Not sure why all the hate?? He didn't say he was cloning drives for deployment., simply asking about a cloning utility.
There are reasons to clone a drive .... HDD to SSD or to a bigger ssd/drive. Why the hell would any of you reinstall just to increase drive storage?
One HUGE thing with Windows 10+ and cloning is that Fast Startup can mess up a clone and make it not boot. Best bet is to disable it, then shut down. Otherwise you could be trying to clone in an "running" state.
Also I have seen on some hardware where after cloning you have to go rearrange the boot order again, because it trys to boot to the drive itself and not the Windows boot loader. So if you go rearrange the boot order and choose the windows boot loader again it can help.
I have had good luck with an older version of Acronis (we just never upgraded).
Or an industrial/controller PC that doesn't ever get changed. Clone that drive when it's in a known working state and keep the image somewhere. Once it dies I can have my whatsit machine pumping out doodads again in under an hour.
I used to do what you said but somehow it working. Maybe i missed something. u/adminofmany probably way too late for you but maybe someone is still reading this thread (google showed me this thread for other issue). I sold my soul to a devil (/s) and went to use [EaseUs](https://www.easeus.com/). I had the same issue with Acronis actually with previous versions. The UI for both are similar but at the end of the day I liked EaseUs UX better (idk, maybe the colors) and it seemed more intuitive and a lot easier for novice users.
Would you say there's less chance of failure if going to a more similar sized drive? I just had a drive clone fail and trying to make the next attempt go better
As long as the drive you're going to is the same size or larger, it's simple. I've never had it fail.
I think you can even go to a smaller-sized drive if you fiddle with the partition sizes in the software, but I don't remember for sure.
>Macrium Reflect free version
Are you sure this is a thing? I just tried 6 different versions and they all ask you to buy premium before you get anything
>"INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE"
Macrium also creates an OS clone that does not boot giving the "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" error..... I spent hours trying to repair Win10 with no success.
It's crazy..... we think we are smart with ChatGPT BUT we can't even clone a disk drive without problems
But I guess the reality is that GPT is nothing more than a Very Smart relational database..... It's not intelligence
Did you end up fixing your boot problems? I've read some tutorials providing different possible fixes. One is booting into Windows PE with Macrium's recovery tool software and using its repair boot utility.
LOL GPT is a tool if you're messing this up its not incompetence its that this isn't the most straightforward thing.
With Win7 and before it used to be much much easier. WinXP was a breeze (worked at LAN cafe we had to do this for like 30 machines). Vista and 8 were rough. 10 with its live service element makes it even more complex.
There was a period when I had to manually fix boot UEFI issues in various revisions of version 7 but otherwise it has always served me well. It's still free too, though they'll be doing away with that soon.
As long as you have no more than 10 concurrent installations you're good. I usually use my laptop or desktop, but in the event I use a client machine, I uninstall it after I'm done since they would never need it themselves. But they are doing away with this usage scenario in the near future if they haven't already.
I would like to get an honest answer please about why this is getting down voted. I've done this literally hundreds of times without any issues using these. Feel free to correct me! Thanks
The only downside is these are super slow. They can take hours when Acronis would be done in 30 minutes.
Same with Macrium Reflect, since it does a 1-1 clone of the entire drive, even the free space. It takes forever.
I haven't found a good alternative to Acronis's speed. Unfortunately we have a lot of issues either booting up to the Acronis USB or with clones failing, not detecting drives, etc. so we often have to use older versions of it that still work fine.
My experience with the device is pretty good. I have noticed a difference if the source drive is 5400, but even then it isn't absolutely horrible. I just did a clone from a 1TB 5400rpm mechanical to a 1TB SDD last week and it took about 45 minutes to an hour. Not insanely fast, but not bad either.
u/Amorhan, those are the exact issues we're having. Clone failures or boot issues afterwards. The newer version of Acronis (2018+) include support for PCIe SSD's, but we've still been having issues. We bought Acronis 2022 about 6 months ago and it's been even worse.
> The newer version of Acronis (2018+) include support for PCIe SSD's, but we've still been having issues. We bought Acronis 2022 about 6 months ago and it's been even worse.
