PSA - You can not Clone-backup Win 7.

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The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
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Spent most of the day trying to Clone my HDD to upgrade to a new drive. Tried Norton Ghost 15, Easeus Disk Copy, Drive Dumper...all made good clones but when you boot up you get a blank screen with "This is not a Genuine Windows Copy" in the bottom right corner.

Called Microsoft and after about 2 hours and 3 different techs, they came to the conclusion that you can not clone your HDD to restore or replace Windows 7. They said the only way to upgrade your drive was to reinstall Windows and reactivate. Finally, I just went for a system restore from image and got it done...after about 8 hours of banging my head. They said that this is true for all versions of Win 7. What a PITA! Can't believe they would do that.
 
razel

razel

Platinum Member
May 14, 2002
2,337
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Interesting... I used paragon partition manager 10 (the free full version given away months ago) and a bundled acronis from Kingston to clone win7 (32bit and 64bit) several times across several different hdd/ssd and two different machines (laptop, desktop) and never ran into such a problem. When I did the clone, it was a direct copy where both drives were plugged in and it went from one drive to the other. There was no image created.

Was windows 7 already activated before the clone? Were Ghost 15, Easeus, Drive dumper full copies and not evaulations? Regardless, pretty interesting you were having problems. I have a feeling MS phone support was probably just blowing you off and agreeing... since it's easier than trying to figure out why or explaining since you're up and running. :)
 
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EarthwormJim

EarthwormJim

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 2003
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Have you tried Acronis with a sector-by-sector approach?

I have yet to try to restore an image of Windows 7 yet, but Vista didn't care one bit.
 
The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
4,741
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91
EarthwormJim said:
Have you tried Acronis with a sector-by-sector approach?

I have yet to try to restore an image of Windows 7 yet, but Vista didn't care one bit.
Click to expand...

Drive Dumper is a low-level cloner. What MS told me was that the different unique ID on the drive would trigger the activation block and that the only way around that was to reinstall. Sounds like BS to me too, but I spent the better part of the day trying to find a work-around and couldn't.
 
P

pjkenned

Senior member
Jan 14, 2008
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www.servethehome.com
Odd.. Two ways I have done this:
1. Free Seagate Clone tool (assuming you have a seagate or maxtor drive). Used this when I wanted to see if I could copy a Win 7 installation from a 1TB SATA disk to a SSD.
2. Windows Home Server backup/ restore. Not exactly a real clone, but I actually use it to store configs and just restore the backups of the config I want.

I'm probably jet lagged and totally missing something.
 
RebateMonger

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
11,586
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Are you removing the "old" drive from the system before booting to the clone? Leaving both disks attached causes Windows to have a fit and folks have been getting the "This copy of Windows is not Genuine" message.

Vista would demand Activation when you moved it to a different disk. Not a big deal, but different from XP. XP's Activation point system didn't consider a disk change an immediate Activation issue like Vista did.
 
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The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
4,741
34
91
Yah I had removed the old drive. I have a 5.25" bay SATA dock that I can yank HDDs in and out of quickly. After I cloned I put the new HDD on SATA-0.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
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The Sauce said:
Drive Dumper is a low-level cloner. What MS told me was that the different unique ID on the drive would trigger the activation block and that the only way around that was to reinstall. Sounds like BS to me too, but I spent the better part of the day trying to find a work-around and couldn't.
Click to expand...

Did they tell you what ID they were talking about? Because if it's the "serial number" generated during a format, that's easily changeable.
 
Gillbot

Gillbot

Lifer
Jan 11, 2001
28,830
17
81
Umm, i've done this three times already with Acronis. I think it was the version provided by WD for free.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
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SunnyD said:
If anyone is using the logical disk serial number in their software, they deserve to have their software stolen.
Click to expand...

I vaguely remember some software that did, but that was a long time ago and I can't remember what it was.
 
The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
4,741
34
91
Gillbot said:
Umm, i've done this three times already with Acronis. I think it was the version provided by WD for free.
Click to expand...

Which version of Win 7 are you using? I heard a rumor that you could only clone-backup Pro and Ultimate. I have Home Premium.
 
M

mooseracing

Golden Member
Mar 9, 2006
1,711
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tcsenter said:
Use a clone tool that resets the SID.
Click to expand...

Have you read Marks blog on his SidChanger tool he created, the guy from sysinternals that is?


I haven't changed SIDs for about the past 3yrs in a business enviro, all are images are clones with Acronis. For desktops that is, I wouldn't image a server and have multiples live.


As for Win7, Acronis B&R10, I've imaged about 30 Win7 PC's, and also use it for testing in a dev world on servers. No issues here.

Also Win7/Vista Backup works for moving drives.
 
alexruiz

alexruiz

Platinum Member
Sep 21, 2001
2,836
556
126
Interesting.... I haven't had a problem cloning and restoring win 7 ultimate to different disks, and I am using the "ancient" DOS based Norton Ghost 2003.
 
The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
4,741
34
91
mooseracing said:
Have you read Marks blog on his SidChanger tool he created, the guy from sysinternals that is?


I haven't changed SIDs for about the past 3yrs in a business enviro, all are images are clones with Acronis. For desktops that is, I wouldn't image a server and have multiples live.


As for Win7, Acronis B&R10, I've imaged about 30 Win7 PC's, and also use it for testing in a dev world on servers. No issues here.

Also Win7/Vista Backup works for moving drives.
Click to expand...

So what version of Win 7 have you had success with? May just be an issue with the Home versions.
 
J

JAG87

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2006
3,921
3
76
There's no chance of this.

Otherwise Microsoft wouldn't sell one copy of Windows 7 to large corporations.

It must be your license type. Try Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate with an OEM SLP key.
 
E

Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
you guys must be smoking ze crack because how else are you sposed to do bare metal backups and restores. (BESR 2010) for your workers. hell microsoft has a backup app i thought or an appliance windows home server.

slic ftw
 
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