SOLVED: MigrateEasy 7 - Refuses to clone from 56GB IDE disk to 32GB SSD

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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I recently bought a 32GB PATA/IDE SSD to replace a ~56GB disk in my Windows XP (SP3) laptop. I am trying to migrate (clone) from the larger disk into the smaller SSD. I have tried MigrateEasy 7 and also (Seagate) DiskWizard and in both cases after a few seconds get the same error message:

"failed to move your data because your new hard drive does not have enough free space to complete the operation. The reasons follow.

1. Some of your partitions contain errors. We recommend you reboot your operating system and correct these errors. For example, start the Check Disk utility is you use Windows.

2. Your new hard disk is much smaller than the old one. Make sure you've selected the correct old hard disc. If you have chose the "As is" option on the previous page, go back and try to select another option."

I have run chkdisk and I still get the same errors. I have tried Automatic mode, Manual mode (with all 3 possible options) with the same error in all cases. I don't understand why this isn't working - there should be plenty of space on the SSD since I have only used about 16GB of storage on the source disk. Why should Acronis care that the target SSD is smaller than the source disk if there is still plenty of space to store all the files? Here's some more background information that might help with diagnosing the problem:

There are two partitions on my existing 56GB disk:
Partition 1
File system = NTFS
Drive letter = C
Used space = 15.6GB, Total space = 55.6GB

Partition 2
File system = FAT16
Drive letter = H
Used space = 254MB, Total space = 302MB

There is also an "Unallocated partition" of 7.383MB.

I have the 56GB drive connected via IDE inside the laptop and the 32GB SSD connected via a USB adapter (I will move it inside the laptop after completing the clone).

Mon, 11/23/2009 - 20:27
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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No comment from Acronis support? Well, I made some progress on the problem so I'll provide the info in case it is of use to anyone else.

By using a disk defragmenter tool called PerfectDisk I was able to get to the point where DiskWizard allowed me to actually define the manual partitions. It seems that neither MigrateEasy nor DiskWizard are able to clone from a larger disk to a smaller disk unless all the used sectors on the disk are compacted to the point that the highest used sector on the larger disk fits within the bounds of the smaller disk. I would suggest to Acronis that they at least update each product so that it tells the user this is the reason that it is preventing the Clone rather than providing a bunch of misleading reasons that have nothing to do with the problem. Even better, Acronis should be able to defrag and compact the source disk and fix the problem itself. Alternatively Acronis should be changed so that it doesn't care about the dispersion of used sectors on the source disk at all!

So next I tried to manually define some partitions on the target SSD. I wanted to ensure alignment by starting my main partition on a 1024KB boundary but DiskWizard stubbornly refused to allow me to specify the exact number of Bytes at which to start the partitions. According to Microsoft, misaligning the partition on an SSD can significantly decrease SSD performance. Unfortunately it looks like no Acronis products are currently capable of setting up partitions correctly for SSDs. I am going to try the approach described in this thread instead:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59092

So I gave up on alignment for the time being and tried to kick off the Clone task only to get the error:
"Unexpected end of script file"

This error occurred after reboot when Acronis tried to run the script that it had created to perform the clone. Needless to say, after all that effort, the script did nothing at all.

My next attempt was to try using the bootable DiskWizard CD to perform the Clone. So far this approach seems to have started running (fingers crossed) but it's got another 4 hours to run so let's hope there are no more problems.

Am I the only one who has these kinds of problems cloning disks, or is this a known problem with Acronis products?

Tue, 11/24/2009 - 23:14
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Success - finally, but not without one more hitch. According to Acronis a couple of sectors on my source disk were unreadable. Acronis offered options to "Retry" or "Ignore". I tried Retry several times without success. In the end "Ignore" allowed the clone to complete and it seemed at least that the process worked since I was able to replace my original hard disk with the SSD and so far the laptop is working normally (but much faster).

Some more feedback/suggestions for Acronis - when a sector is unreadable it would be much more informative if you display the full path of the file for which the sector was unreadable rather than just a sector number which is not very helpful by itself. It would be much better if we could know which file(s) are potentially damaged in some way so that we can attempt to manually fix them after the clone.

Thu, 11/26/2009 - 19:35
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Frequent Poster
Posts: 2
Comments: 843

Hello Mark,

First of all, let me apologize for the delay with response. We're not able to handle some requests in a timely manner due to high volume of requests in this forum. I'm sorry for that.

Regarding this situation: yes, most probably it has been caused by unreadable data on your hard drive.

Please be sure that I will forward your suggestions regarding information about unreadable data to the responsible person.

Anyway, I'm glad that you were able to resolve the situation.

Thank you.

Mon, 11/30/2009 - 14:02
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
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Comments: 3

Please can you read the information in my posts more carefully. I don't believe that all the problems were caused by bad sectors. I believe that there is a severe deficiency in the way that Acronis cloning works when trying to clone from a larger disk to a smaller disk.

Like I said above, Acronis cannot handle this by itself. Unless you first run a disk defrag tool that can shift all the used sectors together at the beginning of the disk, Acronis products seem to think that there is not enough room to perform the clone (even if there is plenty!).

Tue, 12/01/2009 - 21:29