[Vic Winslow]

Help! I'm trying to clone an IBM Thinkpad laptop OEM 12GB IDE HD to a new Samsung 160GB SATA HD via the laptop's USB 1.0 port. Everything seems to run fine until the cloning process is approx. 45% complete, then the program just halts/hangs and it won't respond to any attempts to get it to continue. I have to reboot in order to restart HDClone. I have made four attempts, all with the same result, albeit each time the program halts at a slightly different % complete, eg. 45%, 43%, 46%, 44%. Anyone have any idea what is wrong? How to remedy?

The 12GB HD has a C: and a D: partition.

The 160GB HD has only one partition but it looks to me as though HDClone reconfigures the 160 drive with two partitions,each larger than the 12GB HD before the cloning starts.

OS is Win XP Pro Ver. 5.1, Service Pack 3

[Alex]

The question is, do at the 45% mark some read or write errors appear? If this is the case, then perhaps the error recovery management of the USB does not work properly. But there's no sure way to tell without more information.

As you mention the OS as being WinXP Pro, do you use the HDClone for Windows or the self-booting version of HDClone, since both use a different set of drivers.

[Vic Winslow]

Thanks for your reply, Alex.

No, I don't get any read or write errors that occur before the 45% mark.

I have been using the HDClone for Windows version each time I run the program.

Before the last attempt I ran CHKDSK/F on both the old and the new drive. Both checked out O.K.

When the system hangs, the drive light on disk being cloned changes from a rapid on/off flickering to a pretty much regular interval of about one second, as does the new drive. It seems as though a read is trying to be performed on the orig. drive or a write on the new drive, and that something at that point is preventing the operation(s).

[Alex]

Ok, I'll have a talk with the developers about this. But since this is happening with Windows, my initial suspicion about our own USB drivers cannot be true anymore.

[Vic]

Thank you once again for your reply, Alex. And thanks for the followup you're doing with the developers. Of all the cloning programs I've looked at, HDClone appears to be the most promising and the most intuitive. I hope it eventually will work for me.

[Alex]

Ok, after speaking to the developers, I was asked to retrieve the following information: Once HDClone stops, is it possible to click on anything inside HDClone (be it the Question mark or the circled 'X', or pressing Esc to terminate the cloning process)? or is HDClone dead altogether?

If it stays at 45 (or something like it) percent, does the animation in the center of the screen still run, do read or write errors appear (after this point in time), and does the sector count still increase (albeit very slowly)?

One theory also was that the USB case housing the 160GB disk has problems accessing it, since it is larger than 128GB (which for some older USB case models makes problems). You could download our DiskCheck utility (http://www.miray.de/download/sat.diskcheck.html) and use the built-in sector viewer to browse around the entire disk. It should be possible to seek to any sector of the entire 160GB disk. If this is not possible (and it stops at around sector 268,435,455 (=128GB), then this could be the reason).

[Vic]

Again, thanks, Alex - When the program hangs, it is completely dead; nothing will clear it but a reboot. All read/write activity and sector count stops.

I'll try your diskcheck utility to see what it shows. I've also ordered a PCMCIA USB 2.0 port card to upgrade from my laptop's built-in USB 1 port. I'm using a USB to SATA/IDE connector to the new 160GB HD. My thought was that maybe to USB 1 port on the laptop is the problem. I'll let you know what the DiskCheck shows.

Thank you for the support!

[Vic]

Running DiskCheck gives the following:

The 160GB HD shows a capacity of 152,628GB and 312,581,808 sectors, all of which I am able to see using the sector viewer feature of DiskCheck.

Could my problem be the slow USB 1.0 port that I am connecting the new HD to? I am able to format, partiton, and read/write the 160GB HD using Windows Explorer with no problems.

[Alex]

Yes, it could be with the USB port. If it stops at 45%, around 150,000,000 sectors are copied, it can very well be that the USB driver sees this as way too much for him (USB 1.0 is not really built for such amounts of data), and therefore the driver gives up. In addition to being much more faster, a USB 2.0 driver (at least under windows) never gave such a problem.

[Vic]

O.K. Alex, I'll try again when I get my PCMCIA USB 2 card. Hopefully that fix will work - I'll let you know.