Is it my drive or bad cloning software?

So, I've had some problems with cloning drives lately. First I tried to use DriveImageXML, and that didn't work, and then I tried to use Macrium Reflect. Both times, it said the drives have been cloned, but it's completely destroyed the MBR on my computer when I install the other drive. I've had to re-install my OS again.

I don't know if it's the software I've been using, or the drive I've been cloning to. It's a Crucial m4, and every time I put it in, my computer doesn't want to work. Plugging it in this time, the "hit f2 or Del to go to UEFI setup" screen hung for a very long time, and then when it *finally* got to the loading screen, I got the little spinning dots for upwards of 20 minutes before I rebooted my system. Does anyone have any advice on what I should do? I have the clone drive still, and I'm just going to reinstall everything on the original drive, but it's piddling me off.

Anyone experience this problem?

Welcome to EightForums.

Take look this post:
http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/17083-how-migrate-os-new-hard-disk.html

theog said:

Welcome to EightForums.

Take look this post:
http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/17083-how-migrate-os-new-hard-disk.html

Click to expand...

While that's useful, and I'll follow those steps in the future, it doesn't really address my problem. Dead to rights, Macrium Reflect should have copied everything. I'm wondering if, because I have fastboot enabled, does the change to the hibersys file when shutting down cause problems when I put in the new drive, because it doesn't have the latest version? I also don't know if the physical drive is the problem or not. When I would plug in the new drive, because I figured I could just do a straight install on that, the Windows disk didn't even see it, nor did my BIOS.

theog said:

Welcome to EightForums.

Take look this post:
http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/17083-how-migrate-os-new-hard-disk.html

Click to expand...

I take back my previous statement. This might be the answer to my question. I wonder if those other programs didn't support GPTs. Thanks Theog. I'll try this out.

If you use Macrium, you have to get the last release for GPT support.

When cloning a disk. The disk signature might also be cloned therefore it will create disk signature collisions ie. the original disk and the cloned disk might contain the same signatures. Please open elevated command prompt and run diskpart to find out if that's not the case. If it is then just change the disk signature for one of the disk by altering one number and just make sure that it is unique with the rest of the disks.

whs said:

If you use Macrium, you have to get the last release for GPT support.

Click to expand...

I had only downloaded it yesterday when I tried it, so to my knowledge, it was the most recent version.

topgundcp said:

When cloning a disk. The disk signature might also be cloned therefore it will create disk signature collisions ie. the original disk and the cloned disk might contain the same signatures.

Click to expand...

Would this be a problem if I was replacing the original disk though? The two drives weren't intended to be in the system at the same time. I'll try the diskpart command though, see if it tells me anything

My original post was a bit gross, so I'll try to clean it up, and lay out the steps for what I did.
My system was a Windows 8 Pro install on a GPT formatted SSD with 160GB. I was moving it on to a 500GB SSD.

1) Downloaded Macrium Reflect.
2) Plugged the 500GB SSD into my USB 3.0 drive bay.
3) Launch Macrium
4) Selected the first disk
5) Chose "Clone this disk..."
6) Selected the new SSD
7) Chose "Delete Existing Partition"
8) Checked "Copy selected partitions when I click 'Next'"
9) Cloned the drive
10) Powered down
11) Swapped the drives out
12) Powered up
13) Got to the loading screen with the spinning circle of dots, sat there for 20+ minutes.

The first disk in this picture is my current OS drive, the original I was trying to clone. This probably isn't the exact same as when I had it before, as I had to reinstall my OS on it after I borked it. The drive labeled as "GPT Disk 5" on the other hand is the SSD I was cloning to. It's probably the closest thing to what my drive looked like before the crash, aside from the difference in maximum storage space.

I'll admit, I'm mostly knew to the GPT stuff, and until this computer, which is about a year old, I hadn't done anything with UEFI. My original drive cloning adventure was cloning a 60GB win7 SSD to my current 160GB SSD, and Intel included a kit to do that. All I remember is that it rebooted my computer to do it. Could that be part of the issue?