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Thread: BIG WARNING if Cloning Drives!

  1. #1
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    BIG WARNING if Cloning Drives!

    If you have partitioned drives and want to clone be award and remember this otherwise you will get big problems.
    An original drive which had to be cloned was on dockingstation and backup-drive was on boot-system. When i worked on that dockingstation drive i saw partitions had new letters.
    I left the drive on the docking station and started Cloning with Trueimage.
    It was cloned the wrong way, bootpartition was not C but H! I could boot and using internet.
    but programs didnt work anymore and Microsoft didnt accept the key anymore....
    Problems over problems.
    Big problem could be when both drives are of identical make. One can then only distinguish them thru the numbers the system will give them e.g. 5 and 6. maybe better leaving the donor drive always as bootsystem.
    letter-changing not possible, at least not for boot-drive.
    i discussed this elsewhere. its about a possible workaround to copy boot-partition C with driveimage which should change to the right letter. but i would only try this out with a backup-drive.
    Last edited by europanorama; 10-02-2018 at 01:38 AM.
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    This issue has been around for YEARS... You can not have two C:\ drives on one computer.

    You MUST unplug the original drive.
    "Vegetarians live up to nine years longer than the rest of us...Nine horrible, worthless, baconless years."

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    dont understand. when i want to copy data from original to backup-drive i will have mixed-up partition-letter on the backup-drive when sitting on docking-station or similar. i had HDD and SSD on my pc this will work since SSD has only one partion. will check again. have anyhow one Win7 which MS isnt accepting anymore. dont know why. had huge computer-problems see elsewhere.
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    "Cloning drives" and "copy data from original to backup drive" are two different operations.

    Once a cloning operation is complete, power down, replace the old drive with the new, power back up.

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    The problem is this:
    If one had original and backup on pc during booting, partition-letters of external one will be changed. i can decide from which drive i want to boot. if i dont have attached the drive with changed letters afterwards for booting alone and go directly with cloning through Trueimage-boot-CD. wrong letters will be copied and the boot-partition-letter cannot be changed back to C. possibly only with driveimage. this will be tested by working on a clone of the affected HDD. i meantioned this already elsewhere. in only dont remember details of the story.
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    When cloning, temporarily disconnect all drives other than the two you're working with.

  7. #7
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    yes and both, if second also bootdrive must have booted once before cloning to reset letter-system.
    cloning with boot-cd-cloning-program. Trueimage 2014 here
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    Haven't ever had to that. Once a cloning operation is complete, simply power down, replace the old drive with the new, power back up. That's it, you're back in business.

  9. #9
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    I make it simple now:
    When one is copying data from backup to original-drive for whatever reasons(accidental producing data there), letters of the latter will be changed. if cloning must be done afterwards this must be done:
    attaching first backup-bootdrive alone to system in order that letters will be reset to C....etc.
    afterwards attaching drives as always. original as bootdrive(but not booting then) and backup on secondary channel or external esata or whatever. then cloning with boot-cd can be done successfully.
    one must be very careful when working with external drives. never interrupt pc-actions or shut down of docking-station other than the normal way. i have a) overlapped C and D-partitions with no more access to D.
    b) no more data-access to external drive. Testdisk and Knoppix Live-DVD helped me retrieving Data(two options). Took a lot if time and nerves. have a thread about it. So never rush when having to do special tasks. better asking.
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  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by SpywareDr View Post
    Haven't ever had to that. Once a cloning operation is complete, simply power down, replace the old drive with the new, power back up. That's it, you're back in business.
    The problem was not AFTER but before cloning. maybe i was a bit confusing. dont remember exactly in which situation is was when i hadnt C-letter for bootpartition on backup-drive anymore. both drives must have the original partitions-letters. I forgot to check and stop cloning when H instead of C popped up on bootpartition during cloning process.
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  11. #11
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    Cloning = Duplicate, a copy of an original.

    The original would be your old drive (drive C: usually). The drive that will become a clone (duplicate copy of that drive) either has no drive letter or, if it does, the cloning process will remove it. As soon as the cloning process is complete, you now have two drives connected that contain exact copies on them. Power down, replace the old original with the new clone, and then power back up.

    Note that if you were to leave both drives connected and rebooted, the drive listed first in the BIOS would be the one the computer would attempt to boot from.

  12. #12
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    cloning versus copying drives

    So after cloning was done when doing it the next time its must be called copying the drive?
    thats what is did but had booted up with backup-drive attached resulting in partition-letters mixed-up.
    Should have switched the drives to reorganize the letters. H(bootpartition) would then become C again. but when clone was done this cannot be organized easily, not letters of non-boot-partitions could be altered-set back but not the bootpartition-one. ther is a workaround with driveimage. Would only try this out with a copy/clone of that drive.
    BTW: booting from external drive is possible when in docking-station(esata in my case) but not when attached(as esata in my case) to pci-card. it has additional connectors for incase-drives. ide and sata.
    will try the ide-slot since there was a problem with an ide-drive(320gb-boot) not beeing recognized anymore after a dilletant electrician(who didnt understand my language) did interrupt power despite me saying PC was ON!
    See also my other huge thread about two defective PCs.
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  13. #13
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    In answer to your question, a Clone is an exact, bit-by-bit, drive-to-drive copy.

    A "copy all of the files from one drive to another" would is not Clone.

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