After Copy Or Migration All Partitions On The Destination Drive Are Empty

Scenario

After using “Migrate OS” or “Hard Disk Copy”, the copied disk doesn’t boot and doesn’t have any data on partitions

Reason

This happens when one drive uses 512 byte sectors, and the other one 4096 byte sectors. Copying between drives with dissimilar sectors is a new feature introduced in HDM 14. We’re receiving reports that on some systems, it produces a copy with empty partitions. This should be fixed in current HDM versions.

Solution

Currently, the solution is to make the drives use identical sector sizes, so that the program uses its default copy process.

Drives that use 4096-byte sectors only expose this sector size when plugged in by USB, but emulate 512 bytes when connected via an internal interface such as SATA or eSATA. Most external HDD cases have a special port for eSATA and include a cable for it, and most newer PCs have a port for it. If your drive doesn’t include an eSATA port and cable, it should be possible to connect it as internal drive by using the normal SATA connection. After you connect the drive via this interface, try copying again and see how it goes.

After copying, try booting the system. If your system is EFI/GPT based, avoid changing drive position (plugging it into another slot). Boot process on EFI / GPT systems starts with a special record in EFI memory called Windows Boot Manager that points to the Windows boot files by using drive position and unique GUID of the partition with boot files. HDM should give you an option to create a new EFI boot entry for the destination drive when copying. If you switch drive position, you’ll need to use our Boot Corrector to fix the record and have it point to the new location.

Backup & Recovery, Drive Copy, Hard Disk Manager™ for Windows, Migrate OS to SSD
Tags: copy, error, issue, migration

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