HDD clone boots normally from cold start but not from restart

karaokeking · Apr 14, 2015

Never saw this happen before. Used Acronis to clone a 500gb HDD from a Dell tower (Windows 7 Pro) to a 1tb HDD.

The clone seemed to work properly at first... booted right up, detected the new hardware. But when restarting it, the system went to Windows Repair, which failed.

We discovered if we shut down the computer fully and started it up, it would boot with no problems.

If you restarted the system from Windows, it would go to the repair screen every time.

To further complicate things, we discovered when the customer plugged his ext. HDD (Western Digital) into the computer and turned on the computer, same thing happens - it goes to the Windows repair.

We put the customer's old HDD back in the system - no problems. Started up, rebooted, it started up, plugged in the ext. HDD, it started up.

What am I missing here? A setting in the bios? An option in the cloning software? I've never had this happen before on a cloned drive.

Any info would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

giantbucket · Apr 14, 2015

I have almost the same thing on my Dell laptop - original HDD boots/reboots fine, but cloned SSD (using native Windows system image & restore operation) doesn't like to REboot and hangs in BIOS, but cold start works perfectly fine all of the time. actually, when it hangs in BIOS, I just have to enter BIOS and exit it without making a single change, and then it boots perfectly fine. odd and annoying.

I gave up trying to find settings to make it work. it might be some tiny firmware tweak on the original hard drive or some code somewhere that's missing on every replacement/cloned drive.

karaokeking · Apr 14, 2015

giantbucket :

Interesting that it's 2 Dells with the issue.

Well, I'll keep digging but hopefully someone has found a solution for it.

ArtPog · Apr 15, 2015

1. I'll assume (as you've indicated) that the source drive - the 500 GB HDD - boots without incident and functions without any problems or anomalies.

2. It's conceivable that for one reason or another the Acronis disk-cloning operation went awry with the result that the destination disk - the 1 TB HDD - contains a "bad" clone. s!@t happens as I'm sure you know.

3. I'd like you to give this Casper disk-cloning program a try. I'm assuming you're not familiar with the program. It's a commercial program costing $49.99 (although highly-discounted 3-user "Family Packs" are available). There's a 15-day trial edition available at...
https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/

4. The trial-edition is slightly crippled. It has a "restriction" built into the program in that while (as in your example) the total contents of the 500 GB source drive will be cloned over to the 1 TB destination drive, after the completion of the disk-cloning operation the destination drive will contain a partition of 500 GB (the actual disk capacity (rounded-figures) of the source drive). The remaining disk space of the 1 TB destination drive will be unallocated. Of course this is a trivial "restriction" since it will take about 5 seconds using Disk Management to extend the created partition so that ALL the unallocated disk space is utilized by the 1 TB drive (as a single partition).

5. Anyway, if you're so inclined, give it a try. I would be interested in hearing the results.

giantbucket · Apr 15, 2015

re: point #3, I think that's how most cloning operations work since they also clone the partition table so they set up the same size partitions as on the source drive. Win7 / Win8.1 do the exact same thing - a clone of a 500G onto a 1T will have a 500G partition of cloned stuff plus a 500G unallocated space

but it's good to have another program / cloning software option! I've tried the free variant of EaseUS and found it to be... eh, not as slick as I'd like. but free is free, so one can't complain TOO much.

karaokeking · Apr 15, 2015

Thanks for the responses. I'll give Casper a try. We do have partitioning software, so making proper use of the extra space on the drive won't be a problem.

ArtPog · Apr 15, 2015

giantbucket :

Yes, you're certainly right that many disk-cloning programs will follow the disk-cloning process along the lines that I described involving the TRIAL EDITION of the Casper disk-cloning program.

BUT, the COMMERCIAL Casper program will happily create a SINGLE partition encompassing the ENTIRE disk-space of the destination drive - in this example 1 TB. And the 500 GB of data would reside in that SINGLE partition. And that would be the default during the disk-cloning operation

As I indicated in my response to karaokeking that (seemingly absurd!) restriction is built-in the trial edition since it's so simple to merely use DM to extend the created partition.

BTW, Caper also has the option during the disk-cloning operation to create a different size partition should the user desire that.

ArtPog · Apr 15, 2015

karaokeking :

Good. I'm glad you're going to give it a try. And please post the results.

I hope I made it clear that even with using the trial edition of the Casper program you really won't need any "partitioning software" to utilize the unallocated disk-space of the destination drive since Disk Management simply & easily can perform that function in this case.

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HDD clone boots normally from cold start but not from restart

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