'Sector Cannot be Read' after cloning with EASEUS Disk Copy Pro

Evening all.

I would like to ask for some help relating to a cloning issue, which is doing my head in! But first, some short background here: I have a 12-year old Dell OptiPlex 990 SFF, purchased in 2011. Apart from a couple of years spent in storage, the machine has been left running literally 24/7 since it was new. During that time, with the exception of a power supply failure, it has never missed a beat.

At the time of purchase, I replaced the OEM Seagate hard disk drive with a nice Western Digital 2TB Black, 7200RPM. That too has lasted incredibly well, with over 80,000 hours of runtime on the clock. Again, I put this down to leaving the drive running undisturbed, 24/7. The WD Black contained my life-long data, formatted as a single NTFS partition of 1.82TB, and was basically my ‘Master Data’ drive. The machine runs Windows 11, which resides on a 250GB Samsung 860 PRO SSD.

Over the years I have employed various backup solutions, but most recently, I have been using Easeus Partition Master and Easeus Disk Copy Pro to perform a full clone of my D: drive on a regular basis. The data is copied onto an external USB drive – a 2TB Western Digital Passport Ultra.

Last October I went away on holiday to Turkey for a week, and I stupidly shut the machine down. When I returned, I noticed that Partition Master would no longer allow me to clone the data drive, instead producing a ‘Sector Could not be Read’ error practically straight away. A whole raft of errors then started to appear on CHKDSK, and during a surface scan of the drive in Partition Master. I knew that the drive had begun to fail, and that I needed to act fast.

I had been planning to migrate the old WD Black onto an SSD for some time, but kept putting it off. However, with the drive now failing, this was the push that I needed! So I ordered a 2TB Samsung EVO 870, attached it to the machine using a Startech USB-to-SATA cable, formatted it to test that everything was OK, then set about cloning the failing 2TB HDD onto it.

As expected, I was unable to clone the drive using Easeus Partition Master, because the same ‘sector could not be read’ error appeared every time.

I was able to get round the problem by using Easeus Disk Copy Pro in ‘Sector by Sector’ mode, which took around 20 hours, and appeared to complete successfully. I made sure to select the ‘Target is an SSD’ option, to ensure correct 4K Alignment. During the operation, Easeus Disk Copy warned me of around 100 sectors which could not be copied, which, under the circumstances, didn’t seem too bad. In the end, only a few photographs seemed to be missing, so I restored these from the last successful backup I’d made, a few months earlier.

With the clone complete, I then set about removing the old WD Black HDD, and installed the new SSD inside the machine. No problems there, and everything seemed to work well – I now had two 2.5 inch SSDs mounted together in a Corsair Dual SSD mounting bracket, so everything seemed hunky-dory. I also ran CHKDSK /B on the newly imaged drive, which released around 416k of bad sectors, resetting the bad sector count to zero. I should probably also mention at this stage that both SSDs are partitioned using the GUID / GPT system.

The problems came when I attempted to run a backup on my newly installed Data SSD (D: drive). To my dismay, Easeus Partition Master still refused to clone my newly installed EVO 2TB SSD onto the external USB drive! The same error persisted: ‘Sector could not be read’. Just like when I attempted to clone the failing WD Black, the error occurred almost straight away, within 30 seconds or so of commencing the clone.

I ran CHKDSK again on the new SSD – absolutely no faults found. I did a full disk scan – no bad blocks. But somehow, it seemed that there was some kind of corruption that had been transferred from the old failing HDD to the new SSD. That same corruption was apparently stopping me from cloning the newly migrated data onto a backup drive.

I then scanned the new SSD using various different tools: HDD Tune, Samsung Magician, CrystalDisk Info. No issues were reported. But yet, EASEUS persistently failed during the ‘Reading Partition Info’ part of the clone… ‘Sector Could Not be Read’!

Interestingly, I also attempted to clone my new data drive using Macrium Reflect and also AOMEI Partition Assistant. Both of these packages completed the clone without issues. But yet the Easeus products would fail, and these are the ones that I have licences for.

Could anyone suggest what I might try in order to resolve this issue? It’s almost as if there’s some type of sector error right at the beginning of the disk, which is serious enough to stop Easeus Partition Master / Disk Copy from being able to make a clone, but yet not serious enough to show up in CHKDSK, or prevent Windows from accessing the drive.

I know that, if push came to shove, I could probably buy another 2TB SSD, format it, and do a simple file-copy operation from the existing SSD onto the new one, and the glitch would likely be gone. But really, if it can be done, I would like to find and fix the error within the partition that is stopping me from cloning the drive using Easeus.
Thank you to any experts out there for their suggestions!

