I don't know how I screwed up disk cloning, but I did

I will update this post later. Right now as I type this I'm restoring an image to a AMD A8-5500 quad core machine where I had upgraded the hard drive..

I don't know how I screwed up disk cloning, but I did (and I've built several PCs from scratch, though not an expert by any means).

Here's a brief summary. Windows 10, 64 bit is the OS, AMD A8- quad core CPU from about 2010-2012 I estimate (bought second hand); the bios is: UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 0602 07/31/2015 (BIOS reflashed to the latest 2015 version).

1) I bought the excellent Macrium free version, which I've successfully used on other machines to restore image files more than once, and used it to "image" the old disk, a WD mechanical HD, 1TB, to an external USB drive. The new disk is exactly the same size as the old, except it's a WD 'black' (high performance) rather than a 'blue', and two years younger.

2) I then used Macrium to "clone" the old disk onto the new. Worked fine.

3) with both disks installed, SATA cables switched*!* (see endnote below), I rebooted, everything worked fine. You could clearly see the new WD drive as the bootable "C" drive and the old now-non-bootable drive as the "D" drive, just like expected.

4) Since I'm a bit concerned about data privacy, I decided to Quick format the "old" drive, now appearing as drive "D" rather than the bootable primary drive "C". This was a mistake (turns out)

5) I thought I was very diligent, and believe me I was very attentive, but somehow, perhaps because the disks are identical [*!* (see endnote below)--SEE UPDATE at the very end too], I somehow reformatted (erased) the "new" disk rather than the old disk (I still don't know how, I was paying attention, one has a slightly different serial number). I took out the old drive, and kept just the new drive in (but it's now blank, unknown to me)

6) Upon reboot, no OS boot sector the new drive is apparently blank. But it gets worse...

7) no CD/DVD recognized either! It keeps going to the "Windows repair" b.s.. (where does that even appear? Maybe it's written somehow on every disk, even a non-bootable disk? I think so...remember, this is the 'blank' HD that's being "read" by Windows)

8) I tried BIOS setup. This is a new ASUS BIOS mobo: A55BM-A/USB3. It recognized there was a ATAPI Asus DVD but I could not get it to become #1 priority bootable device, try as I could. I reset to default values. I was just about to clear the CMOS and then I decide to play around with this parameter: boot to UEFI Mode or Legacy BIOS mode (not the exact phrase, but close enough). Here is more information from the net on this:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E20881_01...891/gltde.html
**Selecting Legacy BIOS or UEFI Boot Mode

UEFI BIOS supports two boot modes: Legacy BIOS boot mode and UEFI boot mode.. Some devices and operating systems do not yet support UEFI-based BIOS and can boot only from Legacy BIOS boot mode. Depending on your situation, you might have to specify which boot mode of UEFI BIOS you want to use: Legacy BIOS boot mode or UEFI boot mode. Choose Legacy BIOS boot mode to allow HBAs and Express Module devices to use option ROMs. Choose UEFI boot mode to use UEFI drivers.

Only devices that support the selected boot mode are listed on the BIOS Boot screen. If you select UEFI Boot Mode, only boot candidates that support UEFI BIOS boot mode are listed on the BIOS Setup Utility screens in the Boot Options Priority list. If you select Legacy BIOS boot mode, only boot candidates that support Legacy BIOS boot mode are listed in the Boot Options Priority list.

Note - If the boot mode is changed, the boot candidates from the previous Boot Mode disappears. Boot candidates for the newly changed Boot Mode appear after the 'Save Changes and Reset' BIOS command is issued and also appear in the screens after the next boot to BIOS Setup Utility.

When you switch between Legacy BIOS Mode and UEFI Boot Mode (in either direction), BIOS settings that affect the Boot Options Priority List settings are changed. Because the settings for a given mode do not persist on a transition between modes, you should use the ubiosconfig command to capture and preserve the BIOS configuration if you intend to switch back to the previous BIOS mode and want to retain your previous BIOS settings.

9) The upshot is when I switched into the 'legacy' mode I finally got the CD/DVD to be recognized. It has loaded in it the Macrium "rescue CD/DVD" and it was able to then recognized a USB external HDD I plugged in, recognized the image file from step 1) above, and, as I type this, it's reloadeding this image file onto the 'blank' HDD.

