Miray Forum

Hi There,

I'm using HDClone 3.6 Basic.

I have a 160GB HD in 2x15GB and 1x130GB partitions. I cloned the 1st 15GB containing Vista to the 2nd 15GB (partition to partition mode). As I wanted to restore my Vista, I cloned back (restore) the 2nd 15GB to the 1st. After restart, Vista worked fine as expected.

I tried to clone the 2nd 15GB to another 80GB HD (partition to drive mode) and allowed HDClone to automatically resize the target drive. After restart, Vista won't boot on the 80GB HD and said something like disk partition failure or no system disk (I can't remember which one).

What's wrong?

Thank you.

Regards,
rma

If you copy a parition to a disk, the disk will not have a Partition Table, which is essential for booting Vista.

In your case, a disk->disk copy would be best, as it contains the Partition Table.
As the target disk is smaller than the source disk, it still might be better partitioning the 80 GB with Vista's Disk Management utility to something around 15GB (or more), then you can copy the partition with HDCLone, which will resize automatically the newly created partition to its fullest.

Thank you for replying, Alex.

Just to make sure that I understood you correctly; so, if want to clone the Vista containing partition to another HD, better to use disk -> disk copy. Another way is to partition the 80GB into 15GB, and then partion -> partion copy with automatic resizing.

Am I right?

Thank you.

Regards,
rma

Yes, it is essentially that the destination drive contains a partition table and a MBR. These are copied from the source drive only with the disk->disk copy. Other than that, both disk->disk and partition->partition are fine (and both are able to resize partitions). Only disk->disk resizes always the last partition, while you can resize any partitions with partition->partition copy.