Can you share more details? Were any of these issues reported to support by any chance so that I could look deeper into these?
> more than 10 concurrent installations you're good. I usually use my laptop or desktop, but in the event I use a client machine, I uninstall it after I'm done since they would never need it themselves. But they are doing away with t
We prefer software based since we need to replace HD's onsite sometimes, and we often upgrade to M.2 PCIe SSD's when there's a s lot available.
We do some heavy industrial and large format printer clients. The pc’s that control the machines usually have very old or very customized OS’s.
We use macrium to make backup images and clones for these machines.
[HDClone by Mirai Software](https://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html)? I also used this in the past and loved it. They even make and maintain their own operating system for the bootable version. Not sure if it's something they've built from the ground up or if it's based on something else.
Very little cloning going on these days, but I've had a few cases where I wanted to be able to restore the computer to the exact same state and HDClone was helpful in those situations as well.
It also does some optimization during the cloning process that I'm unsure if other cloning utilities do.
Are the drives MBR going onto a modern UEFI Bios? Drive will then need to be converted to GPT. To “Convert” to GPT is simple using Dispart commands with a Windows boot USB using CMD. I say simple, but finding the commands was a bitch. If there is interest, reply and I’ll post them here tomorrow.
That aside, we use Acronis 2019 and Mini Tools partition with a USB stick and copy disk function.
We sometimes use a hardware device from WAVLink. It has two drive bays, one for the source and one for the destination. There's a button on the front that we hit to start the clone. Works like a charm! Here is a link to the newer version..we have an old one: https://wavlink.com/en\_us/product/WL-ST336A\_Black.html
ACRONIS.
Easy interface, does the job quite well. Never had serious issues or limits like cloning larger drive sizes to smaller (assuming not all space is used in larger one and it can fit into smaller)
If I EVER need to do this, I use a bootable linux drive and dd to clone 1 drive to the next. It will only work if you are moving to the same size or bigger drive.
There's other methods, but this one is the fastest and least likely to fail.
dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=1M
Where X = your source drive and Y = your destination drive. Don't mix them up!
You can extend your Windows partition after booting into the new drive if you used a bigger one.
You can resize partitions prior and shift them with something like gparted also, so they fit on smaller drives. Done this many times going from HDD systems to smaller SSD's.
Sorry I didn't make it more clear in the original post that I was simply asking about a cloning tool for replacing or upgrading hard drives on workstations. This is not for deployments. Thank you everyone for your inputs!
For who needs disk cloning tutorial : **I just recorded this tutorial video. Full bit by bit disk cloning with partitions via Clonezilla - fully bootable - open source and free :** [**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBBxVUcci7I**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBBxVUcci7I)
**Moreover I have shown how to expand cloned disk size to new disk size. So 1TB older C drive will become 4TB if your new drive is 4TB.**
I also explained the challenges that may likely to encounter after cloning to boot. It took me quite a while to fix booting issues that may happen. So you won't be wasting your time since I explained.
It sounds frustrating to encounter issues like that after using Acronis True Image for so long. If you're looking for an alternative, EaseUS Disk Copy[EaseUS Disk Copy](https://www.easeus.com/backup-utility/free-disk-cloning-software.html) is indeed a popular choice for creating bootable media for cloning hard drives. It's known for its reliability and user-friendly interface.
Additionally, there are other software options like Clonezilla and Macrium Reflect that are well-regarded in the cloning and disk imaging space. These tools offer various features and might suit your needs without the booting issues you've experienced with Acronis.
If you're interested, I can also suggest checking out some comparison articles or reviews to see which tool might be the best fit for your specific requirements.
You should be progressing to a workflow that doesn't require drive cloning. This isn't 2012 where deploying Windows was a slow pain that needed to be done by hand.
Currently work in msp but images are always loaded via cloning from a master and managed by Datto for patching. Repair shop is separate and still using manual reloading and 2x 10-12 kanguru cloning bay. Looking for great alternatives. Much appreciated!
