O.T. Missing Folder/files

Remember we have #3hd inside the 8500 at present not the original hd
so should I put the original hd back. I kind of want to because were
doing all this on #3 so far and we need to return to the original hd and
use the clones to test with.

When I have the 1TB hd in the 8500 the external Mrimg hd connects and
the Patriot Key connects but not the external #4 hd. We put #3 inside the
8500 to see if it would connect with it but it did not.

I tried testing the external #4 hd on the 780 to see if it would connect
and it did not. So #4 hd must be bad because it should of connected
with the 780 .

https://postimg.cc/jnqsZfWG

I tried the unknown hd in the external case but again nothing.

https://postimg.cc/fSRHHWMH

Yet if I put the Patriot Key in the 8500 recognizes does all those things its
suppose to but none of the hd's in the external case do so. Only the external
hd with the Mrimgs does. So this leads me to believe the hd itself is bad.
How about I put the 780 #2hd in the external hd case and see if it connects
to the 8500? It should.

Yes, the pictures say it loading driver and ready to use but there are no popups
to open files and identifying the drive as I: etc. like the Patriot Key. I went into
disk management with the external hd connected but it doesn't show anything
and it shows it's online.

https://postimg.cc/KKZJc7WK

I think its a good idea for me to switch back to the original hd because I can't do
any work with the #3 hd in the computer.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
Remember we have #3hd inside the 8500 at present not the original hd
so should I put the original hd back. I kind of want to because were
doing all this on #3 so far and we need to return to the original hd and
use the clones to test with.

When I have the 1TB hd in the 8500 the external Mrimg hd connects and
the Patriot Key connects but not the external #4 hd. We put #3 inside the
8500 to see if it would connect with it but it did not.

I tried testing the external #4 hd on the 780 to see if it would connect
and it did not. So #4 hd must be bad because it should of connected
with the 780 .

https://postimg.cc/jnqsZfWG

I tried the unknown hd in the external case but again nothing.

https://postimg.cc/fSRHHWMH

Yet if I put the Patriot Key in the 8500 recognizes does all those things its
suppose to but none of the hd's in the external case do so. Only the external
hd with the Mrimgs does. So this leads me to believe the hd itself is bad.
How about I put the 780 #2hd in the external hd case and see if it connects
to the 8500? It should.

Yes, the pictures say it loading driver and ready to use but there are no popups
to open files and identifying the drive as I: etc. like the Patriot Key. I went into
disk management with the external hd connected but it doesn't show anything
and it shows it's online.

https://postimg.cc/KKZJc7WK

I think its a good idea for me to switch back to the original hd because I can't do
any work with the #3 hd in the computer.

Robert

1) Use Disk Management. (Start : Run : diskmgmt.msc if you can't find it)

2) Don't forget to use the scroll bar on the bottom
pane of Disk Management, while using the XPS 8500.

That's because I think the disk entry for the external
is hiding down there.

When I see the driver load like that, it's time to check
Disk Management. And only when satisfied that Disk
Management is nominal, then go check File Explorer.

Paul

I put the 1Tb hd back in the 8500 and put the #3hd in the
external case and tried to connect it but same as before.
I checked disk management also

https://postimg.cc/vgxfLX2S

https://postimg.cc/WhGKwwQ3

https://postimg.cc/hJj5gWhz

I logged into my account to access disk management

https://postimg.cc/WhGKwwQ3

https://postimg.cc/hJj5gWhz

and then also followed your instructions but it's not there.

https://postimg.cc/kV0zyYX2

https://postimg.cc/CRXSWNxg

and its not connecting for some strange reason. It's like the
backspace key. It should work and everything else works but
it doesn't. It's very odd.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
I put the 1Tb hd back in the 8500 and put the #3hd in the
external case and tried to connect it but same as before.
I checked disk management also

https://postimg.cc/vgxfLX2S

https://postimg.cc/WhGKwwQ3

https://postimg.cc/hJj5gWhz

I logged into my account to access disk management

https://postimg.cc/WhGKwwQ3

https://postimg.cc/hJj5gWhz

and then also followed your instructions but it's not there.

https://postimg.cc/kV0zyYX2

https://postimg.cc/CRXSWNxg

and its not connecting for some strange reason. It's like the
backspace key. It should work and everything else works but
it doesn't. It's very odd.

