Solved Clone recommendation

larc919 · May 22, 2025

Macrium Reflect Home 8.1 recently failed cloning the UEFI boot part of system drives on 2 of my PCs running Win 11 24H2. Once I finished, neither would boot into Windows. Reflect boot fix failed as well. I'll be needing to clone the system drive in my laptop soon, but don't trust Reflect 8.1 cloning anymore. What's my best bet for a cloning utility that will work properly?

SIW2 · May 22, 2025

The best tool for this is diskgenius free version. Use the os migration ( and add any extra partitions if you want)

It is possible to have multiple target disks but presumably you only want to select one target disk

System Migration: Migrate Windows 10/11 OS to SSDs, HDDs, or USB Disks

This guide shows how to migrate Windows 11/10/8/7 or Windows Server to SSDs, HDDs, or USB disks with DiskGenius without reinstalling everything on target SSDs or HDDs.

www.diskgenius.com

It automatically selects the partitions on the source disk need for windows

if you want to add extra partitions from the source disk it is very easy

To add an extra partition to the migration Click Manage Partitions

Click Add Partition

Select the partition to Add ( in this example it is D )

click OK

I also want to add partition E

clik Add partition again

Select partition E and click OK

that is all I want to add so click ok

can use the arrows to resize partitions on the target disk if desired

glasskuter · May 22, 2025

Some of us here never clone. We restore an image which allows us to restore and resize partition all in one go. You resize by dragging the divider bar to the right of the partition. You do not have do do any formatting of the disk either. Macrium will do it all. Personally, I've had problems every time I attempted a clone.

larc919 · May 22, 2025

SIW2 said:
The best tool for this is diskgenius free version. Use the os migration ( and add any extra partitions if you want)

Thanks very much for your suggestion and detailed guide on using it. Have already downloaded and installed. Will try DiskGenius next week when I will need to clone.

larc919 · May 22, 2025

glasskuter said:
Some of us here never clone. We restore an image which allows us to restore and resize partition all in one go. You resize by dragging the divider bar to the right of the partition. You do not have do do any formatting of the disk either. Macrium will do it all. Personally, I've had problems every time I attempted a clone.

Thanks! I've done that in the past when switching between drives of the same type. But have had a bad experience or two trying to restore from one type of drive to another type, so will be more comfortable cloning this SATA SSD to NVMe.

gunrunnerjohn · May 22, 2025

I use Acronis True Image. Over the years I've had to restore a few images, no problem at all.

JesseRBassett · May 22, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
I use Acronis True Image. Over the years I've had to restore a few images, no problem at all.

I second using Acronis True Image. I love it. :)

RD Mercer · May 22, 2025

glasskuter said:
Some of us here never clone. We restore an image which allows us to restore and resize partition all in one go. You resize by dragging the divider bar to the right of the partition. You do not have do do any formatting of the disk either. Macrium will do it all. Personally, I've had problems every time I attempted a clone.

I may be the only cloner here, I bought 2 different stand alone cloners, but they have worked flawlessly every time.

gunrunnerjohn · May 22, 2025

RD Mercer said:
I may be the only cloner here, I bought 2 different stand alone cloners, but they have worked flawlessly every time.

I have a SATA TO SATA dock and a SATA to M.2 dock, both will do cloning. I just don't have any reason to use them for that purpose.

RD Mercer · May 22, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
I have a SATA TO SATA dock and a SATA to M.2 dock, both will do cloning. I just don't have any reason to use them for that purpose.

This is what I have, I have never used mine for a dock, just for stand alone cloning.

Scott · May 23, 2025

larc919 said:
Macrium Reflect Home 8.1 recently failed cloning the UEFI boot part of system drives on 2 of my PCs running Win 11 24H2. Once I finished, neither would boot into Windows. Reflect boot fix failed as well. I'll be needing to clone the system drive in my laptop soon, but don't trust Reflect 8.1 cloning anymore

The last time this happened to me Fix Windows Boot Problems didn't work for me either. What did work was Redeploy To New Hardware.

However, i think, if you could manage to boot into Safe Mode, it should then boot properly into Windows.

larc919 · May 23, 2025

Scott said:
However, i think, if you could manage to boot into Safe Mode, it should then boot properly into Windows.

That's exactly what worked on both PCs.

gunrunnerjohn · May 23, 2025

RD Mercer said:
This is what I have, I have never used mine for a dock, just for stand alone cloning.

I use them for prepping and testing drives. I had the SATA<->SATA one, but when I got a bunch of NVMe M.2 drives, I got one that could deal with those.

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