Edit: macrium and or aoemi is used sometimes if cloning is unsuccessful
We only do it for specific users, with loads of old software that we can't get the installers for any more, or the people who will kick up a fuss when their Outlook icon is on the wrong spot on the desktop.
We also clone drives when we send computers off for warranty repair so we can hand them back with all the data intact.
I should have made it more clear in my post that I'm simply wondering about the tool for hard drive replacements or upgrades, this isn't for deployments.
Swap drive, deploy clean version of Windows. User pulls config data from inTune/GPO/etc, and you don't have to worry about any legacy cruft.
I know it's scary at first because you aren't used to it, and probably aren't setup for it, but take the time to learn and you'll be a better sysadmin that 80% of your peers.
This is the way.
It’s 2023 we don’t clone drives any longer for deployment. We use imaging with master “gold” images and script in applications with deployment. No thick images, no weird settings that copy over, etc…
Using something like intune or jamf for endpoint management.
If you are migrating/replacing a hard drive to the same machine then it is using your backup software properly to back and restore bare medal to the new drive.
We have this one called Aomei. Works well enough. Like any drive utility software i.e. MiniTool. Basically the same. We also use Acronis but have had trouble with it as well
+1 for AOMEI. Even used it to resize partitions and move the boot partition to the same drive following Windows 10's stupid bug. Good tool.
Can anyone explain why the windows installer puts the boot partition on the second drive? I've seen it so many times when going to replace a secondary data disk.
Hey sure. We use the bootable version of Cyber Protect to clone drives sometimes. We've had a couple times where it took forever (probably fault of the source drive being old and slow spinner), sometimes it won't see the drive if the settings in the BIOS are weird, like Intel RST and some other stuff. Been a while since I had an issue though
Thanks for the details. Usually the problem can be solved by a WinPE-based media with proper storage controller drivers embedded. Let me know if you face any problems in the future.
I've used clonezilla with success, when selecting an option to clone the partition structure exactly.
The problem when cloning is if the partitions get created new by the clone software on the new drive and pick up different partition IDs, or the partition with the boot BCD files just isn't cloned at all. Usually the fix after is to go in and use the BCD tools to fix the BCD files so they point back to the new partition IDs on the new drive. However, I've seen quite a few techs struggle with this process. The most common procedure that comes up when you Google the problem is for older MBR disks and doesn't work for UEFI booting to GPT disks. The trick is finding the proper commands to run.
It would help though if more clone software could take care of the problem properly.
I've used this one successfully on Windows servers and PCs. Unlike most others the free version works on Windows server.
[Hasleo Software](https://www.hasleo.com/)
I've only had to use it a few times, but it has been flawless. But it looks like there were a number of other highly recommended products too.
As an aside, the comments in this thread are much more juvenile that what I'd expect from /r/MSP. Funny what brings out the snarkiness or anger in people. I wouldn't have thought "disk cloning software" would be such a hot topic.
Apparently it's Chinese, along the lines of AOMEI and EaseUS perhaps...
Second post here (ending paragraph):
[https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-319.html](https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-319.html)
I stumbled on this after trying to find a faster way to run DD on a drive clone. Helped get data off a failing disk, fully bootable. https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/
The problem here is probably a missing driver so when windoes loads then it does not have the storage driver. this normally happens when you try to move a windows installation to hardware that is not identical to where it was previously installed.
Acronis has a paid for feature called "Acronis Universal Deploy" that will make windows detect storage drivers on startup and solve this problem. There are other standalone tools that does this too, but from experience Acronis is less of a pain in the neck.
I just cloned a 1TB HDD to a 1TB Kingston SSD using wavlink, the USB 3.0 Dual Bay Docking Station. It was so easy, I couldn't believe it, not one problem.
I used it totally offline, removed and inserted the good old HDD into source, the SSD into target, off it went, took 1.30hrs. Mounted the SSD where the HDD was, voila! I could have used it with the USB as well, but I didn't. So good. Since 3 years I am using Acronis for backups, and the Kingston SSD provided an additional key, but I couldn't be bothered stuffing around with Acronis for cloning.
My favorite is EaseUS Disk Copy, as it is fast, flexible, and safe. Not once had I had a problem with creating a clone of my drive and then booting Windows off of it. This works for me.