Question for the group: (1) have you had this happen or know of somebody who had this happen? I suspect I'm not the only one, and (2) what the heck is this UEFI/Legacy business? Very annoying. The hardware on this AMD A8-5500 is about from 2010 to 2012 or so, and it's a mystery why the CD/DVD was not recognized until I played around with the BIOS. The 'old fashioned' BIOS I am used to did not have such a problem, and in fact from inside BIOS you could often boot to whatever drive present just by clicking on the drive.

And I was just about to take this PC to the computer repair shop, like a total noob. Maybe I should have! I am getting too old for this, lol.

Ah, my image restore is already 100% done. I might update this message later with the exact BIOS wording for this UEFI/Legacy business, when my system is restored. I am not a fan of cloning BTW, it's so easy to mix up the drives.

UPDATE:

I finally got the new drive restored with the image. Whew. Two hours of my life wasted, maybe three hours.

Here's some updates:

The BIOS verbage is "CSM - Compatibility Support Module". And ordinarily it is set to "Auto" but if so, it will NOT recognize the CD/DVD as a bootable device. You must set it to "Enabled" rather than "Auto". However, once you are done with the CD/DVD, you must set in BIOS the "CSM" back to "Auto" or you cannot get the hard drive to be recognized. Bizarre and IMO a bug, not a feature. Give me the 'old' bios please! The way it used to be 15 years ago.

That's it for now. BTW, despite the disks being identical, both WD except for Blue vs Black, there was some very small 'error corrections' (one time) made by chkdsk

RL

*!* ( endnote ) I did find out that when I played around with unplugging the SATA cables, I was unknowingly unplugging and plugging in the CD/DVD SATA rather than the 'old' HD Sata. Ordinary, this should not matter, since it's 'plug and play' upon bootup. But I remember Paul saying something like some motherboards assign priority based on how the SATA cables are plugged in, and perhaps this BIOS/mobo: UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 0602 07/31/2015 somehow does this? Thus mixing up "C" and "D" drives. That's the only thing I can think of. Other than human error, try as I could to make sure I was quick formatting what I thought was the right drive, the old one, but failing to do so.

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 4:39:27 AM UTC-4, RayLopez99 wrote:

Here's some updates:

The BIOS verbage is "CSM - Compatibility Support Module". And ordinarily it is set to "Auto" but if so, it will NOT recognize the CD/DVD as a bootable device. You must set it to "Enabled" rather than "Auto". However, once you are done with the CD/DVD, you must set in BIOS the "CSM" back to "Auto" or you cannot get the hard drive to be recognized. Bizarre and IMO a bug, not a feature. Give me the 'old' bios please! The way it used to be 15 years ago.

////////////////

One more wrinkle: I had turned out "IOMMU" (Enabled) rather than the default 'disabled' in the old BIOS settings, since I use Oracle VirtualBox. This may have been a mistake since from the internet I see: "My system will refuse to boot when I have enabled the hardware IOMMU and a disc is inserted in the CD drive. "

Hence I recommend turning off IOMMU and/or being aware of this potential pitfall. However, what saved the day was the "CSM" business, since I had 'reset' the BIOS to the original values (which has IOMMU disabled) and was still not able to boot to the DVD/CD drive upon startup.

RL

RayLopez99 wrote:
I will update this post later. Right now as I type this I'm restoring an image to a AMD A8-5500 quad core machine where I had upgraded the hard drive.

I don't know how I screwed up disk cloning, but I did (and I've built several PCs from scratch, though not an expert by any means).

Here's a brief summary. Windows 10, 64 bit is the OS, AMD A8- quad core CPU from about 2010-2012 I estimate (bought second hand); the bios is: UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 0602 07/31/2015 (BIOS reflashed to the latest 2015 version).

1) I bought the excellent Macrium free version, which I've successfully used on other machines to restore image files more than once, and used it to "image" the old disk, a WD mechanical HD, 1TB, to an external USB drive. The new disk is exactly the same size as the old, except it's a WD 'black' (high performance) rather than a 'blue', and two years younger.

2) I then used Macrium to "clone" the old disk onto the new. Worked fine.

3) with both disks installed, SATA cables switched*!* (see endnote below), I rebooted, everything worked fine. You could clearly see the new WD drive as the bootable "C" drive and the old now-non-bootable drive as the "D" drive, just like expected.

