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HD Clone corrupted the partition table of the source drive

PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 12:30 pm
by qilex
Hello,

I gave HD Clone a try last week. I cloned my SSD (fresh Windows 10 install) to a SATA HD drive.

I worked on this PC for the remaining part of the day and it ran smoothly. But at the end of my working day, Windows 10 refused to shutdown the PC. I had to click on restart and then to stop the PC at bios step.

Next morning, I disconnected physically the target HD drive. Then, I tried to boot up Windows from my source SSD drive. It couldn't boot any more.

It comes that both my source and target drives had a 17MB reserved space and only one partition. In other words, both the system and recovery partitions had gone and this both on the source and target drives!

Did I do anything wrong? Why did HD Clone modified the partition table and did a few other unwanted changes?

I then prepared a bootable USB drive that helped me booting on C:\Windows. But at the end of the day I had not other choice than reinstalling Windows, user accounts, applications etc. ?

Regards,

Philippe

Re: HD Clone corrupted the partition table of the source dri

PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 3:43 pm
by Adrian Decker
Hello Philippe,

We apologize for the inconvenience you experienced with HDClone.

Regarding the problem you observed on your system I would like to assure you, that HDClone has protection mechanisms implemented, which ensure that it is writing only onto the selected target. Of course it still may happen on rare occasions, that a storage device stops working while it is being used with HDClone (or shortly after), for example because it reached the end of its life span (among other possible reasons).

In order to narrow down the cause of this particular problem I would like to ask you to clarify the following points:

1.) How did you determine, that the source wasn't bootable? Was it not recognized as boot device by the BIOS/UEFI? Did the booting or starting process not finish properly? Or did you get an error message?

2.) Were you able to start the source Windows on your system once, after the final adjustments of the Windows installation?
3.) Was there a second Windows installation on your system, while you installed the Windows 10 on the source disk in question?
4.) Was your source Windows performing an update while, or shortly before it didn't shut down?

5.) Was the target bootable afterwards?
6.) And if not, did it show the same behavior as the source?

7.) Were there read or write errors during the copying process?
8.) How did you adjust the boot data at the end of the restoring process (Automatically, Manually, No changes)?

9.) For a more detailed diagnosis we would need the by HDClone automatically stored system log of this copying process. Though, assuming that you performed this cloning process with HDClone started on the Windows, which now has been overwritten with the new installation, the required system log doesn't exist anymore.

INFO: When you started HDClone on Windows, then you can find the system log, also on Windows, via the Toolbox menu (wrench symbol) under "Stored log files". And if you started HDClone from a self booting USB drive, then you can find the system log on this USB drive in the directory "/Symobi/Logs/".
(With a self booting CD an extra USB drive is necessary, for storing the log manually on it.)
Screenshots will be stored on the Windows Desktop or in the in the directory "/Symobi/Screenshots/" on the USB drive.

You can identify the right system log with the time stamp. For that it is best to sort the files by their modification date. In case of doubt just upload all system logs from the day in question. For uploading many files at once it is recommendable to copy all files in one folder and compress this folder into an archive file (e.g. ZIP, 7ZIP). Though, please note the maximum upload size of 16 MB here in the ticket system.


Sincerely,
Adrian Decker

Re: HD Clone corrupted the partition table of the source dri

PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 4:30 pm
by qilex
Hi Adrian,

> 1.) How did you determine, that the source wasn't bootable? Was it not recognized as boot device by the BIOS/UEFI? Did the booting > or starting process not finish properly? Or did you get an error message?

Black screen with "no bootable" device or something like that. After booting from an USB drive, I could inspect the partition tables of both the source and target disks.


> 2.) Were you able to start the source Windows on your system once, after the final adjustments of the Windows installation?
Prior to disk cloning, Windows was booting smoothly from the source drive.

> 3.) Was there a second Windows installation on your system, while you installed the Windows 10 on the source disk in question?

No


> 4.) Was your source Windows performing an update while, or shortly before it didn't shut down?

No


> 5.) Was the target bootable afterwards?

No. I checked this after disconnecting the SSD (source) and reconnecting the HHD (target). This behaviour was expected since
no recovery and system partitions were present anymore on either the source or target disk.


> 6.) And if not, did it show the same behavior as the source?

Yes and the partition tables looked identical though corrupted.


> 7.) Were there read or write errors during the copying process?

No error messages, but I must admit that did not have a look into the logs.


> 8.) How did you adjust the boot data at the end of the restoring process (Automatically, Manually, No changes)?

During the Windows reinstall process, I deleted the only partition that had not been previously "erased" and launched he install using the non partitioned space (i.e. the whole disk). The OS is running fine now.


> 9.) For a more detailed diagnosis we would need the by HDClone automatically stored system log of this copying process. Though, assuming that you performed this cloning process with HDClone started on the Windows, which now has been overwritten with the new installation, the required system log doesn't exist anymore.

You are right, the logs have been overwriten.

Regards,

Philippe

Re: HD Clone corrupted the partition table of the source dri

PostPosted: Wed May 30, 2018 3:38 pm
by Adrian Decker
Hello Philippe,

According to your description you used HDClone the right way. The reason, why you weren't able to boot, neither from your source nor from your target can't be determined at this point. For this it would be necessary to analyses the behavior while it is ongoing.

Though, if you get a "no bootable device" message on a black screen, then it may also work to just manually select the Windows boot manager (UEFI) via the Boot menu of your mainboard (not the BIOS/UEFI setup). How to open this menu depends on the BIOS/UEFI and mainboard manufacturer and should be described in the respective manual - often also on the first screen when the system starts up. Usually you can open the BIOS/UEFI Boot menu with one of the following keys (sorted downwards by relevance):
F12, F8, F2, F1-F11, Esc, Enter, Arrow-Keys, Del, Special key from the manufacturer

Sometimes it also can be necessary to completely turn off the power of your computer (interrupt the power supply) and restart it afterwards (for a clean reset of the BIOS/UEFI automatic temporary values). On rare occasion it is even required to remove the built-in BIOS/UEFI battery.

Please also note, that the relevant partition entries for your GPT disk start very likely from sector 2 on, after the "EFI PART" in sector 1.

Sincerely,
Adrian Decker