Cloning errors .. help!

[papahobo]

I was attempting to clone a Windows 7 hard drive today using Aomei Partition Assistant which I have used their products successfully in the past and have been mostly satisfied with the results. I'm cloning a 500 GB drive to a 2 TB drive. Aomei uses a Pre-OS environment to perform this from the machine. Upon reboot the Pre-OS starts but then tells me the operation failed.

So I reboot again and get this:

"Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart.
2. Choose your language settings, and the click "Next."
3. Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible."

Oh Crap.

Here's the thing.. I can finally get past this after attempting the boot for the third time (hit enter, get the message again, hit enter and boot to Windows 7). I've tried multiple times but the message will always be displayed the first 2 attempts at boot. The third time it goes into Windows 7 normally. Weird.

Currently I've got the hard drive removed from the machine to try another cloning method because I don't want to risk not being able to boot at all. If this works, I'm still going to need to fix the boot issue. Any ideas?

 

[Larry Sabo]

I would just use another program to re-do the cloning rather than wrestle with the clone or living with a flaky system. Lots of alternatives already discussed here.

Edit: You might want to use a different target disk when your re-clone. It would be a shame for the patient to die part way through the re-cloning if you were using the current clone.

 

[Markverhyden]

Clonezilla, which is free, can do that in advanced mode.

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image/advanced/09-advanced-param.php

 

[PCS]

If you get it to boot to windows, use EasyBCD to repair the bootloader.
http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

It looks like it needs to be installed but if you unzip the .exe with 7zip, you can then run the EasyBCD program from the extracted folder and do repairs / backup.

 

[Krynn72]

Two ideas:

1) when you get into Windows, run msconfig and go to the boot tab. Ensure there's only one OS its trying to boot.

2) when you get the startup error, choose Repair your computer, get to the command prompt and type in:
bootrec /fixmbr
then bootrec /fixboot

and restart.

 

[lcoughey]

R-TT, the company that makes R-Studio, has a program call R-Drive Image as a stand alone program which looks to be pretty good. There are also built-in imaging features with R-Studio, too, if you already have a license for it. Yes, there are some free programs out there, but I'm pretty sure we all charge for our services.

 

[Diggs]

Some of us have Lazesoft in our bag of tools. It will do the clone (and resize it) and also reset the boot sector if needed (along with password resets, keycode retrievals, etc.) It's inexpensive but effective.