Help! Cloned Windows 7 drive has issues

Kirk,

Try to do a backup and restore instead of a clone.
- leave your OLD disk where it was,
- boot in Windows, create a screen capture of your disk management console, print it for reference,
- boot on the acronis recovery CD, create a disk and partition backup of *all* the partitions on your drive to a USB disk,
- put the new disk at the same spot as the old disk,
- using tools, add new disk, select your NEW disk (remember the drive letters are typically NOT the same as in Windows, pay extra attention to the drive labels, etc.)
- when ATI proposes a new partition on the disk, delete that partition and finish the Add new disk process. Your new disk is now ready for restore.
- boot on the acronis recovery CD:
= restore each partition at a time, in the same order they were laid out on the old disk, the destination is your new disk,
= mark primary active the partition that was active,
= leave 1MB before the first partition,
= do not resize any partition except the C:\system partition or any partition YOU created, to take advantage of new disk size, if this is the case,.
= no need to reboot inbetween restores,
= finally, restore the MBR+track0 and add the disk signature.

That's it!

Pat, would you mind clarifying a couple of things in this tutorial:

1. when ATI proposes a new partition on the disk, delete that partition and finish the Add new disk process. Your new disk is now ready for restore.

not sure what you mean 'delete that partition' if the disk is new. Or should you already create partitions on the new disk to hold the restores?

2. leave 1MB before the first partition

What is this needed for?

3. finally, restore the MBR+track0 and add the disk signature.

What is the disk signature and is it separate from the MBR. What do you mean 'add' it. I have seen posts on this causing windows activation and update issues

I recently did something like this with Vista (not Win7) and was successful. I moved all partitions except C: off the bad drive first to avoid complications with multiple partitions. Used a combination of my second HD and USB drives to hold data. Did this in safe mode and successfully changed the drive letters in Windows to be correct and pointing to the correct partitions.
Deleted all partitions except c: from the bad disk. Made a backup of the bad disk which consisted of C: and the MBR.
Inserted new drive in same place as bad drive. Did a restore and let TIH create the partition same size as before and everything went just fine. However, I never saw anything or did anything about the signature.
I have heard people have issues doing this with Win7 due to a signature. Maybe you can clarify for us? After the disk restore I installed Win7 in a dual boot situation. Win7 image backupsstill only seem to have an MBR and not a separate signature?

1. When you add a new disk through ATI, ATI will tell you it will erase the disk completely and then proposes a default C:\ partition (it doesn't create it, it just proposes it). You have in fact to choose "delete" to decline the partition creation. Note a big deal if you don't: whatever you created will be deleted by the restore.
In general, you don't need to create partitions before you restore. In some cases it is better. For example, versions of ATI before 2011 would not create the right offset (unallocated space before the first partition) of 1MB, which is crucial when you restore to an SSD.

2. The 1MB offset is very important to align many disk situation, typically with default RAID settings and most importantly for SSDs and advanced format disks (4k sectors). It doesn't hurt to create it on disks where it is not necessary. Since the OP didn't mention the disk situation, I'd thought I add it.

3. The disk signature is a key linked to the disk. Each disk has a different signature. ATI can replace the signature with the signature of the old disk so that (a) software activation remains valid - although this can be fixed with the ISV customer support- (b) preserve the data from the Windows System protection - shadow copies / VSS snapshots. At the last steps of the restore wizard, you have this option. Since you cannot have 2 disks with the same signature in the system, you have the option of restoring it or not.

Thanks Pat. I learn all the time from you guys. :)
I am using TIH 2010. 2011 was a disaster for me.
When I restored from USB drive,I used the recovery function, pointed at the backup with C drive and MBR and restored it to the new disk.
I can't remember if I had to add a new disk or not. It did warn me it was going to delete. Anyway, it created the same size partition as the backup was and restored that and the MBR fine. It was 200MB and so I did not try to resize, nor did it ask me.
However, there was no mention of disk signature. I was not asked by the program. Nevertheless Vista booted fine and has been running fine ever since. It is activated and updates work (some people complain of activation and MS update issues).
When you take a backup can you see the signature as a separate item or is it in the MBR and track 0? All I see is the partitions and the MBR. Now that I have Win7 as well as Vista want to make sure I get it right.

Not sure what you mean by ISV customer support. MS activation hotline?

Maybe the disk signature option was added only after 2010 versions. I thought the 2011/2012 recovery disk was identical to the 2010 version aside from drivers, maybe they added the feature then.

Yes, you would see the disk signature option during the wizard (one of the last steps if not the last from the top of my head).

Yes, the customer support of the software which would not activate.

Ok. Thanks very much for the help. I guess the signature was recovered with the MBR in my 2010 version as everything seems to work.
I plan on staying with 2010 until Acronis comes out with a usable version. So if I have to restore from a 2010 backup, I hope that restoring the signature is the default when restoring the MBR, or else there would be issues.
When I backup partitions, which I also do from the bootable disk, I often only backup the C drive as the others don't need to be backed up as often and the MBR is always backed up. So I in a drive failure situation I would restore C and the MBR and then other partitions (perhaps from different backups) separately without the MBR. That seem like a workable plan? I believe in KISS without fancy options like incremental backups.
I did take advice from earlier posts and ignore the clone option and restore from a USB drive backup. That certainly worked for me. I did not trust a clone.

Brian B wrote:

When I backup partitions, which I also do from the bootable disk, I often only backup the C drive as the others don't need to be backed up as often and the MBR is always backed up. So I in a drive failure situation I would restore C and the MBR and then other partitions (perhaps from different backups) separately without the MBR. That seem like a workable plan?

Yes.

I appreciate all the advice, but after all was said and done I decided to make sure I had two good copies of all my data and I put in the new drive and did a clean install of Vista from Dell DVD's, then loaded the free Windows 7 upgrade Dell had given me and opted to do a clean install of it. When I was done I put all my data back and reloaded only the software that I really used, and now I have a clean drive, with a single partition and didn't have to put back any Dell junk programs that I didn't want (as Vista OS restore disk was just that). I had to spend a little time hunting around getting correct drivers, etc. but the in the long run I think I'll be happier with the clean install. It was just a little frustrating as back in the old IDE laptop drive days I used to use the old Apricorn EZ-Gig II and could clone from original to new drive in a USB housing all day long, and now since SATA, Vista and Win7 have come along it seems more complicated that it needs to be. Now that I have everything the way I want it I will probably do a full Win7 backup and create a recovery disk, and then reinstall True Image Home 2011 product again and start using it for making backups. Thanks again