Drive cloning problem

esuhl

The cluster size problem was worked around by putting the new drive in the laptop before cloning, but if Partition Wizard works better than Macrium with SSDs I'll bear it in mind if I ever come across an SSD.

Macrium Reflect has now cloned the old drive partitions to the new one. Unfortunately it doesn't boot.

The laptop uses a UEFI BIOS, so I partitioned the drive in GPT format (which I'm not overly familiar with). I don't know if that's what's causing problems.

I tried to set the OS partition as "active", but I get an error saying that this is only possible on MBR drives.

I'll have to have a look at bcdedit next... Kinda tricky getting much done on Xmas day!

pappa_golf

I have said this twice and after this posting I am going onto other threads ,


you have not cloned the drive , you have mealy copied the partition without any boot info


I have 2 machines here that use the UEFI system, why do you think that I searched for a proggy that would work on this system


you do NOT have to play around formatting or playing around with sector size , you just clone the whole drive , NOT partition ,


there is a tab to click IF you are using a SSD drive , in your case you do not need to click this


once downloaded and running you should be able to exchange drives within 10-15 mins

esuhl

pappa_golf wrote: »

you have not cloned the drive , you have mealy copied the partition without any boot info

Oh, strange. I wonder why Macrium prompted me to clone boot infromation but failed to do so...?

Surely if I have the partitions copied, then it'll be quicker to use bcdedit to write the boot information...?

pappa_golf wrote: »

once downloaded and running you should be able to exchange drives within 10-15 mins

Fair enough. I'll give it ago if I can't make the drive bootable with bcdedit.

pappa_golf

bcdedit dates back to vista and win 7 , is it compatible with a UEFI bios ? https://neosmart.net/wiki/bcdedit/ when loading win 10 or later 8.? on a uefi machine the system sets up 4 partitions from memory , unlike earlier versions of windows


I went thru all this a long time ago , just as you are doing now


have you got access to a desktop PC ?


I would be tempted to use the extra sata ports and plug both drives in and then run partition tools from the box

esuhl

Gah! MiniTools Partition Wizard gives a similar error to Macrium Reflect when run from the OS I want to migrate: "Since a different size on the source disk and destination disk, MiniTool Partition Wizard cannot continue."

And unfortunately, I don't have access to a desktop PC or any hardware other than the laptop, the new drive, a SATA-to-USB adapter... oh, and an Asus EEE 901 netbook... and some blank DVDs.

I'm not overly familiar with UEFI BIOSes, GPTs or bcdedit, but (from web searches) bcdedit does seem to be compatible with UEFI BIOSes... I just don't really know how to use it... or how UEFI setups differ from the old-fashioned MBR that I'm used to.

There are three partitions on the disk: a ~2GB FAT (UEFI?) partition, an ~8GB NTFS partition labelled "RECOVERY" and the main partition for the OS (Windows 7).

I think I'll export the BCD settings file of the old HDD to the USB storage on my phone, then try importing it onto the new HDD.

Cheers for the tips. I thought that swapping a hard drive would be trivially straightforward... I've done it so many times, but I've either been installing a fresh copy of the OS from retail disks or it's been on a PC with multiple native IDE/SATA ports.

Hope you had a good Christmas!

pappa_golf

sorry about that , I think its your usb to sata device that's causing the hiccup


just one last thing , what OS is on the laptop

esuhl

pappa_golf wrote: »

sorry about that , I think its your usb to sata device that's causing the hiccup

Yeah -- me too. I'm gonna burn the damn thing when I get home!

pappa_golf wrote: »

just one last thing , what OS is on the laptop

It's Windows 7 Home Premium OEM.

Importing the BCD file failed (probably because I was booting from the Macrium WinPE image on DVD, rather than the Windows Recovery Console, so BCDedit probably tried to update the BCD on the Macrium DVD instead of HDD. D'oh!)

I'll give the cloning process one more go, verifying the source drive this time. If that fails, I'll just have to take it home to clone in a desktop PC. (Unless you have any other ideas.)

pappa_golf

summot just struck me , the new drive is formatted as GPT , is the old one? , do some checking as to if GPT is supported on 7 home premium http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html


perhaps your win 7 cannot "see" the GPT format

esuhl

pappa_golf wrote: »

summot just struck me , the new drive is formatted as GPT , is the old one? , do some checking as to if GPT is supported on 7 home premium http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html


perhaps your win 7 cannot "see" the GPT format

Hmmm... good thinking. Well... *hic* (oh dear, I'm getting a bit tipsy now!)

It's a 64-bit version of Windows 7, which apparently supports both MBR and GPT, but not "hybrid MBR" (whatever that is): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2581408

Maybe (from your link) this was causing a problem when using the new GPT drive over USB:

Removable disks are MBR disks by default.
Removable disks cannot be converted into a GPT disk.

I totally cleared the partitioning data earlier, before trying again to re-clone, and the new disk is inside the laptop, so maybe the cloning process that's running now will set the appropriate partitioning system. :-/

I assumed, with UEFI, you had to use GPT on the boot drive... Is that right, or would it work with old-style MBR?

esuhl

OMFG! It worked this time! Phew! Thanks for all your help!