Ali Gator, the same license has been given to me, but when activating it say the same as you, "activation code has been used"! did they provide the same code for us to compete for it, or every one to use the code!
the bad thing, they are quite do not give clarification, let me uninstall it is useless!

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[ Nick ],

Is drive 0 UEFI?

AweClone doesn't work on UEFI drives.
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Peter Blaise, (thanks for response)
Where do I look to find this info - and do you mean the C drive (Drive 0) or the external drive F (Drive 1)?

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[ Nick ],

Yes, the first drive, the boot drive, is usually drive 0, alphabetically C: ( there are reasons it's not 1 and A: ... gotta love random computer geek history ! ).

We OUGHT to be able to identify any drive using today's GOTD MaGoShare AweClone software, right?

Ya think?

After all, it's supposed to be the "... Best ..." at knowing about hard disk drives and being able to copy them, clone them.

Right?

Apparently NOT!

Let's ask another GOTD participant, EasyUEFI:

-- Press the [ Windows ][ R ] keys to open the Windows Run dialog,

-- type [ msinfo32 ][ Enter ] to open System Information window.

-- In the right pane of System Summary, you should see the [ BIOS MODE ] line.

-- If the value of BIOS MODE is [ Legacy ], then Windows is booted in legacy BIOS mode.

-- If the value of BIOS MODE is [ UEFI ], then Windows is booted in UEFI BIOS mode.

More at:

https://www.easyuefi.com/resource/check-windows-is-booted-in-uefi-mode.html

I have no "BIOS MODE" information because my computer has no UEFI BIOS and therefore has no choices of different boot modes and different drive layouts, unaware that being a single mode = what is now known as "legacy" mode ... like when Subaru only made one car, so never gave it a name, until they made another car, then having to name the original the Subaru Legacy, I guess.

The only way I know how to change from an UEFI boot and hard drive layout to NTFS legacy hard drive boot and layout is to

-- change all BIOS settings to "legacy boot" and no UEFI,

-- then reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system from scratch,

... which I do the moment I take a new computer out of the box.

The only time I have ever experience UEFI boot is just before a long series of swear words filling the room and emptying the building.

Just saying.
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Brian, depends upon your OEM... one of them may be a system partition to enable bitlocker encryption of the boot drive as a later option another could be a diagnostic partition made for and by your OEM designer... really they could be almost anything some tech designer figured was a good idea and thought nah the end user will never want to create their own partition so it's fine if we use up all the 4 primary partition locations in a MBR based hard drive! They may be GUID drives that can have more than 4 primary partions in which case ignore my gripe about OEM's using up all the MBR partition slots LOL!

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[ Brian ],

Yes, I know what those non-drive letter partitions are for.

; - )

Oh, you want an explanation?

=8^o

They are your computer's and Windows resources for pre-boot and intelligent transfer of control from boot to the Windows partition, plus recovery ( where [ F10 ] or other "reset to factory default" boot options hide ), and so on, and there may be one or more at the end of the drive, also ... plus unpartitioned space if the drive's sector count numbers don't match and align with Microsoft's neatness expectations for beginnings and endings ... sometimes I expand a partition into the empty space, sometimes I partition it as a drive letter for data storage like it was a permanent thumb drive.

Clone the entire drive ... or install Windows on the target drive first, then clone only the Windows partition from the working source drive to that pre-formatted WIndows target drive, whatever works.
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starvinmarvin, License code for AweClone for Mac:
DL9JI-NWLY5-GNN53-NUGLB-6QWU3

Jean Baljuw, The developer of the software. We are publishers.

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[ Mike ],

Thanks for the exploration, especially the SUPPLEMENTAL COOLING FAN reminder ... I have all my hard drives running under 99° Fahrenheit, often at or below room temperature: "live by heat, die by heat", if it feels warm to the touch, it's dying ... I've installed as many as 6 or more supplemental PC fans ( many salvaged from old dead PCs and power supplies ) in each desktop / tower PC aimed directly at hot-spots like hard disk drives, memory and processor chips, and especially video cards, but laptops are hard to cool, so I drill and Dremel the cabinet ( when disassembled ) around the hard drive, then use flat or squirrel-cage fans powered by external AC adapters and external USB power supply adapters to blow directly on the hard drives ( when assembled ).

