is the SSD from the Boot Order menu in the BIOS, and it comes up and displays the opening Windows 10 logo, but doesn't successfully boot.  I see a mouse pointer overlaid on a spinning circle that flickers, and the HD LED indicates that access is occurring, but I have no idea what  is taking place.

One issue may be drive size.  The source drive is 500GB, and the target drive is 240GB, but the amount of actual data to be cloned is about 40GB.  There's more than enough space on the SSD to hold what's being cloned.

I tried the first time using Automatic mode, and when that didn't work, tried Manual for finer control.

I suspect I'm missing something that ought to be obvious.  My memory of doing this on the Dell box was that it was relatively straight forward and surprisingly quick.

Suggestions?  At this point I'm rather thoroughly confused.

Thanks in advance,

>Dennis

 

 

 

 

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Dennis, are you booting your computer with both the original and the cloned drives connected?  It sounds as if that is the case if you are seeing drive letters assigned to the hidden/system partition of the cloned drive.  This is not recommended as both drives have the same identical disk signature which can confuse Windows.

When you clone the Windows OS, you are also cloning the Windows Boot Configuration Data which tells the computer where to boot the system from, i.e. which Sata controller / port, so again, if you have the original drive and the cloned drive both connected, Windows will look to the original controller / port to boot from, not necessarily where the cloned drive is connected.

Please see forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this

Hello,

naerly the same problem I got yesterday 2017/10/08 after installing ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 2014 again.

Perhaps it was my mistake to press the clone button. I use WINDOWS 7 and after the process no more booting of my PC was possible. No reinstall, no correction with the original WINDOWS CD. Any help availuable ? It is unbelievable that the is no contact adress or Support in this bad situation. I need my drive for there is all all my work and private letters of the last three month on it.

Thanks for help ?

Please contact

JPTheurich@gmx.de

Jan Peter, welcome to these User Forums.

It would be best if you created a New Topic for your situation rather than joining this topic introduced by Dennis - it will make it a lot easier to focus on trying to help you when dealing with only one problem at a time.

When opening a new topic, please give as much information as possible about the actions you have taken etc, what drives are involved, how you did what you did etc.

Please see forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this