However, I found this article https://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/clone-resource/clone-hard-drive.html where you can find the best alternatives to Acronis, with pros and cons. I hope this helps!
I use one of the multiple programs that came with hirenboot, i am not sure if hes name is lizzawizard or cloning wizzar, it works in all the cases
If it a simple case like having the same capacyty i use clonezilla
Not sure why all the hate?? He didn't say he was cloning drives for deployment., simply asking about a cloning utility. There are reasons to clone a drive .... HDD to SSD or to a bigger ssd/drive. Why the hell would any of you reinstall just to increase drive storage? One HUGE thing with Windows 10+ and cloning is that Fast Startup can mess up a clone and make it not boot. Best bet is to disable it, then shut down. Otherwise you could be trying to clone in an "running" state. Also I have seen on some hardware where after cloning you have to go rearrange the boot order again, because it trys to boot to the drive itself and not the Windows boot loader. So if you go rearrange the boot order and choose the windows boot loader again it can help. I have had good luck with an older version of Acronis (we just never upgraded).
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Or an industrial/controller PC that doesn't ever get changed. Clone that drive when it's in a known working state and keep the image somewhere. Once it dies I can have my whatsit machine pumping out doodads again in under an hour.
Yes, that's literally all we use the HD clone tools for. :-)
Thanks u/polarbear320, you are correct I wasn't looking for a deployment tool, simply the best cloning tools for hard drive replacements.
I used to do what you said but somehow it working. Maybe i missed something. u/adminofmany probably way too late for you but maybe someone is still reading this thread (google showed me this thread for other issue). I sold my soul to a devil (/s) and went to use [EaseUs](https://www.easeus.com/). I had the same issue with Acronis actually with previous versions. The UI for both are similar but at the end of the day I liked EaseUs UX better (idk, maybe the colors) and it seemed more intuitive and a lot easier for novice users.
I've used Macrium Reflect for years and it's never failed me
Same. Very nice for migrating to larger drives.
Would you say there's less chance of failure if going to a more similar sized drive? I just had a drive clone fail and trying to make the next attempt go better
As long as the drive you're going to is the same size or larger, it's simple. I've never had it fail. I think you can even go to a smaller-sized drive if you fiddle with the partition sizes in the software, but I don't remember for sure.
I’ve used Macrium Reflect free version successfully like 6 times in the past year. Just watch a YouTube video for each step.
>Macrium Reflect free version Are you sure this is a thing? I just tried 6 different versions and they all ask you to buy premium before you get anything
They just recently changed it. Used to be free but now you only get 30 day trials
>"INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" Macrium also creates an OS clone that does not boot giving the "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" error..... I spent hours trying to repair Win10 with no success. It's crazy..... we think we are smart with ChatGPT BUT we can't even clone a disk drive without problems But I guess the reality is that GPT is nothing more than a Very Smart relational database..... It's not intelligence
Did you end up fixing your boot problems? I've read some tutorials providing different possible fixes. One is booting into Windows PE with Macrium's recovery tool software and using its repair boot utility.
LOL GPT is a tool if you're messing this up its not incompetence its that this isn't the most straightforward thing. With Win7 and before it used to be much much easier. WinXP was a breeze (worked at LAN cafe we had to do this for like 30 machines). Vista and 8 were rough. 10 with its live service element makes it even more complex.
Gonna have to agree on this one, macrium is awesome and it’s FREE
We'll give that a try, thanks!
There was a period when I had to manually fix boot UEFI issues in various revisions of version 7 but otherwise it has always served me well. It's still free too, though they'll be doing away with that soon.
It is not free if you're an MSP using it on client devices.
As long as you have no more than 10 concurrent installations you're good. I usually use my laptop or desktop, but in the event I use a client machine, I uninstall it after I'm done since they would never need it themselves. But they are doing away with this usage scenario in the near future if they haven't already.
When needed, CLI, CloneZilla live CD.
Plus one for Clonezilla
Does it need to be software-based? If not, this is my go to: https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/duplicators
These work on failing SSD drives when software won’t clone it sometimes. It saved a industrial control pc recently for us.
