Cannot clone OS partition with TI8 or DD9

I am using the latest versions of everything. I have, in the past, cloned my HDD successfully with older versions of these products. I have now tried to clone my HDD 7 times without success. The error is identical each time.

I have tried using Disk Director to clone the HDD, apparantly this is not possible. Please see this thread if you can shed some light on this: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=355678#post355678

From the advice another person got, I am now using the clone feature within TI8 to perfrom this task: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=62792

I have 2 identical HDDs, both at 160Gb PATA 8Mb Samsungs. One of the is whinning badly and has the OS partition. I intend to clone this perfectly working, but noisy drive, to the backup HDD. All partitions on all drives have been checked to be error free. The original OS partition works fine, and is being used to write this.

There are 2 partitions on the first drive. One is the OS, the other is for data with My Documents folder.

I start the cloning process using the automatic mode. I tell it to clone the partitions exactly, wipe the destination drive (to remove my previous failed attempts), and to leave the data on the original drive.

TI8 reboots the machine and starts the process, the process completes without error. The machine is restarted, when windows is run a script from TI8 is also run, it says the clone is complete and windows loads fine.

I shutdown the machine and uplug the original drive. The slave drive is the connected to the master cable and jumpers set. The machine starts to boot into windows where the TI8 script is run, the following is displayed:

Acronis True Image
Analysing Partitions 100%
Assigning letters 100%
Sync with OS 100%
Completed

At this point the machine hangs and has to be hard reset.

The machine is restarted, and a black OS startup screen is shown where I select to "Start windows normally"

Splash screen comes up, then the chkdsk screen where the HDD is scanned. Several errors are found, but I managed to record only the one.

Deleteing index entry AutoPartNt.let
There are other AutoPart entries that are deleted

The machien then reboots and the following error is shown on a blue screen just after the OS splash screen

Acronis AUTOPART
ERROR: Script file not found

The machine then hangs.


Exactly the same error happens time and time again when I use TI8 to clone the machine. What is going on??

Also, why can I need boot using the Disk Director 9 rescue Cd and then just copy the partitions from there? I would have thought that was a valid method to do this?

I would be very grateful is someone could please come up with a way to clone my HDD using either TI8, DD9 or their rescue CDs. I'm sure I am following the instructions for these products, but they just do not seem to work

 

Hello Luminous,

Thank you for using Acronis software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/).

You cannot use Acronis Disk Director Suite to clone the drive because it doesn't allow you to clone MBR.

As for Acronis True Image, please send the screenshots with all your steps o support@acronis.com and we will do our best in order to solve the problem.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I initaill read your response yesterday, and have since then being trying to get together all the info that you requested.

I shall be mailing tech support this evening to see if they can help me.

Since I last posted I have downloaded Samsungs HDD analysis tool to check out my HDDs. It took many hours to run through both drives, but both were fully tested to be OK - including surface scans.