Can't clone anymore
I just cloned a drive yesterday to try some things out. Things didn't work out so I put the original disk back in the computer and then wanted to clone the working disk back to the original. This time It gets to 4 of 6 steps and it errors out leaving the destination disk with two small properly cloned partitions and the rest of the disk as unallocated space.
I am running windows 8.1 and have successfully cloned the entire drive with the OS on it many times until now. I can't say that anything out of the ordinary has happened in the meantime. I have tried starting the cloning process from the start menu thru windows and then rebooting with the acronis boot disk which would work in the past. I have tried cloning directly from the boot disk which also worked in the past. I ran an error check on the destination disk, reformatted thru windows and saved files and folders to it as a test to see if there was something wrong with the HDD but it worked fine.
The only thing I can think of to do now is to remove acronis and reinstall and activate it again and see if the program got corrupted somehow.
Am I on the right track or am I missing something simple? Thanks in advance for any insight.
Thanks for the reply. After posting I downloaded the installation file again and saw the repair option and tried it. I was glad it kept the license intact but it didn't help the problem.
I was cloning from the main internal bay drive bay to the second internal bay and even tried the target disk on an external dock (which worked even less that internally).
I have cloned windows 8.1 from a conventional 750 GB HDD to a hybrid 1 TB SSHD and visa versa without incident. Lately it has been from Hybrid to conventional as the hybrid drive in the drive that I use on a daily basis and the conventional disk is for backup. I think you are implying that the 8.1 OS may be the culprit. I will install the hybrid disk in the second bay of a windows 7 machine I also have TrueImage on and try cloning the source to a dock and see if that works.
I have tried both automatic and manual methods. I always allow a proportionate shrink/expand of the partitions because .......just because.
I think I will try it on now on the W7 machine and see if it works. Thanks again for taking the time to help me.
Just tried the source disk in the second internal bay and the destination disk in the USB dock on the W7 machine. I can choose the source disk just fine but the destination disk is grayed out and not allowed to be a choice. Thru windows explorer I can open and save files to the destination so I know it can be read.
I guess I am out of luck for now unless there are any more suggestions out there. What bothers me the most is the why this has happened all of a sudden. The dock I can understand (kind of). Can it be that for some reason you can now not clone from a hybrid SSHD? Windows 8.1?
Cloning has never been one of preferances. I much prefer the backup and restore methd.
In both the clone and restorong a backup, I am very careful NOT to use proportionate.
The reason being that the program is not smart enough to know what to change and which to keep the same.
It does a pretty good job of recognizing the non-lettered System Restore but all other become questionable.
If a disk keeps being reclone, then each of these partitions keep chaning with each new clone. This is one reason why I would clone only the original and then do manual partition resizing so I can control which sizes are changed and how much.
The dock is internal, usually using them is not an issue as long as you make the physical move changes following the clone with no interim boots. Windows seems to get confused when it sees two indentical disks. Before booting a clone, at the very least I would disconnect the source before allowing a boot of the clone.
Users have reported lots of issues when cloning the 8 and 8.1 when the disks have been UEFI or GPT.
I can't say whether the issues are due to program or due to non-experience of the user with TI.
My experince, when cloning or restoring, it is better for the target disk to be initialized but all unallocated which can be done with the included TI "add new disk" module.
I don't know whether any of the above helps you or not. Good luck.
Thanks for the reply. Guess I may have a double wammy. The source disk was always GPT and UEFI which wasn't a problem until now. Thinking more about this problem I did have to reinstall my Norton 360 to repair a firewall issue. I could try to roll back to an earlier date and see if that is the problem but I probably won't.
The whole reason for going thru this is because a network administrator said he could not edit the credentials to logon to their wireless network (its a long story) so I installed a clone of his attempt and worked on it myself knowing that I could always swap the disks again and easily go back to before I started tinkering. I like the idea of just swapping disks and find TI easy to use. I just wish it worked.
I hope the developers put out a patch or something to address the windows 8 and GPT/UEFI issues if this is what the problem is.