Drive cloning problem

esuhl

I've been asked to upgrade the hard drive in a relative's laptop. I thought it would be as easy as attaching the new drive via USB, cloning the existing disk to it, then swapping the old drive for the new one.

However, I just tried using Macrium Reflect to do this and I get a message saying that "the target disk has an incompatible sector size". Apparently the SATA-to-USB adapter I'm using is the cause of the problem:

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Incompatible+Disk+Selected

I'm only here for a few days over Christmas and don't have any additional hardware, so I was wondering if there's anything I can do to get the drives swapped while I'm here.

The new drive is more than double the capacity of the existing one, and apparently it should be able to create an image file (rather than a direct clone) without this problem.

Sooo... I was wondering if I could create a partition at the end of the new drive and write an image file to it, swap the hard drives over, then use a Macrium/WinPE Recovery CD to boot the PC and restore the image at the end of the drive to newly created partitions at the start of the same drive...

Anyone know if that would work?

Fightsback

Why not put the new HDD in the lappy and clone from the old HDD in the USB caddy ? I'm assuming it's a smaller HDD so it might not remap the sector size for a smaller drive, worth a try.

GunJack

probably a daft question, but did you format the new drive before you started? Or did you just use it as-is? Might be worth booting with hiren's or similar and formatting the new drive before starting again.

If the new hdd is big enough, try formatting in two partitions, IMAGE rather than clone to the second partition, then use macrium to re-instate the image to the first partition. Once this boots/runs ok, then wipe the second partition.

pappa_golf

we went thru this same thing about 2 weeks ago , a 100 answers however the answer I gave about 3 from the top of the topic worked.


please try http://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/partition-manager9.0-64x.html just try it once and clone from the main machine to the slave (caddy) , whilst doing this the machine will reboot in a "dos" mode and copy and finish , then swop the drives , boot and run a disk defrag


the drive does not need formatting or any other work doing to it

GunJack

I've been using minitool's partition manager for several years, 'tis very good. Worth a blast

esuhl

Thank you all for all the ideas! :-)

I had a quick look at some of the links for alternative software, but it looked like most of the current free versions didn't support differing cluster sizes.

I tried creating an image file on a partition at the end of the new drive, but when I put it in the laptop it appeared as a raw, unpartitioned drive.

Fightsback wrote: »

Why not put the new HDD in the lappy and clone from the old HDD in the USB caddy ? I'm assuming it's a smaller HDD so it might not remap the sector size for a smaller drive, worth a try.

Aha! Should've tried that first! I'm just running Macrium again now, so fingers crossed, thanks again and merry Christmas!

pappa_golf

read this https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5373965 similar to your problem and a result

esuhl

Interesting... I wonder why partitions created externally (via USB) don't work when the drive is connected directly (via SATA), yet it's fine the other way round. :-/

bluesnake

if your old drive is the same size or slightly larger, I would shrink the partition. A way is to do this is first using defrag, then in windows diskmgmt.msc shrink the partition.

Another sort of great bit of software is driveimage but you will need a bootable pxe to restore https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

After restoring via this software, if your drive boots, then consider this a micacle, because I never get stuff to boot via driveimage restores. This has always fixed it for me https://www.runtime.org/driveimage_faq.htm#boot

Different controllers (usb/internal) may not present the drive the same way to the computer

be aware of cluster size and positioning on ssd ad it can differ for nonmal sata. http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/how-to-properly-re-align-your-ssd-hdd-partitions

jshm2

Macrium is mainly for backups - not cloning.

Try using Clonezilla or Driveimage XML instead. You've also got other programs from Easeus and Acronis but they're not free.

pappa_golf

as mentioned twice in this thread , and shown to resolve problems on other threads http://www.partitionwizard.com/ this has the correct settings to change from a standard drive to SSD type .


there is no need to start playing around with cluster sizes etc , just set it to clone DISK not partition , and providing the data on the older drive does not exceed the size of the new ssd , the job is done.


and yes it is FREE to home users