Solved Macrium cloned drive REALLY slow

[see3po]

I used Macrium v5 free to upgrade/clone a 250gb WD Caviar to a 500gb Seagate Momentus. The cloned drive is really slow -- slow to boot, slow to login, apps go into "Not Responding" a lot. I'm curious if someone knows the reason. It is quite unusable as it. I don't know if it'll get better with time as Windows somehow adjusts.

A little background, but probably not cause of the sluggishness. There are 4 partitions, from the factory -- HP Tools, Recovery, C:\, and something else (Win PE maybe?). First time I used it, I cloned as-is, which ended up with a large unused unpartitioned space. This is not what I wanted so I cloned it again, putting the "C:\" partition at the end and used Cloned property to specify Max space, ended up being 400+gb on the new partition. Both times the sluggishness is present. I have not changed BIOS or Windows settings, but Windows did install new driver for the new drive.

Any suggestions to narrow down the problem? Thanks

 

[whs]

It would be helpful if you posted a picture of your Disk Management.

 

[see3po]

whs,I have not ignored your post. I took a image of the disk management window 2 days ago, but was looking for a place to host the images since the forum seems to be asking for a link. I used to use picassa but Google has changed it and I have not figured out how to link it instead of sharing an album. Was trying to find another hosting site. Any recommendations?

In the mean time, I'm wondering if something else is going on: laptop, SATA-USB bridge, the 500gb drive. I've tried the "Check error" in windows 7, took 2.5 days to finish the 500gb drive. I tried cloning on a Thinkpad W500 using the same SATA-USB bridge but different drive, only took 55 minutes to do a 52gb partition. At the same time, tried another drive (320gb WD Caviar blue that came out of the Thinkpad), it's just as slow on the HP laptop. So just a bunch of experiments and only thing in common is the HP G72. Maybe USB chipset? But why would it be slow when installed internally? Now the original drive in the HP seems to be really snow too. Virus? I'm using MS Essentials the virus definition is up-to-date. Don't know, hate to do a clean install since it's the wife's laptop and she'll have to reload all the programs and data and she won't be happy with that process...

 

[DavidE]

You can post images directly in SF:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

For Disk Management screen shots there is also this:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

 

[whs]

Where is your Disk Management picture. That would really help.

 

[see3po]

here disk management

Thanks for the instructions. I was using the image icon instead of paper clip.
Is sfc /scannow same as the "Check Now" under drive properties - "Error checking"?

 

[whs]

Your disk setup is standard. It shows nothing unusual. The next step would be to look into Event Viewer and see whether there are any particular events that need attention.

sfc/ scannow checks for corrupted system files and check now under drive properties checks problems on the disk.

 

[see3po]

Anything from Event Viewer I should post?

Other than taking 2.5 days to finish, "check now" under drive properties did not show any errors, neither did sfc /scannow. I uninstalled a few programs, nothing major, and did a Disk Cleanup. In the process of doing a full Malwarebytes scan now; going to do a full MS Essentials next. The laptop seems responsive as far as mouse moving around, but sluggish in doing things like opening programs, installing, uninstalling, things like install windows just hang around for a long time and sometimes I cancel, but in fact it really did finish installing the window just didn't close.

I started to "End Process Tree" while doing the Malwarebytes scan before coming to work, don't think any of them helped much in scan speed, but that's just a feeling, not a controlled test at all. The number scanned items jump by about 7 every second or two and the file being scanned just shows when the number updates. I was expecting it to show every single file being scanned scrolling very quickly where I can't read it like on my old desktop.

I think I'm going to try msconfig and disable startup items too. I know people here don't recommend using registry cleaners, but anything I can do to declutter besides uninstalling unneeded programs? Is there some Windows system file that's grown over the years that can be cleaned up somehow?

 

[whs]

I think I'm going to try msconfig and disable startup items too

That's a good idea.

I know people here don't recommend using registry cleaners, but anything I can do to declutter besides uninstalling unneeded programs

Cleaning the registry in Windows 7 is a useless exercise and can get you into more trouble.

 

[DavidE]

Is the old WD Caviar 7200 RPM, and the new Seagate 5400 RPM?

You can look through these tutorials for some suggestions.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219576-clean-up-factory-bloatware.html

 

[mjf]

It looks like your C (OS) partition is on the large side. I find ~50GB manageable to image on a regular basis. I'd move fairly static data off this partition and use imaging of this partition on a regular basis. You can backup fairly static data in other ways.
I would not recommend cloning as a regular efficient backup method.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

So, what was the actual cause of the problem and what fixed it? This thread has been marked solved.