4) Since I'm a bit concerned about data privacy, I decided to Quick format the "old" drive, now appearing as drive "D" rather than the bootable primary drive "C". This was a mistake (turns out)

5) I thought I was very diligent, and believe me I was very attentive, but somehow, perhaps because the disks are identical [*!* (see endnote below)--SEE UPDATE at the very end too], I somehow reformatted (erased) the "new" disk rather than the old disk (I still don't know how, I was paying attention, one has a slightly different serial number). I took out the old drive, and kept just the new drive in (but it's now blank, unknown to me)

6) Upon reboot, no OS boot sector the new drive is apparently blank. But it gets worse...

7) no CD/DVD recognized either! It keeps going to the "Windows repair" b.s. (where does that even appear? Maybe it's written somehow on every disk, even a non-bootable disk? I think so...remember, this is the 'blank' HD that's being "read" by Windows)

8) I tried BIOS setup. This is a new ASUS BIOS mobo: A55BM-A/USB3. It recognized there was a ATAPI Asus DVD but I could not get it to become #1 priority bootable device, try as I could. I reset to default values. I was just about to clear the CMOS and then I decide to play around with this parameter: boot to UEFI Mode or Legacy BIOS mode (not the exact phrase, but close enough). Here is more information from the net on this:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E20881_01...891/gltde.html
**Selecting Legacy BIOS or UEFI Boot Mode

UEFI BIOS supports two boot modes: Legacy BIOS boot mode and UEFI boot mode. Some devices and operating systems do not yet support UEFI-based BIOS and can boot only from Legacy BIOS boot mode. Depending on your situation, you might have to specify which boot mode of UEFI BIOS you want to use: Legacy BIOS boot mode or UEFI boot mode. Choose Legacy BIOS boot mode to allow HBAs and Express Module devices to use option ROMs. Choose UEFI boot mode to use UEFI drivers.

Only devices that support the selected boot mode are listed on the BIOS Boot screen. If you select UEFI Boot Mode, only boot candidates that support UEFI BIOS boot mode are listed on the BIOS Setup Utility screens in the Boot Options Priority list. If you select Legacy BIOS boot mode, only boot candidates that support Legacy BIOS boot mode are listed in the Boot Options Priority list.

Note - If the boot mode is changed, the boot candidates from the previous Boot Mode disappears. Boot candidates for the newly changed Boot Mode appear after the 'Save Changes and Reset' BIOS command is issued and also appear in the screens after the next boot to BIOS Setup Utility.

When you switch between Legacy BIOS Mode and UEFI Boot Mode (in either direction), BIOS settings that affect the Boot Options Priority List settings are changed. Because the settings for a given mode do not persist on a transition between modes, you should use the ubiosconfig command to capture and preserve the BIOS configuration if you intend to switch back to the previous BIOS mode and want to retain your previous BIOS settings.

9) The upshot is when I switched into the 'legacy' mode I finally got the CD/DVD to be recognized. It has loaded in it the Macrium "rescue CD/DVD" and it was able to then recognized a USB external HDD I plugged in, recognized the image file from step 1) above, and, as I type this, it's reloadeding this image file onto the 'blank' HDD.

Question for the group: (1) have you had this happen or know of somebody who had this happen? I suspect I'm not the only one, and (2) what the heck is this UEFI/Legacy business? Very annoying. The hardware on this AMD A8-5500 is about from 2010 to 2012 or so, and it's a mystery why the CD/DVD was not recognized until I played around with the BIOS. The 'old fashioned' BIOS I am used to did not have such a problem, and in fact from inside BIOS you could often boot to whatever drive present just by clicking on the drive.

And I was just about to take this PC to the computer repair shop, like a total noob. Maybe I should have! I am getting too old for this, lol.

Ah, my image restore is already 100% done. I might update this message later with the exact BIOS wording for this UEFI/Legacy business, when my system is restored. I am not a fan of cloning BTW, it's so easy to mix up the drives.

UPDATE:

I finally got the new drive restored with the image. Whew. Two hours of my life wasted, maybe three hours.

Here's some updates:

The BIOS verbage is "CSM - Compatibility Support Module". And ordinarily it is set to "Auto" but if so, it will NOT recognize the CD/DVD as a bootable device. You must set it to "Enabled" rather than "Auto". However, once you are done with the CD/DVD, you must set in BIOS the "CSM" back to "Auto" or you cannot get the hard drive to be recognized. Bizarre and IMO a bug, not a feature. Give me the 'old' bios please! The way it used to be 15 years ago.