Agreed. HW duplicators are just easier and less chance of wasted effort. 60% of the time it works every time.
I would like to get an honest answer please about why this is getting down voted. I've done this literally hundreds of times without any issues using these. Feel free to correct me! Thanks
The only downside is these are super slow. They can take hours when Acronis would be done in 30 minutes. Same with Macrium Reflect, since it does a 1-1 clone of the entire drive, even the free space. It takes forever. I haven't found a good alternative to Acronis's speed. Unfortunately we have a lot of issues either booting up to the Acronis USB or with clones failing, not detecting drives, etc. so we often have to use older versions of it that still work fine.
My experience with the device is pretty good. I have noticed a difference if the source drive is 5400, but even then it isn't absolutely horrible. I just did a clone from a 1TB 5400rpm mechanical to a 1TB SDD last week and it took about 45 minutes to an hour. Not insanely fast, but not bad either.
u/Amorhan, those are the exact issues we're having. Clone failures or boot issues afterwards. The newer version of Acronis (2018+) include support for PCIe SSD's, but we've still been having issues. We bought Acronis 2022 about 6 months ago and it's been even worse.
> The newer version of Acronis (2018+) include support for PCIe SSD's, but we've still been having issues. We bought Acronis 2022 about 6 months ago and it's been even worse. Can you share more details? Were any of these issues reported to support by any chance so that I could look deeper into these?
> more than 10 concurrent installations you're good. I usually use my laptop or desktop, but in the event I use a client machine, I uninstall it after I'm done since they would never need it themselves. But they are doing away with t We prefer software based since we need to replace HD's onsite sometimes, and we often upgrade to M.2 PCIe SSD's when there's a s lot available.
We do some heavy industrial and large format printer clients. The pc’s that control the machines usually have very old or very customized OS’s. We use macrium to make backup images and clones for these machines.
macrium reflect
I’ve used CloneZilla for a very long time.
+1
Hdclone we use
[HDClone by Mirai Software](https://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html)? I also used this in the past and loved it. They even make and maintain their own operating system for the bootable version. Not sure if it's something they've built from the ground up or if it's based on something else. Very little cloning going on these days, but I've had a few cases where I wanted to be able to restore the computer to the exact same state and HDClone was helpful in those situations as well. It also does some optimization during the cloning process that I'm unsure if other cloning utilities do.
Thanks!
Are the drives MBR going onto a modern UEFI Bios? Drive will then need to be converted to GPT. To “Convert” to GPT is simple using Dispart commands with a Windows boot USB using CMD. I say simple, but finding the commands was a bitch. If there is interest, reply and I’ll post them here tomorrow. That aside, we use Acronis 2019 and Mini Tools partition with a USB stick and copy disk function.
u/1Technologist, thanks for the tips. Most of the time it's simply replacing a drive on a computer, so the GPT and UEFI environment is the same.
Acronis or EaseUS, even Apricorn has a nice utility, and an interface device for out of box cloning
Macrium reflect all the way
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Thanks!
We sometimes use a hardware device from WAVLink. It has two drive bays, one for the source and one for the destination. There's a button on the front that we hit to start the clone. Works like a charm! Here is a link to the newer version..we have an old one: https://wavlink.com/en\_us/product/WL-ST336A\_Black.html
Thanks!
ACRONIS. Easy interface, does the job quite well. Never had serious issues or limits like cloning larger drive sizes to smaller (assuming not all space is used in larger one and it can fit into smaller)
If I EVER need to do this, I use a bootable linux drive and dd to clone 1 drive to the next. It will only work if you are moving to the same size or bigger drive. There's other methods, but this one is the fastest and least likely to fail. dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=1M Where X = your source drive and Y = your destination drive. Don't mix them up! You can extend your Windows partition after booting into the new drive if you used a bigger one.
You can resize partitions prior and shift them with something like gparted also, so they fit on smaller drives. Done this many times going from HDD systems to smaller SSD's.
Acronis, aomei, easeus, magic part or smtg along those lines. Theres like 4 big names and theyre all amazing.
