Macrium Reflect clone bootable & Paragon Adaptive Restore

System is on W10 Pro ver 1903. Using Macrium Reflect free ver 7.2 and used clone. But it checks for 2 partitions, the System Reserved and the NTFS C: , not for an entire disk. Then found the clone ( from 500 GB HDD to 500 GB HDD) won't boot, probably due to the same issue found in today's How to make cloned drive bootable?.

First, is there an option in the free version to clone a whole drive and therefore get the boot sector? Second, I presume I could run the command(s) using a HUBD, etc. But need to be in an elevated command prompt. Or I could use another routine to accomplish the same, found on an UBD.

And dictum's command: bcdboot C:\Windows /s G: is all it takes?

This is for a ~10 year old system so I presume it's not EFI. Don't want to introduce EasyBCD as the main thing I hope to accomplish is using Paragon Adaptive Restore to move my OS to a new Ryzen system (same HDD for now).

Not sure if using this will fly going from an older Bios based to an EFI. Would appreciate any real world experience since if it can't be done I'll simply buy another license. But I like to see if things work so ....


Thanks in advance for any feedback,

Mustachio

Firstly,make sure all partitions on the original disk are checked because Macrium only clones selected partitions.Then retry the clone process.
It is advisable to Image the original HDD to another HDD,if you can.
Yes you can transfer from HDD to HDD or SSD,my old system was home built in 2007,with a Gigabyte 965P and my new home build has a Gigabyte 450m and Samsung SSD 860 EVO.
There wasn't any problem transferring the licence.

I see when cloning that the disk itself is also checked but it must not have copied the UEFI bootloader, w/is why I was thinking use EasyBCD. Tried it again and when I use the 2nd HDD I get error 'BOOTMGR is missing, press Cntrl + Alt + del'.

EasyBCD ver 2.4 should give me a W10 option so I believe the UEFI bootloader is what it will write. But haven't run EasyBCD off usb yet.

So you're saying you Imaged your W10 home, and it transferred the license to the new system? Did you need to enter the key again? Also, a clone would copy everything including boot sector, in my mind, but would an image of a drive do the same?

If Paragon Adaptive Restore works w/W10 it would be great b/c I dislike having to re-install all my appl's, etc.


Appreciate your help joeandmarg0!

A Macrium image would include all licensing, registration info, configuration fine points, applications, etcetera-------assuming you include the necessary partitions in the image file. You can omit or include any partition you want. Imaging is often more reliable than cloning.

Paragon applications are also reliable in my experience, although I haven't used any in over 5 years.

Yeah I've picked up that most think imaging beats cloning. Going to try Adaptive Restore on the 'clone' disk after I run fixboot, etc. commands and test that it boots. If it works I'll finally finish this build : )

AFAIK Macrium Reflect free doesn't allow for clone entire disc, only the partitions you check box for. I believe that's why the 2nd HDD didn't get boot files from original. The Bios is from a ten yr old GB GA-790XTA-UD4. So when I installed W10 in February it probably added just MBR boot files. Dunno if W10 could add UEFI stuff for that old a mobo. (I checked for clone the System Reserved partition also.)

The Bios allows me to specify the HDD to boot from. I'll try the fixboot commands on the 2nd drive b/c it gives me that BOOTMGR missing error.

I'd think Paragon Adaptive Restore works like a fresh W10 install and adds the UEFI boot files on a system that calls for that.


Thanks Kyhi.

For future reference: As I said, worked great for W7 Pro 64b (orig off a retail disc) but for my OEM W10 Pro 64b it does not work. Finally found the spacebar acts like the non-functioning enter key. But I get an error (twice) so no go. Better to fresh install anyway but interesting to see if it works on W10. Some noise out on the web says it worked for them on W10, YMMV.

ignatzatsonic said:

A Macrium image would include all licensing, registration info, configuration fine points, applications, etcetera-------assuming you include the necessary partitions in the image file. You can omit or include any partition you want. Imaging is often more reliable than cloning.

There´s no need to assume anything - just image the whole disk.