Question Unlikely wear in a 9 month old 500Gb SSD

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Sebastian42

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Dec 2, 2016
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I like to keep backups of my system, rather than do roll-backs to a Restoration Point, so for years I have cloned my system every week to a partition on a larger hard drive. Last December, I started using an SSD instead of a spinning disc HDD, to store those successive copies of my system. Recently I needed such an old clone, but failed to achieve a bootable HDD, as they all required REPAIR (which did NOT make the drive bootable) when I tried to boot from a clone of one of the partitions. So I bought a new large SSD, created partitions on it, and cloned my system to those partitions; when I clone the partitions back to a smaller drive, they succeed in booting. So something has happened to the original SSD that NOW prevents the creation of bootable clones from its partitions - the new SSD allows it and so should the old one, which has had only 9 months of once-a-week 'work' so can not be 'worn-out'. I'm interested in what damage could have been done - and so if it can be reversed.
 

mxnerd

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Jul 6, 2007
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The fact is that if you only clone a system partition thinking that you will also clone the boot sector, you are wrong. You have to clone the whole disk in order to boot, or you will repair the disk all the time and still maybe not able to fix it.
 
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Sebastian42

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Dec 2, 2016
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I do clone the whole disk to one of a number of partitions on the target disk. Then when the need arises I expect to be able (and have in fact done it) to clone that partition to a disk which I can then boot. Moreover (again I have DONE it) I can mark the just cloned partition as ACTIVE, and then I can boot directly from it.
 

mxnerd

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Everyone here basically is telling you the same thing. It has nothing to do with SSD, HDD or even NVMe or disk error. What matters is which disk cloning software you were using? And it's MBR or UEFI (which requires a GPT partition) boot? You probably changed the way how motherboard boots (MBR or UEFI) or partition types of the disk in the past 9 months. It could render your system non bootable.
 

Billy Tallis

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Aug 4, 2015
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I do clone the whole disk to one of a number of partitions on the target disk.

Are we to believe that your cloning process results in a partition on the backup disk containing literally everything from the source disk, including the boot sector and partition table—embedded at the start of a partition rather than at the start of a disk? That's so thoroughly non-standard that I simply cannot believe any automated "user friendly" sort of backup tool would let you do that. And it certainly would not result in a bootable backup.
 
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Sebastian42

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I create the partitions to start with, and then ask the cloner to place the clone in one of those partitions AND IT DOES IT, and if I mark it as ACTIVE I can boot from it.
 

Billy Tallis

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Aug 4, 2015
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I create the partitions to start with, and then ask the cloner to place the clone in one of those partitions AND IT DOES IT, and if I mark it as ACTIVE I can boot from it.

That's not the whole story, which would be obvious if you would actually inspect the partition tables on your source and backup drives. Possibly your tool is converting the MBR from the source disk into a series of EBRs nested inside the primary partition you have selected as the destination of your backup, and then adding a bootloader to the real MBR of the destination drive in order to chain-load the bootloader cloned off your source drive. If that's what's happening, I can think of at least a few ways it could go wrong.
 

Sebastian42

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Dec 2, 2016
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It may well be that your 'possibly' is 'actually' - your details are way over my head. But if you can see ways that the 'actual' may have gone wrong, and could be prevented from going wrong, then I think we could be on the way to a solution.
 

mxnerd

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To verify what you said is true or not, I downloaded Caspter 11 and run it in a VM,
which has Win10 installed on the 1st MBR disk, and a 2nd 100GB MBR disk, creates an NTFS partition with 30GB, left with 70GB empty space.

As you can see, when using copy disk, you can't even select empty space on 2nd disk as destination disk. The 70GB empty space doesn't even show up.

casper1.png

casper2.png

casper3.png
 

Sebastian42

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Can you think of a way I can prove to you that I can and have been doing that successfully ?

and for years - except for the troublesome SSD. I use Casper v8 - have found no need to upgrade - it still does an excellent job.
 

mxnerd

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Can you think of a way I can prove to you that I can and have been doing that successfully ?

and for years - except for the troublesome SSD. I use Casper v8 - have found no need to upgrade - it still does an excellent job.
Ask Casper for support then.

I just copied the 60GB partition (not whole disk) to the 70GB empty space on 2nd disk, and marked it as active. Removed 1st disk and tried to boot, the VM just can't find the boot disk.

won't boot.png

The boot info entries are in the most front area on a disk and not in any partition. You can't just copy a system partition to another partition on another disk and wish it boot. No software that I know will do that.
 
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mxnerd

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Just post pictures here, no need to send it to me. There is no secret here. Just erase/block the area you don't want to show.
 

Sebastian42

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Dec 2, 2016
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It's your call. You SHOULD be interested in evidence that someone else can get results different from yours. If you change your mind, tell me so and I'll post the screenshots, but when it is NOT near midnight as it now is here.
 

UsandThem

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May 4, 2000
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This thread has run it's useful course at this point.

If
after following the advice already given by several users on how to fix the issue, the OP can create a new thread if any additional help is needed.

AT Mod Usandthem
 

Sebastian42

Member
Dec 2, 2016
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The faulty 480Gb SSD mentioned in my previous thread was fixed by doing a CLEAN in elevated command prompt - which wiped everything, but restored its ability to accept BOOTABLE clones in its partitions. Much thanks to all who contributed ideas, even if in the end they were not the needed solution. I'm still happy to post screen shots if I am told exactly what they should show.

Moved post from CPU forum and merged into previous thread.

AT Mod Usandthem
 
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