That's it for now. BTW, despite the disks being identical, both WD except for Blue vs Black, there was some very small 'error corrections' (one time) made by chkdsk

RL

*!* ( endnote ) I did find out that when I played around with unplugging the SATA cables, I was unknowingly unplugging and plugging in the CD/DVD SATA rather than the 'old' HD Sata. Ordinary, this should not matter, since it's 'plug and play' upon bootup. But I remember Paul saying something like some motherboards assign priority based on how the SATA cables are plugged in, and perhaps this BIOS/mobo: UEFI: American Megatrends Inc. 0602 07/31/2015 somehow does this? Thus mixing up "C" and "D" drives. That's the only thing I can think of. Other than human error, try as I could to make sure I was quick formatting what I thought was the right drive, the old one, but failing to do so.

One thing I see missing from your description, is the
clone of the original disk, should be booted by itself
just after cloning. The original disk should be disconnected,
but just for that boot cycle. You can reconnect the original
disk after the clone has been booted once by itself.

I do that as a safety precaution, because I was seeing the necessity
of that with some older OSes and would assume it's still a
requirement for later OSes. The possible disturbance, is the
newly booting clone, spots the pagefile on the old C: drive,
and the partition drive lettering gets screwed up. You don't
want the new disk to latch onto the old pagefile, but instead,
latch onto its own pagefile (by keeping the new drive by itself
for the first boot).

*******

I don't recollect an IOMMU setting. Perhaps that's VT-D or something ?
Which is not to be confused with VT-X for virtualization assistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT-d#I..._Intel_VT-d.29

It's possible VT-D fixes DMA addresses coming from hardware bus
card slots or something.

Paul

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 01:39:25 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote:

5) I thought I was very diligent, and believe me I was very attentive, but somehow, perhaps because the disks are identical

Yes, I've had to be v. careful as I've 2 identical WD HDDs where only the
serial no. differs - all the partitions are the same size.
Macrium is clear as to which is which (but doesn't show the S.N.) whereas
EaseUS, at least a couple of years ago, got a bit ambiguous with the grammar
and useage around the word "clone" and its derivatives - in English, the
wording looked disastrous!

Now I've the 512GB 850 Pro and clone that to 2 HDDs: one WD and one HGST,
each in an external caddy. Seems to be a good way of backing up - no
restoring and immage, just plug in and go.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 6:25:34 PM UTC+7, Paul wrote:

One thing I see missing from your description, is the
clone of the original disk, should be booted by itself
just after cloning. The original disk should be disconnected,
but just for that boot cycle. You can reconnect the original
disk after the clone has been booted once by itself.

I do that as a safety precaution, because I was seeing the necessity
of that with some older OSes and would assume it's still a
requirement for later OSes. The possible disturbance, is the
newly booting clone, spots the pagefile on the old C: drive,
and the partition drive lettering gets screwed up. You don't
want the new disk to latch onto the old pagefile, but instead,
latch onto its own pagefile (by keeping the new drive by itself
for the first boot).

Nice one! I will but this in my notes and remember this for future reference. Indeed, this additional 'disconnect on the first bootup' would have saved three hours of frustration for me...I was just about to resign myself to going to the local PC repair shop and stand in line with a bunch of noobs who don't know how to turn on their PC (oh the embarrassment that would have been).

Any comments on the legacy boot issue? Here is an analogous thread (secure boot does not allow access to Bios since apparently a certain graphics card was not properly signed for secure boot): http://en.community.dell.com/support...514/t/19981976




*******

I don't recollect an IOMMU setting. Perhaps that's VT-D or something ?
Which is not to be confused with VT-X for virtualization assistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT-d#I..._Intel_VT-d.29

It's possible VT-D fixes DMA addresses coming from hardware bus
card slots or something.


Yes IOMMU is the generic and/or AMD version of VT-D or something. Anyway, turning it off, the default mode, did not seem to affect Oracle VirtualBox, so I left it off.

