Windows 7 Clone Wars

dryfire

New Member
"The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online"

Message when original and cloned hard drives are both installed. There is a "simple, way too simple" fix, which makes the inaccessible hd accessible. It obviously changes the signature and OF COURSE MAKES THE HARD DRIVE NO LONGER BOOTABLE.
Absolutely negates the idea of cloning a boot drive, required recloning, etc. Live and learn.

The cloned drive does not require authorization when booting the original W7 64 bit system.

The cloned drive also boots up on a foreign 32 bit computer, complete with all applications. However the W7 OS was not authorized.

I use a StarTech SATDOCK22R

Jim
They're only putting in a nickel and they want a dollar song
 
Welcome to he forum dryfire. Wish you posted here before you reimaged.
Reimage isnt neeeded.
Just open disk management and right click the area to the left of the offline drive.
Select online and the drive will be placed on line.
Doesn't mess with the drive, doesn't make it unbootable etc.
See link to screenshot below, red arrow points to the area you right click on.


http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c338/fjgold/Untitled-46.jpg


I use a Stardock device myself.
 
Last edited:
Clone Wars Take 2

Thank you for your welcome message Frank.
I guess I was less than clear in my original post, but stand by all of my findings, which I have replicated. I did do exactly what you suggested, "Select online and the drive will be placed on line", and the process makes the drive recognizable in the system, but unbootable as a stand alone drive.
And the purpose of my post is to determine what is being changed in the drive.:razz:

Your friend,

Jim



Jim Stewart
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They're only putting in a nickel and they want a dollar song
 
Now this is strange. I just plugged in my spare drive with cloned duplicates of all my main drive OS's on it in an attempt to duplicate
the conditions you posted about at the start of this thread.
The drive mounted fine with all partitions visible and accessible in explorer.
Diskmgmt showed everything ok, no message about the disk being offline...

The 2 drives are identical as to partition scheme.

The partition structure of my main drive is as follows:

(using linux partition numbers instead of drive letters)

sda1 22.53 GB NTFS XP pro
sda2 87.90 GB NTFS storage
sda3 87.90 GB Fat32 storage
sda5 19.20 GB ext3 Ubuntu Hardy 64 bit
sda6 4 GB linux swap
sda7 19.01 GB ext3 PCLinuxOS 2008.1 KDE
sda8 19.01 GB ext3 Ubuntu Intrepid 64 bit
sda9 19.01 GB ext3 PCLinuxOS 2010 Gnome
sda10 22.53 GB NTFS Win 7

My second drive has an identical structure except that the storage partitions are smaller due to the drive being smaller.
320 GB vs 200 GB.

The partitions on the spare were populated by using Clonezilla to create images of my main drive OS's
and restoring them to their respective partitions.

Of course when the spare drive is mounted using my StarDock device the partitions have different drive letters from the drive letters of my main drive.

But I now don't get the signature conflict??

The spare drive installs in my computer and everything boots fine.

But the fix for the initial situation that I posted, at least in my case did not keep my spare drives OS's from booting.

I don't seem to be able to reproduce the condition now and I don't know why.
Just a strange quirk in Win 7 I guess.
Like the random inability to delete a file or folder. The only fix for that I've found is a reboot at which time the file or folder will be gone.


Hopefully SP1 will fix issues like this.
 
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