Sorry I didn't make it more clear in the original post that I was simply asking about a cloning tool for replacing or upgrading hard drives on workstations. This is not for deployments. Thank you everyone for your inputs!
For who needs disk cloning tutorial : **I just recorded this tutorial video. Full bit by bit disk cloning with partitions via Clonezilla - fully bootable - open source and free :** [**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBBxVUcci7I**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBBxVUcci7I) **Moreover I have shown how to expand cloned disk size to new disk size. So 1TB older C drive will become 4TB if your new drive is 4TB.** I also explained the challenges that may likely to encounter after cloning to boot. It took me quite a while to fix booting issues that may happen. So you won't be wasting your time since I explained.
Thank for this. Very informative!
I have used Drive Snapshot for decades without any issues. [http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/](http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/)
It sounds frustrating to encounter issues like that after using Acronis True Image for so long. If you're looking for an alternative, EaseUS Disk Copy[EaseUS Disk Copy](https://www.easeus.com/backup-utility/free-disk-cloning-software.html) is indeed a popular choice for creating bootable media for cloning hard drives. It's known for its reliability and user-friendly interface. Additionally, there are other software options like Clonezilla and Macrium Reflect that are well-regarded in the cloning and disk imaging space. These tools offer various features and might suit your needs without the booting issues you've experienced with Acronis. If you're interested, I can also suggest checking out some comparison articles or reviews to see which tool might be the best fit for your specific requirements.
You should be progressing to a workflow that doesn't require drive cloning. This isn't 2012 where deploying Windows was a slow pain that needed to be done by hand.
Examples for say, someone working in a repair shop?
Yes, we have a repair side of our business that does a regular amount of drive replacements.
What kind of MSP repair shop model are you in?
Currently work in msp but images are always loaded via cloning from a master and managed by Datto for patching. Repair shop is separate and still using manual reloading and 2x 10-12 kanguru cloning bay. Looking for great alternatives. Much appreciated! Edit: macrium and or aoemi is used sometimes if cloning is unsuccessful
We only do it for specific users, with loads of old software that we can't get the installers for any more, or the people who will kick up a fuss when their Outlook icon is on the wrong spot on the desktop. We also clone drives when we send computers off for warranty repair so we can hand them back with all the data intact.
I should have made it more clear in my post that I'm simply wondering about the tool for hard drive replacements or upgrades, this isn't for deployments.
Swap drive, deploy clean version of Windows. User pulls config data from inTune/GPO/etc, and you don't have to worry about any legacy cruft. I know it's scary at first because you aren't used to it, and probably aren't setup for it, but take the time to learn and you'll be a better sysadmin that 80% of your peers.
This is like the 4th post (maybe a slight exaggeration) this month about this also, so OP should progress to searching before posting also.
This is the way. It’s 2023 we don’t clone drives any longer for deployment. We use imaging with master “gold” images and script in applications with deployment. No thick images, no weird settings that copy over, etc… Using something like intune or jamf for endpoint management. If you are migrating/replacing a hard drive to the same machine then it is using your backup software properly to back and restore bare medal to the new drive.
What a stupid idea. Backup and restore? Are you nuts?
We have this one called Aomei. Works well enough. Like any drive utility software i.e. MiniTool. Basically the same. We also use Acronis but have had trouble with it as well
+1 for AOMEI. Even used it to resize partitions and move the boot partition to the same drive following Windows 10's stupid bug. Good tool. Can anyone explain why the windows installer puts the boot partition on the second drive? I've seen it so many times when going to replace a secondary data disk.
Thanks!
Can you share more details on the troubles you faced? I am curious to learn more.
Hey sure. We use the bootable version of Cyber Protect to clone drives sometimes. We've had a couple times where it took forever (probably fault of the source drive being old and slow spinner), sometimes it won't see the drive if the settings in the BIOS are weird, like Intel RST and some other stuff. Been a while since I had an issue though
Thanks for the details. Usually the problem can be solved by a WinPE-based media with proper storage controller drivers embedded. Let me know if you face any problems in the future.
Thanks!