I usually clone hard disk drives back and forth via an old desktop / tower computer that has 4 or more SATA sockets, 2 to boot it's own disk and disc drives, plus 2 for adding the two drives to be cloned back and forth, because I find USB cloning to be too slow to support a cloning-checking-tweaking-settings-cloning-again-checking cycle -- and even the oldest slowest SATA desktop is faster than USB, so folks, keep or acquire at least one old "workbench" PC ( used start at $25 or less, I find them in the trash room of apartment buildings daily, free ).

Now, CLONE wise ...

Do you or ANYONE have any experience with THIS software making an IMMEDIATELY BOOTABLE CLONE?

Yes or no?

If yes, what hardware setup and software settings worked for you?

How about a different "shape" clone, that is, cloning a 1 TB to a 320 GB, or visa-versa, and then immediately booting the clone?

Thanks.
__________

Back to your general info post:

"Cloning" is a great way to backup, and hard disk drives are cheap, so if we clone our boot drive as soon as it's prepped and ready to go, that is, Windows installed and updated to current, with our main applications installed and registered ( before restoring or creating our data ), we can CLONE the new boot drive, and set the clone aside as an emergency swap after an inevitable crash, installing it as our internal boot drive, and immediately starting up and running ...

... then reattach the just-crashed drive as an external drive, scrub it of infections, copy the data to the internal drive, and then CLONE the working internal drive to the useless external drive, and set the external drive aside as the next emergency boot drive to be used after a crash.

Leapfrog or toggle the drives back and forth over time to quickly recover from unbootable crashes, and clone again and again whenever we want a backup, though a third ( and fourth and fifth ) drive is probably best just for data backup without the need to boot from the data-backup-drive.

Thanks for sharing and keeping us tech savvy, [ Mike ].
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Hi Mike! The sequence at switch on is as follow:
1. Preparing auto repair
2. Computer diagnostic
3. Auto repair not possible. Options: Switch off, Advanced options
4. Advanced option:
5. Adv.op. :Troubbleshot
6. Restore point: made a restore from saved restore point. Did not help.
7. Start up repair: no change.
8. Start options: Tried most options incl. Fail Safe, non of them worked.

In this case I wish I had a cloned disk

Hans, User ettings in the "Windows Defender Security Center" may be blocking access. It is called "Controlled Folder Access". See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4046851/windows-10-allow-blocked-app-windows-security AND https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-10-controlled-folder-access-an OR search MS Windows Support for "controlled folder access in windows 10."

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[ Dudley S ],

UEFI?

This software seems to be NTFS, so, not for you.

Their specifications say:
__________

File system

FAT 12/16/32
NTFS/NTFS5
EXT 2/3, exFAT
HFS/HFS+
Others
__________

"Others" does not include UEFI, apparently.
.

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... I love the voting here at GOTD ( not ), apparently some folks think that looking up the technical specifications for the software offering of the day, and bringing them into the discussion thread is not useful.
.

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[ Gary ],

If your computer boots via UEFI, then Magooshare Aweclone will not see any boot drive.
.

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[ Delta Vee ],

If your computer boots via UEFI, then Magooshare Aweclone will not see any boot drive.

You can clone 2 external drives, one to the other, though.
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Blue, License code for AweClone for Mac:
DL9JI-NWLY5-GNN53-NUGLB-6QWU3

Egmont, same thing happened to me. When I uninstalled my pc rebooted without notice. Just awful!!

Egmont, Do you try to install Windows or Mac version?

muhozah, I have tried to type the key still I can not register the software, it give the same error message, "License key has been used"
please tell what is going wrong!

muhozah, Do you try to install Windows or Mac version?