TLDR: I cloned a failing HDD onto a new SSD using ‘Sector by Sector’ copy. Now, when I try to clone the new SSD onto an external backup drive, the clone fails with a ‘Sector Cannot be Read’ error. CHKDSK and a whole bunch of disk scanning software cannot find any faults. How to fix, please?

• hard-drive

Hello and welcome to the forum. I'm sorry no one has answered you yet, but I'm sure someone who deals with cloning will jump in soon. Many members are in distant time zones and come into the forum late night so I'm sure one of them will have an answer for you.

Personally, I never clone so am not the best to give advise on it. Instead, I image systems with Macrium making sure the image is verified. I image my OS and data drives separately. I then restore the image, letting Macrium handle any needed partition resizing during the restore process if I am restoring to another drive. Neither have I ever had a need for sector by sector copy although I do believe Macrium can do it. For me, imaging makes more sense as a backup method. With Macriums rapid delta restore I can restore an image in 12 minutes.

Good luck.

Have you raised the question at easeus forum?

there may be some log files it creates that will make sense to them.

If I need to clone a disk then I'd always use the Linux DD command or boot up gparted (still Free BTW and will continue to remain so) -- and the interface / GUI is similar to other partition managers so Windows users won't have any trouble using it. Gparted can clone and copy partitions etc too. Of course it's not a full featured backup so no incrementals / differentials or some other features that are in commercial products but certainly more than good enough for basic repairs, copying and cloning. Note when imaging a disk it can be restored via Macrium to different size partitions so long as there's sufficient space (for smaller target disk). No problem of course to larger size disk.

I've had zero problems with using Macium to Image a disk -- I don't usually bother to "Verify" the image as that won't necessarily gurantee a successful restore to the same / another drive. You should test restores every so often !!!!

I think the majority here on these Forums find Macrium perfectly good whether paid or Free and the are satisfied with the product and have encountered very few problems. Its a shame that the Free version is ending soon -- but I suppose it's the same with any business these days --they all seem to need to "monetize" their offerings.

I hope this doesn't again raise up the ogre of Windows becoming a subscription service for ordinary consumers say as Windows/365. If that happens I'll run a VM forever and a day !!!.

Cheers
jimbo

Another reason for using Macrium , its ( proven !) the best software we can use for these jobs ( backups , cloning , etc. )................

Why people try "to clone" a storage unit - which proved to be faulty or failing (cause if you don't know - then yeah, sure, rubbish happens) - is beyond me (well, laziness was the most common excuse - but when it comes to stuff like this - maybe even important data - it can be costly).

Instead, the right approach - is to be eclectic about it (what's worth and can be saved) - and simply try to copy all that can be copied to a different/functional storage unit. Some of that data could even be corrupted - but hey - you saved what can be saved. Just my 2 cents.

SIW2 said:

Have you raised the question at easeus forum?

there may be some log files it creates that will make sense to them.

Click to expand...

Hi SIW,

Yes indeed, I also logged this question with Easeus themselves.

They have suggested that it could be a Windows OS environment issue, but frankly I'm not convinced. Main reason is that the fault also existed on Windows 10, and is still there even after I've migrated the machine to a fresh, clean install of Windows 11.

Alan.

pietcorus2 said:

Another reason for using Macrium , its ( proven !) the best software we can use for these jobs ( backups , cloning , etc. )................

Click to expand...

Hi Pietcorus.

Yes, Macrium Reflect does seem to work well, and will happily clone the SSD in question onto any of my WD Passport Ultra external drives.

I'm just keen to find out why both Macrium and AOMEI seem to handle the clone just fine, while Easeus products fail.

Easeus products not capable for these jobs , maybe after more updates ..........

It seems odd to me that both Macrium and AOMEI are successful while Easeus is having fits. To my mind, that would seem to point the finger at Easeus directly, especially since it is also having difficulties with the new disk. But glasskuter has made a really good point: Have you tried creating a disk image backup using Easeus rather than a full clone or forensic sector-by-sector copy?

If you take a look at posts related to backups / imaging / cloning, you may note that there are a number of posts where people reported having difficulties with cloning while an image backup was successful.

Cloning was more useful in the past when disk imaging was not as flexible as it is today. Most such software these days can disk image to a destination disk that has a different size than the source with no difficulty, even resizing the partitions to properly fit the new drive. In addition, since this only saves the used blocks from the source disk, it may be more likely to get past potential problems.

