Does MBR Disk Clone Work?

aiArtisan

Disk Clone MBR Disk fails.

Ventoy MBR USB > Partition Assistant Pro 9.15 WinPE ISO

Legacy BIOS

HP i5 x64 Desktop 2013

Source HDD 500GB 2013

Target SSD 2.5" 1TB Sandisk 2023

USB 2.0 ports

     Booted Ventoy in Legacy BIOS mode, launched PA WinPE successfully. Confirmed target disk MBR, not GPT partition table. Source internal SATA, target external USB 3 to SATA adapter. Clone aligned for SSD, Intelligent-Sector, not exact-sector; clone successful. Shutdown, remove stick. Removed HDD, installed SSD internal SATA.

     Boot Legacy BIOS SSD,

BSOD

The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.

File: \Boot BCD
Error code: Oxc000000f

Troubleshooting:

PA > rebuild MBR

LazeSoft > oneclick fix > rebuilt MBR, rebuilt BCD, fixboot, etc.

Windows 10 > Startup Repair

Diskpart > bootrec /fixboot > bootrec /fixmbr > bootrec /rebuildBCD

Diskpart > lis dis > sel dis 0 > lis par > sel par system-NTFS-partition#   > active

What caused this error, and how do I fix it?

aiArtisan

If I use BU, backup, restore, it works with no error. Does not require universal restore. Why would backup restore work, but not clone? I am confused.

admin

@AiArtisan, If you don't mind, could you try to do the system clone again via AOMEI Backupper?

aiArtisan

     I spent 2 days on this. Here are the results.

     In these tests, I used Windows 10 PC internal SSD to external M.2 NVMe SSD to internal SSD. Almost always the 2nd internal disk was on a different PC.

     When using Partition Assistant (PA) in the first clone, it will always fail in the end, it doesn't matter what the 2nd application or setting is. Every other combination of application & settings succeeds.

     The goal is to find what glitch is causing the BSOD result referenced in the original post. The goal is not to find methods that work, I already know many methods that work. Therefore, I did not test BackUpper (BU) system clone method, that was not my goal, the scope is only Disk Cloning method, and the BSOD problem.

     While the chart below always has 3 disks, as you saw in my original post, even if I merely use 2 hard drives, it also results in BSOD BCD error, so it doesn't matter if I clone to 1 disk or 2. In this chart, when the result says "Bad", that means that the Aomei product reported 2 successful clone operations, but after reboot, Windows 10 reports BSOD BCD error. The Aomei products never reported an error in the application or operation. I always used intelligent sector, not exact sector-by-sector method.

     Admin, please send this to your development team, and reply with why the PA Disk Clone method always results in BSOD BCD error on 3 different PCs, and with 2 USB stick methods, thank you.

aiArtisan

Corrected 1 cell.

Also, the "Windows Installation" at the bottom refers to using PA inside of a regular Windows installation, instead of a WinPE, like the others.

admin

@AiArtisan, We might need to check and compare the BCD files to analyze the problem. Could you offer the BCD files on the source disk and cloned disk? And, please also offer screenshots of Windows Disk Management so that we check the layout of the source and target disks.