Alexa, I am installing on the latest version of windows 10 pro 64bit,

Eddie, no the other one; setup exe

Eddie,

Because image backup & cloning apps require a driver to copy Windows files that are in use when Windows is running, there are no portable image backup or cloning apps available AFAIK. The only exception may be an app's bootable USB stick when the app lets you create one. And in that case the software on the USB stick will usually only run when you boot to that USB stick, assuming you can even access the app's files [often stored in a .wim file, it can get complicated].

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[ mike ],

What you are saying is that the portability is not the problem, but the need to boot from another drive than the drive being cloned is the problem.

Got it -- thanks for the differentiation between "portable" and "on bootable media".
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Frank,

Hi Frank, here in Australia we use “A lot” to describe plenty.

Sorry this upsets you. However your comment is useless, please if you have something useful I’d like you to provide it.

Also can confirm hash checks match that of EaseUS getting dodgier.

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[ Matthew P ],

Do you think they are the same companies underneath their marketing presentations, perhaps trying to open new markets, perhaps hiding from bad reputations, or maybe they cross-license?

Inspect and research some more and let us know what you find.

Sometimes I even inspect Trademark registrations at the US Trademark Office and see who signed them -- are they the same for both companies?

CLUE!
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Tes ter, Norton Ghost can duplicate a hard disk entire without going through win platform .

Eddie, I use Ghost 2003 on my Dell Deminsion 8200 to do backup images and also clones. It works fine. It will not work on Windows 10 .. Some say Ghost 11.5 does work on Windows 10, but I can not get either version to work with the USB Keyboard, Mouse or External Drive when using a Ghost Boot CD on the old Dell. I have Acronis TruImage 2017 which can boot from the CD or USB Drive and that will see the above devices. It also will work on Windows 10 computers.

Eddie, my research indicates norton ghost went EOL in 2014

Tes ter,
Used Acronis True Image in the past few months - free with purchase of Crucial SSHD
Cloned fine, but restricted to cloning only.

Bruce, funny. I did the same with my work's 8250 during its early days. :D

Richard, yep. Symantec killed its consumer Norton Ghost. Its enterprise Ghost lived on. :(

Ant, Tes Ter, My version of Acronis TruImage is the 2017 which I paid for. It lets it install on 3 computers and the cost was very reasonable. I do not mind paying a one time fee to buy software, as long as the cost is reasonable. I despise software with time limits or where you need to renew the license each year. (unless the only thing that happens is you do not get upgrades or updates if you do not renew)

TK,

I haven't used AweClone with a bad or failing drive, but in case it helps at all, the only problems I have had using other software is if/when the NTFS file tables have recorded one or more bad sectors. In that case all of the software I tried, for image backups or cloning, refused to work because of the bad sectors. What I did was Copy the partition, which resulted in new NTFS file tables that didn't list any bad sectors -- then image backup or cloning apps worked again.

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[ TK ],

Great question -- does it skip, copy as much as it can, or exit in error?

Of course, to "fix" unreadable data, folks can use free Microsoft [ ChkDsk /R ], but that may just leave bad sectors in place, waiting to trap cloning software, especially on PATA drives ( SATA drives may mask bad sectors and lie, presenting as logically pristine ).

And folks can maybe recover some data from bad sectors and maybe make bad sectors usable again with non-free [ SpinRite ] or [ HDD Regenerator ] software, or definitely-not-free hardware from ACE Laboratory and others.

How about cloning TO a "damaged" drive ( I've never actually seen a "perfect" truly error-free "undamaged" drive ! )?

=8^o

.

TK,
It should work fine. Any hard drive with a bad sector is automatically set aside and won't be read. Basically is skips over bad sectors, therefore cloning with this software should not be affected in any way. I have bad sectors on my main hard drive and that drive automatically skip being read when it is running. The only thing is you can only have so many bad sectors before your drive totally fails. If your files aren't affected by the sectors, all should be good to back up.

