Windows 10 Clone Problems

Steve C said:

That's a better approach than cloning. Note using cloning results in two disks having the same ID which can cause problems if both disks are connected ti the computer.

I hadn't thought of that. Is that dependant upon the program used to do the cloning? Reason I ask is that I went back and re-cloned the disk using Macrium Reflect and then followed the procedure at https://www.maketecheasier.com/fix-disk-signature-collision-error- windows/ and used the uniqueid disk command to determine that Disk 0 ID (source) was F633FDB2-DACD-4733-B3DE-89F838683466 and disk 2 (destination) was 2BEBAFAF-24D5-11E9-BA1D-001A7DDA7113. Are these the IDs you're referring to?

doberschelp said:

I hadn't thought of that. Is that dependant upon the program used to do the cloning? Reason I ask is that I went back and re-cloned the disk using Macrium Reflect and then followed the procedure at https://www.maketecheasier.com/fix-disk-signature-collision-error- windows/ and used the uniqueid disk command to determine that Disk 0 ID (source) was F633FDB2-DACD-4733-B3DE-89F838683466 and disk 2 (destination) was 2BEBAFAF-24D5-11E9-BA1D-001A7DDA7113. Are these the IDs you're referring to?

Yes, those are the IDs and you found a way of deconflicting the IDs

Steve C said:

Yes, those are the IDs and you found a way of deconflicting the IDs

No, I didn't find a way to de-conflict the IDs. In fact, after further experimentation, I've found that the disk IDs are determined by whatever software package you use to clone the disk.

For example, when using Samsung Data Migration to create the clone, the disk IDs were the same. The system booted normally and then using the Windows disk management feature, I found the newly cloned drive appears marked with a red symbol, indicating that the newly cloned drive is offline and cannot be accessed. https://neosmart.net/wiki/disk-signature-collision/ provides a screenshot of a drive marked in this manner. The site states "However, if two different drives’ signatures become identical, then one of these drives becomes marked as offline automatically." The problem seems to be that when duplicate disk IDs are detected, the boot drive could be inadvertently marked as offline. There may be other problems that I'm not smart enough to know about. So when using Samsung Data Migration to clone your drive, I would suggest removing the newly cloned drive from your system to prevent any conflict.

The advantage of Macrium Reflect is that it assigned a different disk ID to the newly cloned drive, preventing any conflicts of duplicate disk IDs. Again using the disk management feature, the drive appears completely accessible. For me, that means I can leave the newly cloned drive attached to the system, back files up to the cloned drive as I wish, and every three months or so, I re-clone the drive to the same disk. That way, if my system becomes corrupted and won't boot, I simply change the boot order in BIOS and away I go with an updated system. Total downtime: two minutes. Another advantage of Macrium Reflect is the time need to clone the drive. Macrium Reflect took 24 minutes to complete the clone, while the Samsung Data Migration tool took 84 minutes to complete.

I apologize for the lengthy response, but I felt some clarity was needed on the different cloning utilities and how they assign disk IDs. Also, I have no knowledge of how Acronis True Image 2019, MiniTool Partition, or the native backup within Windows assigns disk IDs.

I wanted to make sure that what I've reported is true, because looking around at several websites that deal with disk cloning/disk IDs, I was completely lost in a jungle of arcane language and I was unclear as to whether it was Reflect that assigned the new disk ID or the OS. So I reached out to the support desk at Macrium Reflect and received the following response:

"2/1/2019

Subject: Re: Ticket 125508: Disk IDs

Hi Doberschelp,Thank you for reaching out. As a part of a clone or restore process, Macrium Reflect will recalculate the signature according to the table below. If the signature is recalculated, the boot configuration data (BCD) store is located and updated and the drive mappings in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices\ are also updated if necessary.

https://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50152.aspx

Please note that the Free Edition of Macrium Reflect is not a supported product."