New
#11
Same story here, Macrium fails then 'causes' later failure?
I too have been using Macrium for some three+ years, and it always worked well on my Win7 machines, for cloning (not so well in other functions). But last September they started 'upgrading' Pro 5 for Win 8.1, and then the nightmares began. You can't see it now, but lots of folks reported clone failures on single-license machines (like mine, I have maybe 12). All of them were using WD My Passport, as am I. In my case though, the failure only occurs where the drive is 1TB, and that .1 (point 1, so 10% of a GB) bigger than the WD Passport -- which was never an issue in the past, have been cloning same drive to same WD My Passport since last summer or prior. In Macrium, they use 'smart' sector, so if the ending partition isn't fully used, the clone destination needn't be the same size.
Apparently that's no longer true. Macrium trashed the partition it failed to clone, wrecked many of my files, wrecked the destination disk (which of course had had a GOOD copy of those files), created bad sectors where there were none, and it's never become right since. The new Macrium 6 same problem, so of course I didn't renew my license for 6 (just tested all this today with 6).
EASEUS was able to copy the partition properly. Macrium could image it, so clearly it's not the drive, but something related to size and WD My Passport.
I hate Acronis, so won't try that, but I did try Clonezilla which has saved the same machine many times in the past (esp. when Macrium started to go funky), but over the past two days suddenly I can't get Clonezilla to do its regular 'thang' either.
I have NO idea what's going wrong, really. The above is just a report of what SEEMS to be the problem. And I've lost hundreds of hours trying to trouble-shoot it.
So bottom line, try downloading the latest free EASEUS Partition Master and merely copy the partition: that worked for me. At least you'll have that. Or image it, though I hate imaging, I want immediate gratification from cloning.
Clonezilla forum is reporting cloning failure of other types, and if they ever send me the okay email so I can participate in that forum, I'll be there too. I'm a huge Clonezilla fan.
If you want more on this saga, I'm running a log on it here: https://vimeo.com/groups/pcworldalum...m/topic:266071
Tone is strident, as I'm frustrated. The actual CAUSE of the problem, I'm not sure. Am throwing stones to see what fits. I can't go into the Macrium 6 forum until and unless I buy 6 also, and that ain't gonna happen.
BTW, the latest version of Clonezilla just changed, and the usb installation instructions are bad (i.e., no download links or broken links). The ONLY good way to install it to usb is 'do' 'Method B' in that page.
So, for example you download 2.4 (latest) Clonezilla zip for i686 (multi-core processor backward), then extract the zip to a flash drive you've already NAMED (they should tell you, it's really important to NAME your disks) and already FORMATTED as FAT32 (which is normally what flash drives are anyway).
Then, IN that flash drive, find the utils folder then the win version (32 or 64) then IN that folder click on 'makeboot'. You get a DOS window in Windows, saying WHAT DRIVE will be made bootable, warning you to be sure you've selected the right one (no problem, if you clicked that file from WITHIN the flash drive's extracted copy). Click, and in seconds you're done.
Last edited by brainout; 21 Jun 2015 at 02:13. Reason: Clarification and last paragraph re new Clonezilla how-to's.