Robert, not stricktly true, 1) sector by sector cloning of a drive which is what this ones description says it does WILL try and copy ALL sectors including previously undetected by chkdsk and yet to be remapped by firmware (current pending SMART variable indicated sectors) Current pending sectors are only ever remapped to the spare pool of available never normally used sectors. 2) Until that is done no standard sector by sector file system agnostic cloning program will know to skip the bad sectors UNLESS its copy and error handling has been programmed to handle failed sector reads gracefully, either skipping the LBA sector in both source and destination OR copying over as much as can be read from the bad sector and logging the faulty read and then continuing. You'd be surprised how many spare sectors exist on the modern high capacity magnetic hard drives. They are not cheapskates like SSD manufacturers are that have no spare stroage cells that you are not told are part of the starting capacity. I was not asking from a position of ignorance or lack of knowledge on the operation of hard drives and file systems and the built in tools. But challenging the utility of this at the moment one NEEDS to migrate to a new hard drive because the old one is failing or has failed sufficiently to make migration a necesiity and before one has spent tens of dollars on a commercial hard drive repair program like HDDregenerator or Spinrite just to enable a commercial disk clonng product to function... and risking further degredation of the failing drive by the extra exercising the repair tools do to the failing drive... when better functioning drive cloning software will handle the failed/failing sectors properly or in known manner and avoid the extra stress on the failing drive that having to attempt repair on it before attempting to clone it... and before you say just re-install the operating system from setup discs to the new hard drive... and restore your regular backups... well on OEM machines usually the inital factory install is bulk activated to the hardware configuration and the license on the certificate of authenticity is NOT used until you try and install from a generic windows setup disc... so cloning the original factory installed windows is vastly prefered as it leaves an unused OEM license key that can be saved until really needed like in the distant future when the motherboard fails and you want to migrate to new laptop but keep the existing operating system and installed programs or move the entire thing to a virtual machine under the latest 128Gbyte RAM hexadeca core tablet in a few years time.

There was a fork of the linux dd called ddrescue that specificly added the option to skip bad sectors instead of the default failure... and another variant that used smart algorithims and database to allow use of mulitple source images with faults in different logical sectors that allowed the tool to find the previously missing bad sector from one source drive from a different source drive to hopefully create an absolutely clean new drive. I imagine those multiple partially failed clones of each other would have come from a RAID mirror array...

Peter Blaise, I would never use CHKDSK /R to fix bad sectors on a magnetic hard drive! It just scans the surface and does several retries on an errored sector it finds and IF it gets a good one it should copy the entire cluster to a new unalocated cluster and mark the old complete cluster as bad sectors AND if it cannot get a good read I believe it throws away the cluster that contained the bad sectors unreadable data and one ends up losing even more than just the damaged sectors worth of data... I would normally use hddregenerator rather than spinrite even though technically spinrite might recover more of the original bad sectors bits of data but it genrally works a weak drive too hard to get its results and can send a failing drive to its coffin before a workable clone can be made. It all depends upon why the failed sectors are there if I attempt to recover the data and re-use the drive or do extreme measures to clone the data off the drive ASAP before it goes pooft!

Endomondo, from the description:
"AweClone offers sector by sector technology to help easily and securely clone hard disk drive, system hard drive or external device. "

this program claims sector by sector cloning. I know of other software that can, MOST cannot, even file based cloning software can and do fail if the bad sector is in the filesystem data structures or in any active file on the file system and not in some previously allocated but since deleted files space that won't be touched by file based cloning software.

mike, have a look for ddrescue and a similarly named windows port which are customised forks of the linux dd command. There are specialised tools out there written by those that had the need and did the work rather than some software house looking to make a product to selll to the masses.

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[ TK ],

As we say, to each their own, use the most appropriate tool possible.

[ ChkDsk /R ] does not "fix" a hard drive, but may mark clusters as bad so the OS operating system stops falling into clusters that contain bad sectors as you panic to find ways to access your data, ... and, of course, keep a supplemental cooling fan on the drive to keep it cool, especially while [ ChkDsk /R ] is chugging and scrubbing every cluster end to end.

Note that [ ChkDsk /R ] also marks EMPTY clusters as bad if found to contain bad sectors, so it's not just a panic data recovery tactic, it's also a "don't go there, operating system" preventative technique.

