Question SSD SATA drive disappears after cloning to it

[Leon1339]

Sometime back I configured my C: drive to be a ssd using the M.2 port. I wanted to add more storage with a new ssd SATA drive.
I formatted the drive and it appeared on File Explored as H: drive. I then loaded the reflect cloning software and cloned the C;
drive to the new SATA drive. After some time the process was successfully complete . I looked in File Explore and the drive was not there.
I loaded Disk Manager and the drive was unallocate with no partitions with a black bar above the drive. I have tried cloning to this drive
about 10 times trying to make sure that I was doing it correctly. What am I doing wrong? Thank you for your help.

 

[USAFRet]

Wrong steps after cloning.

This is the Windows OS drive?

The FIRST step you needed to do was:
Power OFF
Physically disconnect the old drive.
Attempt to power up with only the new drive.


What specific drives are involved here?

Does the system still boot up with ONLY the original drive connected?
Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.

 

[Leon1339]

Sometime ago I decided to get rid of the old spinning drive and replace c: drive with a samsung evo plus 2Tb
that I installed in the M.2 slote on the mother board. Everything was working fine but I wanted to install a ssd
sata 2Tb drive for more storage. I also have an other 1Tb ssd m.2 drive in the pci slot with a expansion card.
I took the original sata drive out and discarded it when I installed the ssd on the mother board (m.2) slot and
assigned it to be C:

 

[USAFRet]

Sometime ago I decided to get rid of the old spinning drive and replace c: drive with a samsung evo plus 2Tb
that I installed in the M.2 slote on the mother board. Everything was working fine but I wanted to install a ssd
sata 2Tb drive for more storage. I also have an other 1Tb ssd m.2 drive in the pci slot with a expansion card.
I took the original sata drive out and discarded it when I installed the ssd on the mother board (m.2) slot and
assigned it to be C:

So you cloned, and threw out the original C before verifying the new one actually worked?

Details on ALL these drives.
Make and model, please.
Also, the motherboard.

 

[fzabkar]

Can you show us the Partitions window in DMDE? There was no need to format the new drive, so I'm wondering what actually happened.

https://dmde.com/

 

[Leon1339]

Please read my complete text you will see that my computer has been working great for many
months. Of course I made sure the ssd on the MB was working before discarding the old spinning drive.

My question is: After installing (just today) a new ssd sata drive and formating it and assigning the drive letter
H: to it. I then loaded Macruin Reflect cloning software I cloned C; ( ssd on the MB) to the drive H:.
After about 2 hrs the software said the clone was complete and successful, then I looked for it on Windows
Explore and the drive H: that was there before I cloned was now gone.

 

[USAFRet]

Please read my complete text you will see that my computer has been working great for many
months. Of course I made sure the ssd on the MB was working before discarding the old spinning drive.

My question is: After installing (just today) a new ssd sata drive and formating it and assigning the drive letter
H: to it. I then loaded Macruin Reflect cloning software I cloned C; ( ssd on the MB) to the drive H:.
After about 2 hrs the software said the clone was complete and successful, then I looked for it on Windows
Explore and the drive H: that was there before I cloned was now gone.

And I remain confused, awaiting further details.

 

[fzabkar]

A DMDE Partitions window will explain what actually happened, not what you wanted to happen.

 

[USAFRet]

Please read my complete text you will see that my computer has been working great for many
months. Of course I made sure the ssd on the MB was working before discarding the old spinning drive.

My question is: After installing (just today) a new ssd sata drive and formating it and assigning the drive letter
H: to it. I then loaded Macruin Reflect cloning software I cloned C; ( ssd on the MB) to the drive H:.
After about 2 hrs the software said the clone was complete and successful, then I looked for it on Windows
Explore and the drive H: that was there before I cloned was now gone.

Cloning the C drive to some other drive that started with the drive letter H....the target drive will no longer have the drive letter H.

Unless you take special pains to have it be something else, whatever physical drive the system boots from WILL be the C drive.

 

[Leon1339]

Not sure how to send the Disk Manager image on this forum. Please give instructions

 

[USAFRet]

Not sure how to send the Disk Manager image on this forum. Please give instructions

Upload your pic to imgur.com, post the link here.
You do not have to create an account at imgur.

 

[Leon1339]

I found that it is working great I will just use it as a storage drive....forget trying to make it a backup drive.
Thanks for your help.

 

[Alan Alan]

Your not alone, are you using windows 11. Check you disk manager and see if the drive you're cloning to a READ ONLY. I'll wait for your response, I'm having the exact symptom. It can't even clone over a read only drive. And a can't change it to write enabled. However everything is fine in windows ten.

 

[Leon1339]

Yes I am using Win 11. I am looking at Disk Manager and don't see anything about read only. I did find that
as soon as the cloning starts the disk disappears from Win Explore and never reappears after the cloning is
complete. I gave up trying to clone a backup and just using it for storage. If you come up with a solution please
share it with me. I believe that my drive is read/write because I can write to it when using it for storage.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes I am using Win 11. I am looking at Disk Manager and don't see anything about read only. I did find that
as soon as the cloning starts the disk disappears from Win Explore and never reappears after the cloning is
complete. I gave up trying to clone a backup and just using it for storage. If you come up with a solution please
share it with me. I believe that my drive is read/write because I can write to it when using it for storage.

Yes, it will disappear from File Explorer during the clone operation.
At that point, it has no drive letter.

Also, a clone is not good for a backup procedure.
You use Images for that.

Cloning is good for changing the drive right now. Not to stash away for later potential use.

 

[fzabkar]

Yes I am using Win 11. I am looking at Disk Manager and don't see anything about read only. I did find that
as soon as the cloning starts the disk disappears from Win Explore and never reappears after the cloning is
complete.

The cloning tool always attempts to "lock" the source and target drives. This is to prevent other applications, or the OS, from writing to them during the cloning operation. When you formatted the target drive (this was unnecessary and pointless), Windows mounted it and made it available to other applications. This created a potentially problematic scenario.

Edit: The reason that the clone doesn't reappear is most likely due to a signature collision. That is, Windows now sees two drives with the same signature, so it mounts only the first one.

 

[USAFRet]

and never reappears after the cloning is
complete.

And you shouldn't be poking around in it after the clone anyway.

When the clone process is complete:
Power OFF
Physically remove/disconnect the old drive
Power up and attempt to boot from only the new drive.

 

[Alan Alan]

Please read my complete text you will see that my computer has been working great for many
months. Of course I made sure the ssd on the MB was working before discarding the old spinning drive.

My question is: After installing (just today) a new ssd sata drive and formating it and assigning the drive letter
H: to it. I then loaded Macruin Reflect cloning software I cloned C; ( ssd on the MB) to the drive H:.
After about 2 hrs the software said the clone was complete and successful, then I looked for it on Windows
Explore and the drive H: that was there before I cloned was now gone.

Yah, that's suppose to happen. Windows is always a C drive. So in you cloned it your new drive will be the C drive, That is taking into account you actually entered your bios and set the new drive as the first boot selection. Did you go into the bios and do that?