Thanks,

RL

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 7:35:30 PM UTC+7, PeterC wrote:
On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 01:39:25 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote:

5) I thought I was very diligent, and believe me I was very attentive, but somehow, perhaps because the disks are identical

Yes, I've had to be v. careful as I've 2 identical WD HDDs where only the
serial no. differs - all the partitions are the same size.
Macrium is clear as to which is which (but doesn't show the S.N.) whereas
EaseUS, at least a couple of years ago, got a bit ambiguous with the grammar
and useage around the word "clone" and its derivatives - in English, the
wording looked disastrous!

Now I've the 512GB 850 Pro and clone that to 2 HDDs: one WD and one HGST,
each in an external caddy. Seems to be a good way of backing up - no
restoring and immage, just plug in and go.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

Thanks Peter, yes, Macrium is clear, and I thought I saw something like a serial number (or product serial number, almost the same thing) but I may have been confused. But despite Macrium being clear, I got screwed up, and I am not a complete noob. So beware.

As for the 'external caddy', I did some research, and initially I was excited, but it seems the external caddy is not the same thing as a HDD disk replicator. The external caddy it seems only holds the two disks and you still have to control them from another PC. Is this easy to do? Does the external caddy show up in Macrium? Acronis? Clonezilla (online somebody said yes, and if it shows up in Clonezilla it probably shows up in Macrium and Acronis).

Here is my research---

Example of a docking station for disk cloning, "external caddy", (costs about $40): SISUN ® 2.5"/3.5" IDE SATA HDD Docking Station +Card Reader Hub (Black)

Example of a stand-alone disk cloning machine (can cost almost $1000 and up to $10k USD, too expensive for home users): (see http://www.datadev.com/lowvohddu.html)

Demi PG 520 Sata Duplicator and Eraser The PG520 is a 1:1 SATA duplicator or 2 port SATA eraser. The optional ATA kit allows for ATA drives to work with the unit. Transfer rate of up to 8 GB/min. $890.00 (this was the cheapest one...if it was for $150 I would buy it, but not at this price).

RL

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 01:39:25 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99
wrote:


Question for the group: (1) have you had this happen or know of
somebody who had this happen? I suspect I'm not the only one, and (2)
what the heck is this UEFI/Legacy business? Very annoying. The
hardware on this AMD A8-5500 is about from 2010 to 2012 or so, and
it's a mystery why the CD/DVD was not recognized until I played around
with the BIOS. The 'old fashioned' BIOS I am used to did not have
such a problem, and in fact from inside BIOS you could often boot to
whatever drive present just by clicking on the drive.

-
I prefer Legacy as I haven't particular need for UEFI. I'd expect, if
I did have UEFI, to spend time with it, both researching the WEB for
general and, likely, particular subjective experiences with
significant differences, as well, might encounter. Ideally, I prefer
simultaneous computers, placed side by side, when updating the newer
one;- the older at all times operational for drawing upon resources if
difficulties arise.

Simplification of course is almost always best: Bringing up the OS in
stages, one step at a time, while working out contingencies particular
to the individual steps. Dividing the OS install between both UEFI
and Legacy, in as much for two distinct stages, is an example of a
workable scenario for establishing distinct characteristics given to
present conventions for two BIOS modes.

In establishing a binary-stream, sector-to-sector image of Windows7,
myself, it was by in large the sole and initial motivation I focused
upon. The binary images I created were not at the outset consistent,
in that failures occurred subsequently due to Windows rejecting how I
might modify in preparation a solid-state disk for the binary rewrite.

Eventually, more or less, I established what I preferred, past some
random difficulty for bypassing a reticent preference Microsoft had
for formatting linked partitions into a cognizant OS requisite;- one
partition of course as well being within such attainment, as I elected
for a requirement, which proved to be more or less among "crap shots",
sometimes within attainable means, recognized and facilitated by
Microsoft's setup disk, while at others, randomly not.

Computers, apart from blanketed standardization, are interesting that
regard. Microcosmically, I find them to be full of divergent
potentials, in as much that each individualistic build may reflect
unique issues across broader sets of issues, if not directly unstated,
in that potential make-or-break scenario, then perhaps is unique to
relationships known and discussed, for some clue as to a cause and
forthcoming resolution.

Given good regard for your selection of an Asus brand MB, and ignoring
all the worst were it not so, if Asus has slighted you, neither to
discount Microsoft's Windows version 10, the matter then becomes one
of logical permutations. A table of defensible occupancies,
applications and procedures, by which success is determined as valid
and within obtainable ends.