Robert

ASMT2105

Mine gives slightly different responses.

USB2/USB3 - no drive == no response on USB bus
USB2 - drive present == partitions mount
USB3 - drive present (OS appears to have no USB3 driver, as it's Win7)

I am unable to reproduce your No Media.

It suggests the drive is present. On mine,
the blinky LED for drive activity, is fully lit
while the drive is not responding. No blinks
to off state, to indicate recovery for the
last line in the table above.

But if the driver says "No media", I don't see how
any utility will be able to access it (like, data
recovery tools). There has to be a row in Disk Management,
for physical access to begin, no matter how corrupt the
partitions are.

I think it's making contact.

I think it's spinning.

But I'm at a loss as to why it says No Media, when if
it lacked a driver, it would be unlikely to get far
enough to put the Notification on the screen.

If you feed the drive into the Macrium Repair process,
there should be enough I/O there to prove it works as
a drive.

I would think, the USB3 hub and Mass Storage Class driver,
they'd be presented by means of the driver for the onboard
chip for USB3.

Also, you would think Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) would
have a yellow mark, if the ASM2105 was not being
recognized properly on the USB3 port.

At least one person had a corrupted partition, when the
ASMT2015 reported "No Media". But I think you've had
some positive response from the drive, and when you put
it in the machine and Boot Repair it, that would prove the
media is fine.

Maybe Device Manager will give us a hint.

Paul

I decided to test the external hd with the 8500 Mrimgs and
it was textbook:

https://postimg.cc/FktWGxgh

https://postimg.cc/sBvTrLTV

https://postimg.cc/jwfvW7Vm

https://postimg.cc/tnt5kG4z

This is what the other external hd should be doing. If this
external hd can connect then why can't the other and I've
changed the Startech cases, plugs etc and hd's? It doesn't
make any sense?? It's like the backspace key and we've
tested everything for that. What the hell is causing this?

Why will the Patriot Key and the Mrimg external hd work
but not the other?

Robert

I put the #4 hd in the 8500 and ran the rescue CD. It did work up to a point
when it wouldn't accept my adding Win 7 as the OS. Afterwards it gave me
a black screen with a cursor with no way to shut down even after holding
down the power button it kept restarting. So I finally powered it off in-between
before it had a chance to boot. Then changed back to the 1TB hd and boxed the
#4hd.

https://postimg.cc/XZM79rpd

https://postimg.cc/FfjFphLq

https://postimg.cc/47sfFjv3

https://postimg.cc/1gZsfbjK

https://postimg.cc/sQTrHxDn

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
I decided to test the external hd with the 8500 Mrimgs and
it was textbook:

https://postimg.cc/FktWGxgh

https://postimg.cc/sBvTrLTV

https://postimg.cc/jwfvW7Vm

https://postimg.cc/tnt5kG4z

This is what the other external hd should be doing. If this
external hd can connect then why can't the other and I've
changed the Startech cases, plugs etc and hd's? It doesn't
make any sense?? It's like the backspace key and we've
tested everything for that. What the hell is causing this?

Why will the Patriot Key and the Mrimg external hd work
but not the other?

Robert


Let's look at the third picture.

https://postimg.cc/jwfvW7Vm

The active is on different partitions on the two drives.

Are these both for the XPS 8500 ?

Or is one a 780 disk, the other an 8500 disk (the 1TB one) ?

*******

I would think, if you applied Macrium boot repair to the
2TB drive, Macrium might behave "baffled by it all". I presume
both of these disks, in Disk Management, are declared as being
GPT disks.

When disks are "repaired by the OS", when there is a boot
problem, usually the OS does not have the means to go messing
around with the structures it finds. It's allowed to do CHKDSK,
but not generally put back an entire set of boot files to go
with the BCD boot menu file. The OS startup repair is not
an OS re-installation, in effect.

