Free working cloning software

Zanzibar

It's because the boot sector is still configured to look at a particular interface for a drive. As each SATA device connects to a different interface then it is looking in the wrong place.

No. The boot sector doesn't 'look' at any interface. The PC boots from the interface/device set in the BIOS boot list - you change this in the BIOS settings. This wouldn't need a change for moving from SSD to HD (assuming both being SATA).

The boot code (boot sector) is then read from the selected boot device to subsequently load a boot menu or operating system. If this boot code isn't copied then the drive wont boot - ensure you have selected to copy across the boot track *and* that the drive is set as bootable - not sure of the wording in that software but it will be in there.

You can't 'clone' an SSD to a SATA drive with Macrium Reflect Free - you need their Professional version to "restore images to new hardware using Macrium ReDeploy".

No, that means a different hardware environment - i.e. a new PC. It doesn't mean it can't copy from SSD to HD etc.

Toxteth_OGrady

Use the Macrium Rescue CD and check your image has the correct attributes. See steps 5 - 9 in this article:

http://www.tucows.com/article/2268

Alternatively try it with Macrium Disk Restore:

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50004.aspx

System

Zanzibar wrote: »

The boot code (boot sector) is then read from the selected boot device to subsequently load a boot menu or operating system. If this boot code isn't copied then the drive wont boot - ensure you have selected to copy across the boot track *and* that the drive is set as bootable - not sure of the wording in that software but it will be in there.

That's what I actually meant. Boot says drive 0 partition 1 but is now installed on a disk in drive 1 partion 1.
I said interface purely because SATA is one interface to one device and in this situation the interface/drive is effectively interchangeable

ROY47

http://www.xxclone.com/index.htm

try that free one ?

thor

I ended up using a program called minitool-drivecopy which appears to have done the job.
The copying took just a few minutes and when I swapped the original for the newly created clone it booted up. I was a bit worried when windows was loading because there were long pauses with blank screens but I realised that was because I was using a non-ssd drive and I had gotten used to boot times measured in seconds rather than minutes.
The only problem remaining is that I cannot see my normal second drive I use for data storage when booting off the clone. It would be nice if I could fix that too but my main goal of cloning has been achieved so I am content for now(unless somebody knows why I can't see my data drive)

fuzzimba

I favorite is Macrium Reflect, it is excellent tool for hard disk cloning and i use it regularly.
And like DriveImage XML, CloneZilla, and Paragon Backup & Recovery also excellent tool.

thor

I did originally use reflect but the created clone fails to boot so I used minitool drivecopy which does not many bells and whistles but it does create a bootable clone.