Clonezilla

I built a Windows 7 workstation image on a Seagate 500gb SATA ST3500 drive and have sucessfully did a Clonzilla disk-to-disk clone to over a dozen of the same model drive. However when I tried a disk-to-disk clone from the Seagate ST3500 to a 500gb Western Digital Caviar Blue it fails. When I try to boot with the Western Digital clone it reports "Drive Read Error". I have tried Fixmbr but it does not help. I tried to download and burn new Clonzilla CDs using the 'stable' versions in both darrik and linux versions. Is it the case that Western Digital drives use something called 'advanced format technology' that Clonezilla does not reconize? I saw some talk about 'realligning' a drive after cloning but it sounds like both more toruble than it is worth as well as likelygoing to require all my applications to be reactivated acfter being cloned. Any insight or comments are appreciated. Thank you.

perhaps i am too anxious but i looks like this fourm is not very active. love the idea od clonezilla, and it has worked well for some time, but it looks like i am going comercial (going to have to buy a market product) becuase i need to get this stuff done. thanks anyway.

Well, not that anybody appears to be reading this or cares... I tried cloning with an older version of clonezilla and it worked. So it appears that the current 'stable' releases have a problem. Specifically: Disk-to-disk cloning of 500gb SATA drives resulted in 'Disk Read Error' and Windows 7 recover tools reported no installed copy of Windows found in any partition. Drive make/models involved: Seagate ST3500419AS, Western Digital WD500AAKX, and Western Digital WD500AACS, all 500gb SATA drives. Windows 7 image built on Dell Vostro 460 failed to clone successfully using Clonezilla 1.2.8-46-i686 and 20110530-Natty Was able to clone sucessfully using Clonezilla 1.2.6-40-i686 So much for 'Stable'. I suggest you try the older version 1.2.6! Good luck.

If you provide more info, it's easier for us to fix the issue. Especially the error messages when cloning. So did you see any error messages when cloning? If so, please post them. Thanks. Steven.

welli tried to reply but just lost the thing i composed. bottom line, i said all i can about this. re-read the above if you care. but if you cared then it would not have taken over a week to tell me that you need more information. in this day and age a week is the functional equivalent as not responding at all... and given the response received no response would have been preferable. at least my post will help others who experiance the same issue as me... i could not find anything on the web about this so i created it to help the next person. whatever clonzilla did to these recent releases should be removed. it simply doesn't work.

Well, since you did not provide error messages, it's very difficult for others to help you. Besides, nobody is obliged to answer you. If you do need some instant support, pay some company and ask for the support. For the opensource/free software world, people do this voluntarily. Sometime people is traveling, on vacation, or hooked by other things.... Please read this before you ask for support in opensource/free software projects: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Anyway, this is the best I can do. Steven.

dude, i am trying to help *you*. i solved my problem by using the older verson that worked. the newer version fails. there was no error message. just a false 'success' message from clonezilla live, followed by a clean shut down of the computer and then the aparent defective clone image that resulted in the the disk read error message from the system. if you are trying to help me, don't. your help is not needed. if you read what i wrote then you would know this. it appears that if you care about improving the product you will re-read my postings and try to learn from them. or if you are another user experiancing the same problem then do what i did and se the older working vesions of clonezilla live and say away from the defective current 'stable' versions.

OK, thanks for your help. The problem is it's very difficult for us to follow your post to reproduce the problem here. Anyway, let stop here, and thank you very much. If others have same problem, please confirm and provide more info. Please also make sure the problem is not due to some programs installed on the MS windows. Steven.

shesh, there is no more infomation than i previously provided. since you aparently can't read or just don't want to hear it i will say it again: Clonezilla live versions 1.2.8-46-i686 and 20110530-Natty fail at making disk to dsk clones of 500gb sata drives in a dell vostro 460 (i5-2400, 4gb). PC: dell vostro 460, i5-2400, 4gb drives used: 500gb sata, Seagate ST3500419AS, Western Digital WD500AAKX, and Western Digital WD500AACS Clonezilla live 'stable' vesions 1.2.8-46-i686 and 20110530-Natty put the clonezilla live iso images on cds. created a windows 7 software image on dell vostro 460 using a 500gb stat drive and then wanted to clone it. booted the dell 460 using the clonezilla live cd (each of the two defective versions mentioned above). excuted a disk to disk clone. clone reported as sucesfully completed. system shut down after prompt. system unable to boot from cloned drive (no other drive installed) system reported disk read error. booted system with win7 cd in safe mode and ran fixmbr but not change. booted system with win7 cd in safe mode and ran fixmbr followed by fixboot but not change. booted system with win7 cd in safe mode and ran scanos and it was reported that no os fond in any partition. booted system fixmbr but not change. researched faq (useless) and google to see if anyone else mentioned a similar problem. thought it might be drive manufacture incompatibility. decided to try older version of clonezilla live. booted system with clonezilla love1.2.6-40-i686 and excecuted disk to disk clone. clone reported as sucessful. system shut down when prompted. system booted from the cloned drive as it should. If you want an error message then ou will have to put one in the next release of the software, but first you have to figure out why it 'thinks' the clone was sucessful when in fact it failed to copy the drive image correctly. go ahead and have the last word. i have wated way too much time on this. you get what you pay for. in this case i got a lot less than what i paid for and wasted a huge amount of time on this. hopefully this will save the next looser from wasting too much time on this same problem with these problematic versions of clonezilla live.