Computers are also very tedious in that regard. Repetition,
repetition, and more repetition, until potential problems are readily
known, as if ingrained in us, taken firmly in hand, from altogether
being too weary for yet another round of ass-kicking.

RayLopez99 wrote:
On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 6:25:34 PM UTC+7, Paul wrote:
One thing I see missing from your description, is the
clone of the original disk, should be booted by itself
just after cloning. The original disk should be disconnected,
but just for that boot cycle. You can reconnect the original
disk after the clone has been booted once by itself.

I do that as a safety precaution, because I was seeing the necessity
of that with some older OSes and would assume it's still a
requirement for later OSes. The possible disturbance, is the
newly booting clone, spots the pagefile on the old C: drive,
and the partition drive lettering gets screwed up. You don't
want the new disk to latch onto the old pagefile, but instead,
latch onto its own pagefile (by keeping the new drive by itself
for the first boot).

Nice one! I will but this in my notes and remember this for future reference. Indeed, this additional 'disconnect on the first bootup' would have saved three hours of frustration for me...I was just about to resign myself to going to the local PC repair shop and stand in line with a bunch of noobs who don't know how to turn on their PC (oh the embarrassment that would have been).

Any comments on the legacy boot issue? Here is an analogous thread (secure boot does not allow access to Bios since apparently a certain graphics card was not properly signed for secure boot): http://en.community.dell.com/support...514/t/19981976


There is an EEPROM on the video card. It sits in Config space.
Typically, the contents of the EEPROM is loaded by the BIOS
during POST.

In the past, that would be the VESA BIOS on video cards. It's
128KB on a Mac video card, 64KB on a PC video card.

In the UEFI era, video cards instead could use "Graphics Output Protocol"
or a GOP image. This was offered as an option a couple years ago,
but is no longer advertised in an active way. They won't put the
word "GOP" on the specification page for the video card.

GOP doesn't have its own article in Wikipedia. It's mentioned here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unifie...ware_Interface

Then, in this article, notice how they cleverly avoid calling
the feature by name. Instead calling it "adding UEFI support",
which is of course bull****. A UEFI BIOS, even with CSM disabled,
can still use a non-GOP video card. It's only when Secure Boot
is enabled that something bad happens. So this is the closest
article I can find that might match your symptoms. And it's
not "with UEFI enabled", it's "with Secure Boot enabled".

"When installing an after-market graphics card into a certified
Windows 8 PC with UEFI enabled, the system may not boot."

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answe...d-windows-8-pc

The thing about UEFI, is "some brickage may occur". There
have been a few cases where there are bad designs. There is
one case in Windows right now, where a control exists in
Windows "for user convenience", and the "counter-control"
in the BIOS is missing. If you flip that setting, there is...
no escape. On your next reboot, you're cooked.

There was also a case, where the storage space for
NVRAM was exceeded, causing brickage. That was a UEFI design
issue for some company.

We used to brick legacy BIOS, by flash update failures on the
BIOS chip, but there weren't quite as many "trap doors" as
there are in UEFI. Why someone considered UEFI a "good idea",
is beyond me. It took years, before a few good tutorial pages
came out for UEFI, to make it less mysterious. There are even
a couple people on the web, who actually understand how
UEFI works :-)

Paul

RayLopez99 wrote:
On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 7:35:30 PM UTC+7, PeterC wrote:
On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 01:39:25 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote:

5) I thought I was very diligent, and believe me I was very attentive, but somehow, perhaps because the disks are identical
Yes, I've had to be v. careful as I've 2 identical WD HDDs where only the
serial no. differs - all the partitions are the same size.
Macrium is clear as to which is which (but doesn't show the S.N.) whereas
EaseUS, at least a couple of years ago, got a bit ambiguous with the grammar
and useage around the word "clone" and its derivatives - in English, the
wording looked disastrous!

Now I've the 512GB 850 Pro and clone that to 2 HDDs: one WD and one HGST,
each in an external caddy. Seems to be a good way of backing up - no
restoring and immage, just plug in and go.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

Thanks Peter, yes, Macrium is clear, and I thought I saw something like a serial number (or product serial number, almost the same thing) but I may have been confused. But despite Macrium being clear, I got screwed up, and I am not a complete noob. So beware.