Before I go moving stuff on a disk, I try to make sure each
of the partitions, has the files I expect to find on it. The
ESP should have a Microsoft folder on it, with some Windows materials.
The Recovery, I would expect to find a K:\Boot sort of thing,
with the BCD file in it. And that would be the Active partition.
I would feel good then, about moving the Active flag to the
partition with the \Boot\BCD on it. And I would expect the
big C: partition, to have a C:\Windows . With all of the
various structures verified as being in place, if I were to
run the Macrium boot repair on the 2TB, I would then expect it
to work.

So that's the big picture.

Now, we can do things like this with "diskpart".
You could run that from the Macrium Command Prompt window
if you wanted, just before Boot Repair time. (Macrium has a couple
useful icons in the lower left of the Boot CD screen.)

with the 2TB inide the 8500, the sequence would be:

1) Boot from Macrium CD.
2) Find the black Command Prompt icon in the lower left, open it.
It runs as Administrator.
3) diskpart
list disk

select disk 0 # The only disk in the machine

list partition # One of the partitions is 26GB, we select that one
select partition 1 # Now selecting the 26GB partition, might be partition 1.
detail partition # Want to find out whether it is Active
active # Make it Active, if it wasn't Active

select partition 2 # Double-check, only one partition is active
detail partition # Have a look
inactive # Remove the active flag, if it is inadvertently asserted.
exit # quit from diskpart

This is not the whole sequence, this is just to show that the
"Detail Partition", tells you about the Active flag.

https://i.postimg.cc/fbS0Hkpy/active-flag-edit.gif

Paul

I was thinking the external Mrimg hd works because it
was created before I changed the battery and the
present external hd' s don't work because they were
created after I installed the battery although I still can't
believe that would cause all this. If so, Dell must have
known this would happen and is a serious design flaw.
Is Windows not genuine still an issue? If so we may need
to follow the directions step by step in the link you gave.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/e...genuine-issues

As it stands I have the 1TB hd working and #3hd was also
working. So I have at least (1) backup hd for the 8500. I
haven't tested the 780 clones other than booting them after
cloning until the desktop appeared. So I'm assuming they are OK.

The 3rd picture is the 1TB hd in the 8500 with the 2TB Western
Digital external hd connected to it via USB cord with the 8500
Mrimgs on it. I don't know whether they are GPT disks or not
but there's not a thing wrong with either of these two hd's.

Speaking of folder/files I expected the partitions to copy exactly
and that I wouldn't have to resize them. That's why I didn't do it.
So I'm wondering if the 780 clones also have the 900GB of unused
space and I wonder if that could be somehow related to its not
connecting?

Before we start any procedure just which hd are we talking about
doing this to? #4 ? which didn't even finish the Rescue CD because
there was no OS and it wouldn't let me enter one and I had to
emergency power off ? I don't like messing around with the 8500
and doing these emergency power off's when I have no other way
to shut it off. Its not worth the risk of permanent damage to the
8500. One of these times I won't be able to get it back.

So lets be clear on which hd your speaking of and I want a way to
shut it down without me having to press the power button or powering
off the surge protector because I'm in a loop or there no other way
to turn it off.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
I was thinking the external Mrimg hd works because it
was created before I changed the battery and the
present external hd' s don't work because they were
created after I installed the battery although I still can't
believe that would cause all this. If so, Dell must have
known this would happen and is a serious design flaw.
Is Windows not genuine still an issue? If so we may need
to follow the directions step by step in the link you gave.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/e...genuine-issues

If the disk behaves in an even-less-satisfactory manner (instead
of Not Genuine, it freezes), then it might have to be cloned again.
There's no reason to panic just yet. The administrator "slui"
experiment awaits...


As it stands I have the 1TB hd working and #3hd was also
working. So I have at least (1) backup hd for the 8500. I
haven't tested the 780 clones other than booting them after
cloning until the desktop appeared. So I'm assuming they are OK.

The 3rd picture is the 1TB hd in the 8500 with the 2TB Western
Digital external hd connected to it via USB cord with the 8500
Mrimgs on it. I don't know whether they are GPT disks or not
but there's not a thing wrong with either of these two hd's.

