Could not clone Toshiba laptop drive

Just spent 2 days trying to clone my laptop drive. I have used Acronis to close tens of drives on my PC and laptops. For some reason, I had trouble this time.I would get the error "partition configuration has changed, press any key to continue". Pressing any key boots into windows.

I tried to clone this way several times and kept getting this message. I even spent hours testing the drive, but it passed all stress testing. I eventually tried a new drive and got the same message.

On day 2, I loaded Acronis from a boot disk and tried cloning without windows. Acronis said the clone was successful, but the laptop refused to boot. I retried cloning this way several times. Everytime, Acronis said the clone was successful, but it would not boot,

I then backed up the computer to an external drive with Acronis. I then installed the new drive into the laptop and did a restore. It worked! The computer booted. But I had a new problem.

I replaced a 100 GB hard drive with a 250 GB hard drive. The problem was that Windows identified the new 250 GB HD as only being 100 GB. 150 GB of the new HD was unallocated.

I then used Acronis Disk Director to change the partion size on the primary partition.

2.5 days later, everything finally worked out. Wish someone told me about this instead of having to do massive trial and errors.

 

Did you try a "reverse clone"? This is mentioned frequently on the forum. And when a user still has problems with the clone feature, the Image/Restore method is the very next thing to try (and with the boot CD) - also recommended many times on the forum.

 

Thanks for the reverse clone advice. I will try that on another laptop I am cloning. Does it work 100% of the time or is there issues with this method sometimes?

 

For most of the forum regulars, cloning is not the preferred method of upgrading to a new disk. If cloning is to be used, it is the reverse clone which offers your best chance of success and the fewest obstacles.

Clone or Restore using Resize comparison
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