 

[see3po]

There is no one particular cause that solved the problem, I did a bunch of cleanup and now it runs a lot smoother. The various links to tutorials other posters have suggested helped and led me to other tutorials: Disk Cleanup, using msconfig to limit startup, looking through and disabling services, uninstall unneeded programs, emptying recycling bin, Malwarebyte and AV scan. I'm not a frequent user of this computer so it was not kept to my "housekeeping standards." Over time junk just piled up.

Upon looking over the Event Viewer, I did see Bonjour has a bunch of errors constantly. Goggled it, seems like others have had same problem. Disabled in startup it for now, considering uninstalling, but I'm not familiar with Apple stuff I don't know if it's needed for the iPhone. If iTunes doesn't work wife's not going to be happy no matter how smoothly the computer runs. Looks like Bonjour is for Apple networking hardware stuff; don't know why Apple would install it since I'm betting not many PC users use Apple network hardware.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thank you. I'm going to be doing the same thing as you—cloning the HHD in my notebook to another one only, in this case, the clone is going to a hybrid HDD—and just wanted to be ready for as many potential problems as possible. The OS install on the notebook is pretty new so, hopefully, I won't run into any "clean up" issues.

 

[GeneO]

Thank you. I'm going to be doing the same thing as you—cloning the HHD in my notebook to another one only, in this case, the clone is going to a hybrid HDD—and just wanted to be ready for as many potential problems as possible. The OS install on the notebook is pretty new so, hopefully, I won't run into any "clean up" issues.

Have you considered imaging the drive and restoring it instead?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thank you. I'm going to be doing the same thing as you—cloning the HHD in my notebook to another one only, in this case, the clone is going to a hybrid HDD—and just wanted to be ready for as many potential problems as possible. The OS install on the notebook is pretty new so, hopefully, I won't run into any "clean up" issues.

Have you considered imaging the drive and restoring it instead?

More work and time that way. Cloning the existing HDD to the new hybrid HDD is a single operation, after which I just have to physically swap drives. With imaging, I would have to make an image of the drive to a third drive, "restore it" to the new drive—two operations—before I could do the physical swap.

 

[see3po]

Thank you. I'm going to be doing the same thing as you—cloning the HHD in my notebook to another one only, in this case, the clone is going to a hybrid HDD—and just wanted to be ready for as many potential problems as possible. The OS install on the notebook is pretty new so, hopefully, I won't run into any "clean up" issues.

Have you considered imaging the drive and restoring it instead?

More work and time that way. Cloning the existing HDD to the new hybrid HDD is a single operation, after which I just have to physically swap drives. With imaging, I would have to make an image of the drive to a third drive, "restore it" to the new drive—two operations—before I could do the physical swap.

Agreed. After I determined the difference between cloning and imaging, I opted for cloning with the knowledge that they are functionally equivalent for my purposes. With other scenarios, imaging might be a better option.

 

[mjf]

Thank you. I'm going to be doing the same thing as you—cloning the HHD in my notebook to another one only, in this case, the clone is going to a hybrid HDD—and just wanted to be ready for as many potential problems as possible. The OS install on the notebook is pretty new so, hopefully, I won't run into any "clean up" issues.

Have you considered imaging the drive and restoring it instead?

More work and time that way. Cloning the existing HDD to the new hybrid HDD is a single operation, after which I just have to physically swap drives. With imaging, I would have to make an image of the drive to a third drive, "restore it" to the new drive—two operations—before I could do the physical swap.

I guess you do what you are comfortable with. I have never bothered with cloning. There may be 2 operations with imaging but it is faster in the end and every image can restore your existing HDD or restore to a new HDD straight out of box.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Have you considered imaging the drive and restoring it instead?

More work and time that way. Cloning the existing HDD to the new hybrid HDD is a single operation, after which I just have to physically swap drives. With imaging, I would have to make an image of the drive to a third drive, "restore it" to the new drive—two operations—before I could do the physical swap.

I guess you do what you are comfortable with. I have never bothered with cloning. There may be 2 operations with imaging but it is faster in the end and every image can restore your existing HDD or restore to a new HDD straight out of box.

Actually, cloning is significantly faster, far simpler, and doesn't require a third drive (or extra space on the original drive, something that isn't always available), especially when transferring to a single drive. Transferring to multiple drives might be faster with imaging.

 

[meebers]

I like cloning myself. D: is my cloned drive, if C: has a problem, just reboot and choose D: as the start up. Its a 30 second operation. The cloning process is a "smart" process. i.e. only clones the files that have changed since last clone. Not to be confused with incremental backup. If I do it once per week, it is a 4-7 minute process, without interrupting your current work. When C: might have a problem, I boot to D:, clone D: back to C: (assuming it was not a hardware problem) The more often I clone, the less amount of catchup I have to do.