As for the 'external caddy', I did some research, and initially I was excited, but it seems the external caddy is not the same thing as a HDD disk replicator. The external caddy it seems only holds the two disks and you still have to control them from another PC. Is this easy to do? Does the external caddy show up in Macrium? Acronis? Clonezilla (online somebody said yes, and if it shows up in Clonezilla it probably shows up in Macrium and Acronis).

Here is my research---

Example of a docking station for disk cloning, "external caddy", (costs about $40): SISUN ® 2.5"/3.5" IDE SATA HDD Docking Station +Card Reader Hub (Black)

Example of a stand-alone disk cloning machine (can cost almost $1000 and up to $10k USD, too expensive for home users): (see http://www.datadev.com/lowvohddu.html)

Demi PG 520 Sata Duplicator and Eraser The PG520 is a 1:1 SATA duplicator or 2 port SATA eraser. The optional ATA kit allows for ATA drives to work with the unit. Transfer rate of up to 8 GB/min. $890.00 (this was the cheapest one...if it was for $150 I would buy it, but not at this price).

RL

There are dual-mode consumer devices.

https://www.startech.com/ca/HDD/Dupl...SB~SATDOCK22RE

There is a button on the front of the thing labeled "PC / Dup" and
that's what changes it from a conventional dock, to a duplicator.

The specification tab on the web page, lists "5400 RPM drive", and
translating that to English that says "um, our power adapter may
tip over, depending on the power demands of your two disk drives".
I previously did some power measurements, and the smaller drives
have larger spinup current (so they can be ready in about four or
five seconds). Larger drives are allowed to take their sweet time
spinning up. A 5400 RPM drive may draw slightly less power.

https://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/me...ATDOCK22RE.pdf

So yes, you can get the function you want. But it's dangerous having
the thing be switchable, because of the possibility of accidents.
I presume if you only put the one drive in it, using "dup" will do
nothing. So as long as your average dock operation consists of using
it with one drive, it should be safe.

Paul

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 12:33:38 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote:

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 7:35:30 PM UTC+7, PeterC wrote:
On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 01:39:25 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote:

5) I thought I was very diligent, and believe me I was very attentive, but somehow, perhaps because the disks are identical

Yes, I've had to be v. careful as I've 2 identical WD HDDs where only the
serial no. differs - all the partitions are the same size.
Macrium is clear as to which is which (but doesn't show the S.N.) whereas
EaseUS, at least a couple of years ago, got a bit ambiguous with the grammar
and useage around the word "clone" and its derivatives - in English, the
wording looked disastrous!

Now I've the 512GB 850 Pro and clone that to 2 HDDs: one WD and one HGST,
each in an external caddy. Seems to be a good way of backing up - no
restoring and immage, just plug in and go.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

Thanks Peter, yes, Macrium is clear, and I thought I saw something like a serial number (or product serial number, almost the same thing) but I may have been confused. But despite Macrium being clear, I got screwed up, and I am not a complete noob. So beware.

As for the 'external caddy', I did some research, and initially I was excited, but it seems the external caddy is not the same thing as a HDD disk replicator. The external caddy it seems only holds the two disks and you still have to control them from another PC. Is this easy to do? Does the external caddy show up in Macrium? Acronis? Clonezilla (online somebody said yes, and if it shows up in Clonezilla it probably shows up in Macrium and Acronis).

Here is my research---

Example of a docking station for disk cloning, "external caddy", (costs about $40): SISUN ® 2.5"/3.5" IDE SATA HDD Docking Station +Card Reader Hub (Black)

Example of a stand-alone disk cloning machine (can cost almost $1000 and up to $10k USD, too expensive for home users): (see http://www.datadev.com/lowvohddu.html)

Demi PG 520 Sata Duplicator and Eraser The PG520 is a 1:1 SATA duplicator or 2 port SATA eraser. The optional ATA kit allows for ATA drives to work with the unit. Transfer rate of up to 8 GB/min. $890.00 (this was the cheapest one...if it was for $150 I would buy it, but not at this price).

RL

um, caddy (fully enclosed HDD) and dock (slot-in - I jeep each covered with
a plastic bag!) about £20 - £25 each. Plug in to USB 3, switch on as
required, run Macrium, about 20 min. for 'intelligent' B/U - but that's only
about 200GB across 4 partitions of a 512GB drive.

The caddy powers down automatically when 'ejected' (I know the feeling!);
the dock has to be done manually... I'll stop here ;-)
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway