Hard drive won't clone to 2nd identical drive?
I just installed two 500gb hard drives and got my main (C:) drive restored from a USB hard drive image and everything works great. However...
The problem I'm having now is trying to clone that main 500gb drive to an exact same 2nd drive. I set it up to clone and when it reboots, after analyzing the partitions, it immediately says the cloning is complete which is obviously not the case. The weird thing is it did it once before and it worked. I even tried booting off that 2nd drive with the other one unplugged and it worked great. Now I can't clone again for some reason?
I never had this problem cloning one 80gb hard drive to a second identical one. Is there a problem with my 500gb drives being too large or something?

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All of that seems a bit extreme. Why go through all that when I just want an installed exact copy of my C: drive? I did it all the time before with two identical 80gb drives, but now I can't with two identical 500's?
I do this so if my C: drive physically fails or gets corrupted beyond what I'm willing to repair, I can just pull it and boot off the other drive until I can get a replacement. Keep working as if nothing happened...
I did perform a "work around", though. Since I always have a very recent backup on any one of my external USB drives, I just restored my most recent backup archive one to the second (E:) internal drive. Worked perfectly as I checked by booting with it being the only drive connected. And, bonus... I don't lose the use of the computer during this process as I did with having to reboot/clone.
I'd still like to know why I can't directly clone C: to E:, as I did before, however...
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i don't have the answer to your question but I do have ideas. What surprises me is that you were successful in the past. Usually, a clone of the system from within Window will be less than successful because of Windows interference and open files. Cloning a data disk has fewer issues and open files, etc so it tends to be successful.
Using a full disk backup to restore to a new disk is the preferred solution for many of us. Using the CD keeps Windows out of the picture. Cloning is also a risk unless you have covered that risk by having prior full backups.
Perhaps some others will share their knowledge on this cloning issue.
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I glad I thought of just doing a restore from an external USB archive directly to the E: drive. Should have been doing that all along as the process doesn't tie up the computer for a long time like cloning does. And, from my testing, it works as I was successfully able to boot and have everything work normally with only the E: drive installed.
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Scott,
Exactly. Cloning can go wrong (interruption, interference, etc.) when it does both original and copies might be damaged... Cloning should be reserved to "desperate" situations when a regular backup/restore is out of the question, or for specific forencics corner cases.
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Scott
Looking at your posting, I thought you might have an interest in procedure used by forum contributior xpilot. He has used this procedure for several years. I have 2 Antec caddies installed in my desktop and does make for easy swapping of spare drives. It only drawback could be a security theft issue if the desktop is not in a secure area.
http://store.antec.com/Product/accessories-other/easy-sata/0-761345-307…
I extracted several of his posting so there is some redundancy. I know he also has hardrives removed from the premises plus uses some external hard drives in addition to his prime use of the SecureZone--I believe on an external. For external harddrives, I like and use the ThermalTake BlacX docking station which is eSata and usb combo; plus the new ThermalTake docking station for USB3.
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Assorted Postings by xpilot:
Every day TI automatically creates a full backup image to a separate internal HDD. Once a week I pull the current hard drive and replace it with one from the previous week, this is done immediately after the latest backup image has completed. I then run a full drive restore via the rescue CD. Although in some circumstances it may not be necessary to restore the MBR as it is still called by Acronis I always include it. The only part I do not bother with is Disk signatures.
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About once a week I remove the current main hard drive and replace it with the previous week's hard drive. This is a simple operation with a removable hard drive bay fitted. The next step is to restore the latest secure zone image.
This way of working proves the integrity of a sample of my daily secure zone backup images. It has other advantages such as removing the need to validate backups either when created or before a restore. However the greatest value is that there is never any need to overwrite a current working hard drive.
This is a way of working I have been using for several years because it avoids all chances of data loss even if a restore fails.
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Once a week I swap out my main hard drive for one from a previous week and then run a full HDD restore from an image that has just been created. This leaves me with the original HDD untouched and the replacement drive is to all intents and purposes a "clone" of the first drive. SP1 installed with no problems at all and I have just swapped over drives again following another successful image/restore sequence.
I have never used the Acronis method of directly cloning one HDD to another because it is a process that is vulnerable to several possible failures most of which are non-recoverable whereas image/restore to a swapped drive is bomb proof.
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I have never considered using the startup recovery manager because it adds little in the way of convenience and can cause problems in some restoration circumstances because when it is activated it modifies the master boot record. Have a look in MSCONFIG to see the change.
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