[ ChkDsk /R ] is mostly useful and powerful for older, less intelligent PATA and earlier drives, since SATA and later drives tend to manage themselves internally and hide their blemishes from the operating system.

And [ ChkDsk ] is FREE ( and sometimes available as [ ChkNTFS ] ).

I'm not sure what is your caution against [ SpinRite ] over [ HDD Regenerator ], especially if the drive is kept cool by supplemental cooling fans, and especially considering your acknowledgement that [ SpinRite ] has more sophisticated data reconstruction technology.

For me, [ HDD Regenerator ] has trashed data in it's bulldozer attempts to make a drive error-free, where [ SpinRite ] has never trashed data for me, ever ... but we each have our own experiences, and sometimes it hard to know which tool is best until after trying an inappropriate tool, I suppose.

"But the drive is dying, I must hurry" wise, I will add that is it important to inspect everything, especially the mechanicals, to disassemble as far as possible and clean and "refresh" all metal-to-metal electrical contacts, cable ends, sockets, especially under the drive's on-board circuit board ... I use alcohol, a fiberglass brush, and Caig DeOxIt acid/oil cleaner/preservative, though even just alcohol and Q-tips will do for the less-well-prepared.

I have had drives come back to life for a week or so, then die again, only to reveal that the circuit-board-to-power-and-motor contacts were still intermittent due to contact surface corrosion, and once really really really cleaned, the drive came back to life will all data intact, and has lasted without failure for ... years, so far.

I think that our point, you and I together, is that "data recovery", "cloning for the purpose of migrating from a supposedly failing drive", may be unnecessary if the drive is not really failing, but just needs maintenance, including physical maintenance, and just needs temperature controls to keep it cool, real cool ... and so, just downloading and running some migration software may not be the savviest approach to a misbehaving hard drive -- we must inspect deeper and closer, and teach ourselves and learn what is really the problem.

Who knows, maybe we have lost permission to write to and read from our [ Temp ] directory, or our swap file has become 0 size ... and our "clone" will misbehave exactly the same, if it boots at all!
.

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[ TK ],

PS, yes, [ SpinRite ] DID trash data once -- ONCE -- for me, and only once ... back when we used to [ FDisk ] without [ Format ]ting, then used [ DeBug ] to edit the drive sectors-per-cluster count, and then [ Format ], which inherited the custom sectors-per-cluster setup to better match cluster size to file size and reduce slack ... [ SpinRite ] v1 and earlier ( it's up to v6 now ) was unaware of custom sectors-per-cluster sizes, and was hard-wired to just presume that any drive was Microsoft's [ FDisk ] default, and so [ SpinRite ] bulldozed it's way through the drive, re-writing everything as if it were Microsoft's default sectors-per-cluster, leaving a jumbled mess ( which was okay, it was just a test drive -- we often reformatted drives over and over using different interleaves to test which was fastest in a particular computer, we loved wasting time ) ... chagrined at how frustratingly clever customers can be, Steve Gibson, the author of [ SpinRite ] modified [ SpinRite ] to "deal with it" without data loss.

Other than that one test, and feedback to Steve Gibson, [ SpinRite ] has never trashed data for me, and I've been using [ SpinRite ] since v0 ( I'm a beta tester ).
__________

That said, Dmitry Primachenko / Dmitry Postrigan, author/s of [ HDD Regenerator ] have improved from prior to current versions to allow a primary quick scan for errors, then work only on the errors, not the whole drive, whereas [ SpinRite ] has no equivalent "quick find and repair" feature ... [ HDD Regenerator ] uses 1, maybe 5 re-reads before re-writing, whereas [ SpinRite ] will build a statistical database of 2,048 reads before deciding what to re-write, hence the longer time, greater recovery accuracy, and the need for more responsible cooling via supplemental cooling fans.
__________

Anyway, has anyone BOOTED a cloned drive made by MaGoShare AweClone, and if so, what OS and drive layout? NTFS only, right?
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