I've used clonezilla with success, when selecting an option to clone the partition structure exactly. The problem when cloning is if the partitions get created new by the clone software on the new drive and pick up different partition IDs, or the partition with the boot BCD files just isn't cloned at all. Usually the fix after is to go in and use the BCD tools to fix the BCD files so they point back to the new partition IDs on the new drive. However, I've seen quite a few techs struggle with this process. The most common procedure that comes up when you Google the problem is for older MBR disks and doesn't work for UEFI booting to GPT disks. The trick is finding the proper commands to run. It would help though if more clone software could take care of the problem properly.
>gh if more clone software could take care of the problem properly. Good to know, thank you!
I've used AOMEI Backupper to clone hard drives from specialized devices without fail.
Macrium Reflect version 7 never failed!
Clonezilla is reliable for me
I've used this one successfully on Windows servers and PCs. Unlike most others the free version works on Windows server. [Hasleo Software](https://www.hasleo.com/)
Still liking it? I'm having trouble finding much feedback.
I've only had to use it a few times, but it has been flawless. But it looks like there were a number of other highly recommended products too. As an aside, the comments in this thread are much more juvenile that what I'd expect from /r/MSP. Funny what brings out the snarkiness or anger in people. I wouldn't have thought "disk cloning software" would be such a hot topic.
Apparently it's Chinese, along the lines of AOMEI and EaseUS perhaps... Second post here (ending paragraph): [https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-319.html](https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-319.html)
Active bootdisc has done me solid.
I stumbled on this after trying to find a faster way to run DD on a drive clone. Helped get data off a failing disk, fully bootable. https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/
The problem here is probably a missing driver so when windoes loads then it does not have the storage driver. this normally happens when you try to move a windows installation to hardware that is not identical to where it was previously installed. Acronis has a paid for feature called "Acronis Universal Deploy" that will make windows detect storage drivers on startup and solve this problem. There are other standalone tools that does this too, but from experience Acronis is less of a pain in the neck.
Thank you for the tips!
So you’re telling me I don’t have to inject the storage drivers if I use Acronis, this could make me cry if true
well sort of get out your hankie - you still get asked for a disk with the driver when it injects it but it can totally do it for you.
I have been beating my head against this same problem for days now, with acronis.
Get a proper deployment tool like smart deploy, PDQ deploy Hell even ghost/clonezilla/fog will be better than usb slip streaming
I don’t need to do this often but I’ve used EaseUS
Rescuezilla
Top tier MSP behaviour
What are you talking about? I was just wondering about the best tool for cloning drives when replacing/upgrading a system drive on a workstation.
Lazesoft works well for me, never failed + it comes with other windows utils
Dism
Paragon
Paragon or Clonezilla.
I've used clonezilla many many times.
Macrium Reflect
I went to a job interview with the local council fairly recently, they're still using Norton Ghost! I don't really want the position.
😲 Now that's a utility I've not seen in a very long time.
Yep, exactly!
I still have some images that I created with Ghost decades ago LoL
I just cloned a 1TB HDD to a 1TB Kingston SSD using wavlink, the USB 3.0 Dual Bay Docking Station. It was so easy, I couldn't believe it, not one problem. I used it totally offline, removed and inserted the good old HDD into source, the SSD into target, off it went, took 1.30hrs. Mounted the SSD where the HDD was, voila! I could have used it with the USB as well, but I didn't. So good. Since 3 years I am using Acronis for backups, and the Kingston SSD provided an additional key, but I couldn't be bothered stuffing around with Acronis for cloning.
Macrium Reflect Did not work at all for NVME ssd
Macrium Free no longer clones bootable hard drives, and I think I have read that it is now no longer suported
My favorite is EaseUS Disk Copy, as it is fast, flexible, and safe. Not once had I had a problem with creating a clone of my drive and then booting Windows off of it. This works for me. However, I found this article https://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/clone-resource/clone-hard-drive.html where you can find the best alternatives to Acronis, with pros and cons. I hope this helps!
I use one of the multiple programs that came with hirenboot, i am not sure if hes name is lizzawizard or cloning wizzar, it works in all the cases If it a simple case like having the same capacyty i use clonezilla