One more idea: Just in case it is something within Windows (a driver or some software conflict), you might try creating a backup from outside of Windows by booting from your recovery media. I have not used Easeus software myself, but I would image that, like other backup programs, you can boot from the recovery media not only to restore backups, but also to create a backup without booting into Windows. If that works, then it might indicate that something in your current environment is causing difficulties for the Easeus software.

They have suggested that it could be a Windows OS environment issue

Click to expand...

have you tried it from booted winpe ?

Maybe it's just too obvious, but when a program stops working, stop using it!

I've used the EaseUS program for HD management for years, but I've never used it for disk backup.
Because that just didn't seem to be its main purpose. Like, a Corvette, with all its Horsepower, was never meant to pull a plow.
I use a program that was written years ago, for the express purpose of Cloning HD's and backing up partitions.
That was 26 years ago, and that program still works 100% today, because it does not rely on the OS or even the lack of an OS to do its job. It boots up a PC outside of Windows and just does its work independent of what's on the HD it's working with. It will back up everything, but a hole in the disk.

In the past, when I've mentioned the name of that 26 year old program, I've been criticized, ostracized, and slammed for using OLD software. But I just used it again last night and it backed up my C: partition in just 20 minutes and then Verified the Backup Image file.
Years ago, when I was still using the old IDE hard drives, I'd do a backup, followed by a restore, for the perfect DEFRAG.
It worked GREAT! And, never once failed!

Do we learn from the mistakes of the past, or just live long enough to forget, and then repeat them?

Y'all have a Happy Easter now, Y'hear?
TM

" I use a program that was written years ago ".............which program ??

pietcorus2 said:

" I use a program that was written years ago ".............which program ??

Click to expand...

Norton Ghost used to be pretty good at that sort of thing -- before Norton descended into rubbish security software etc.

I suspect the poster probably used something like that.

Cheers
jimbo

The program that I used in 1997, and still use today is "GHOST".
Symantec bought it from the original authors (in New Zealand) back about 1998 and began adding to it.
How the name Norton ever got attached to it, is beyond me.

Originally, the Ghost program was for FAT only and did not understand NTFS. It came to the shop I worked in, back then, on a 3.5" bootable floppy disk. It was just the 'Ticket' for cloning old-small HD's to newer and larger HD's.
Every tech in the shop had his own Ghost boot disk.
It seemed to be so advanced, compared to other software on the market back then, I joked about it being written by little Grey guys, with large black eyes.

Eventually, Symantec fixed the program so it would work with NTFS formatted drives, however it still looked and played the same. It basically had two functions, to backup a partition to an Image File, or backup a whole disk to another disk.
(Called, Cloning)

It can also verify the backup that it's just written. In 26 years, it's never failed me.
(it pains me, to read the forums and see how many guys are having issues with their Backup programs.)
Having a Good, Reliable Backup Program is really important, to PC Security.

The last version of Ghost, that would still boot from a DOS boot disk, was Ghost 11.5.
I still use that version today, booting from either a CD, Flash Drive, or SD Memory Card.
Somewhere out there on the WWW is an ISO for that Ghost 11.5 boot disk. I found it one day, downloaded it and burned it to a Flash Drive. It booted right into Ghost 11.5 and worked flawlessly.
Last I checked, it's still out there!

OK Mates, that's my story,
Happy Easter,
TM

I vowed a long time ago, to never ask someone else to do something that I could not, or would not, do myself.
With that in mind, I did a Google search of the net for a "Ghost 11.5 ISO" and what I found was a file called
"Norton.Ghost.11.5.Corporate.DOS.Boot.CD.iso"
Win-11 was able to burn that ISO to a blank CD.
Using that CD, I was able to boot up my PC to Ghost, run the 'Partition to Image' operation and save the Image File to the second partition on my SSD. (just for speed and efficiency). It worked flawlessly, and was all done in about 25 minutes.
Then I did a "Check Image" (verify) which took about 10 minutes. AOK!

So, that's just one more copy of Ghost 11.5, added to my vast library of CD's, Flash Drives and one SD Memory Card.
Cheers Mates!
TM

Macrium does this all too .............only takes a few minutes to create and check an OS-image !
Using it since Win7 , now in Win11 , never failed...........

Easeus is a b****. It ruined messed up my boot drive.
Where can one still download Ghost? I thought Acronis was the choice of everyone? Also, where's the free version of Macrium?

Yes, EaseUs ToDo let me down when I needed to do a restore and the support was very patronising. I, too, had a disk write error on an eMMC drive, but no tests confirmed it. I gave up and switched to Macrium Reflect. It's never let me down.

Macrium...................