OK. Thanks. The weird thing is no error messages... Then it's very difficult to see why. Anyway, we will try to see if we can reproduce the problem here. If anyone on this forum has same issue, please post, too. Thanks. Steven.

wow!!! what a coincidence, this is so similar to my problem, seagate hd to wd hd. only error coming out: "Drive Read Error" im gonna try your solution now, downloading the exact version you mentioned to steven, please read carefully!!!

-1st sorry if my english is not so good- Hello I got a very similar problem. tested on different Dell Optiplex models with different sources and targets (Seagate, Samsung, WD HDD and OCZ SSD) with both 1.2.8-46 Debian and Ubuntu based. - No error message - The partition are correctly created when choosing disk to disk - The bitmap calculation seems ok - BUT when cames the times to copy files, the transfert speed is really low (like a couple of kB/min) then finally it says that the copy is finished and I can remove the disk and turn off the computer. Ho last detail : I usually try to copy NTSF partitions But one time the 2nd partition was unformatted (RAW) and then the copy seems to work (normal speed rate) Finally i tried the 1.2.6-40 since "seagate-wdc" reported it worked for him and it worked for me too

i finally did it!!! 1.2.6-40 worked for me too thanks so much seagate-wdc u da man!!!

very happy to hear that my positng helped you d1n062 and skankinalcid. was thinking my well intentioned post was just a waste of my time until you guys chimmed in with your feedback. perhaps now the developers will try some more testing on their current 'stable' release of clonezilla live to try to make it a reliable product again.

Guys, Thanks for all the posts. Currently we are traveling, not in office. Therefore we will try to reproduce the issue when we back, and try to fix this issue. Thanks again. Steven.

Oddly enough I ran into this today as well, although my situation deviates a bit. Instead of going from Seagate to WD, I am going from a 80GB 7200 RPM WD to a 150GB WD VelociRaptor. Same issue though. Run Disk to Disk and all seems well then when booting to the new drive it give the "Drive Read Error". It seemed like it took no time at all to copy it over. I wish i would have found this post 20 minutes prior as i already started the Backup to Image process (I will then restore the Image to the new drive). In the meantime I will download the 1.2.6.40 and give that a shot once the Image backup is complete. Hopefully the Disk to Disk is faster. Thanks for the heads up guys!

I too have had this problem. Disk to disk copy has no errors and seems to pass fine. However, I get a disk read error upon reboot. I down graded to 1.2.6.40 and it worked without problem. One item I did notice was that when I did the first disk copy with 1.2.8, when it went to shut down it could not release a lock file in the /var directory. I did not see that when I shutdown with 1.2.6.40 and it worked. Maybe that will give you a clue.

Guys, Does this problem only about cloning MS Windows 7? I tried to clone a windows XP from smaller disk to larger disk, and Clonezilla live 1.2.8-46 works. The cloned XP boots successfully on the larger disk. Besides, how many partitions do you have? Could you please show me the partition table by running: sudo /sbin/parted -s /dev/sda print ? I will try to clone Windows 7 to see if this problem can be reproduced here. Steven.

i don't think it has anything to do with the OS, if you notice, it seems that the problem lies in the brand of HD, it always happens when data is copied to a WD drive. i also noticed since i tried it so many times before using the older version, when clonzilla is writing to the WD drive, it stays at 0% for a long time then suddenly goes 100% ...finished... no errors. something like that. however, in the older version, the progress bar actually progresses from 0% to 100% slowly. i don't know if it means anything. i hope this helps the developers coz ive been using clonzilla for a while and this is the first time i used a WD drive. hopefully its just a bug. by the way, thanks to whoever made clonezilla, in case people don't say it enough. :)

Thanks for the post. I had same issue, had trouble with Clonezilla 20110530, reverted to 1.2.6-40 and am so far getting transfer rate of 4.7GB/min (vs few kB/min and then abort with success message in 3 minutes).

forgot to attach details: source 320GB maxtor target 500GB seagate OS windows xp

If the issue is about the brand of hard drive, then I guess it's related to linux kernel. The linux kernel used in Clonezilla live 1.2.6-40 is 2.6.32, while 2.6.38 is used both in Clonezilla live 1.2.8-46 and 20110530. Is that possible you can give testing Clonezilla live 1.2.9-12 a try? It comes with kernel 2.6.39 so maybe the results will be different. Please let us know the results if you try that. Thanks! Steven.

It has nothing to do with OS (I was trying to clone XP but it occured on the 2nd partition too) or disk brand neither (tried from OCZ SSD to OCZ SSD, Seagate HDD & Samsung HDD). The only persistant parameter I can see is partition format : NTFS On one of my source drive the 2nd partition was unformatted then it worked.

Here some progress... I have no problem to clone MS windows XP, however, I did encounter a problem to clone Windows 7 in the beginner mode. It looks like the issue is on the partclone terminal user interface, so I tried to enter expert mode, and choose "-nogui", and it works. So could you all please try to enter expert mode, and choose "-nogui" and let me know the results? I need your confirmation. Thanks. Steven.

I'll try the "-nogui" thing. But again, my problem occured when cloning XP partition so I'm pretty sure it is not OS related. I'd tend to say it might be more related to the partition type than to the partition content. > Failed on a NTFS primary part. with XP > Failed on a NTFS 2nd part. with no significant content > Worked with a RAW part But maybe your XP partition was actually FAT32 so we could deduce that we got a problem with NTFS parts..