I'm just looking at the declaration of Active, and where the
Active is on the original disk. If you're not trying to boot
from the drive, you might not notice.


Speaking of folder/files I expected the partitions to copy exactly
and that I wouldn't have to resize them. That's why I didn't do it.
So I'm wondering if the 780 clones also have the 900GB of unused
space and I wonder if that could be somehow related to its not
connecting?

No, whether the C: is resized or is left at original size,
does not affect connecting.


Before we start any procedure just which hd are we talking about
doing this to? #4 ? which didn't even finish the Rescue CD because
there was no OS and it wouldn't let me enter one and I had to
emergency power off ? I don't like messing around with the 8500
and doing these emergency power off's when I have no other way
to shut it off. Its not worth the risk of permanent damage to the
8500. One of these times I won't be able to get it back.

If the bottom item is #4, then the "strictly off-putting response"
of Macrium, must be answered somehow. And my recommendation, if the
bottom item is #4, is to move the Active. But when I do stuff like
this, repair disks, I also inspect the contents, and it's a lot
harder for me to write up procedures for this. There is a tool called
TestDisk. that can display content even on "hidden" 0x27 partitions
and can also display the content of the ESP partition on a GPT disk.
But the GUI interface is quite annoying.

And I don't really have a good inventory application either. That's
on my TODO list, is re-inventory all my disk drives, and I can't do that
until I get a suitably automated program to help out.


So lets be clear on which hd your speaking of and I want a way to
shut it down without me having to press the power button or powering
off the surge protector because I'm in a loop or there no other way
to turn it off.

Robert

It could be #4.

Remember, what I'm doing here, is putting symptoms and observations
together. The report is "Macrium is asking me all sorts of stupid
questions, as if it can't read anything properly" (as seen in your
pictures). And I'm telling you the Active flag is on the wrong partition,
and the symptoms that result, would be "Macrium goes nuts, doesn't
work the Boot Repair". That's because Macrium uses the Active flag
as a "hint", and the "hint" tells it to look in a particular place,
and the data structure is not there, so Macrium throws up its hands
and asks you is this Windows 8 or something. The reason it is bananas
while boot repairing, is the Active flag being in the wrong
position, throws it off.

Paul

I had the chronology wrong the clones were created before the battery change.

Let's review; we started out fixing the Sea Monkey problem and resolved it by
downloading from the Admin Account, we also fixed the boot menu problem
on the 780 then we addressed the backspace key problem and we spent allot
of time and effort and checked everything and still could not find why it's not
working. We then agreed to move to cloning where it was going along fine with
no problems on the 780 #1, and #2 then started #3 on the 8500. All went well, I
had rebooted to show the desktop and it was logging off when I received the not
genuine message. This came totally out of the blue. We checked and it's licensed
and then changed the battery and its not been the same since.

Obviously #3 did connect at the time otherwise I couldn't of cloned it but whatever
the battery did it's affected every drive I connected to it afterwards as you said.
That's why #3 wouldn't connect even though I had just taken it out of the 8500 and
why the WS external hd did connect because it was created long before the battery
change. That's also why the Patriot Key works because it isn't tainted.

So #3 and #4 needs some work so that the 8500 recognizes them. I can go into the
DOS screen and enter the commands but can I safely logoff?

I see what you're talking about now with the Active. Hmmm strange,..on the 8500 it's
in the Recovery partition and on the external Western Digital hd in I: partition. How
weird? I hadn't noticed that before.

The bottom item is the WD external hd with the Mrimgs for the 8500 so we don't want
to touch it! I was just showing you that it connects just as the Patriot Key does.

So do you want me to put #3 or #4 and enter the commands in DOS? Remember #3
is the only backup hd I have for the 8500 and #4 has no OS. So which do choose.

If I bought new hd's would they work since they haven't been tainted and we could start
fresh? That might be a better option.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
I had the chronology wrong the clones were created before the battery change.

Let's review; we started out fixing the Sea Monkey problem and resolved it by
downloading from the Admin Account, we also fixed the boot menu problem
on the 780 then we addressed the backspace key problem and we spent allot
of time and effort and checked everything and still could not find why it's not
working. We then agreed to move to cloning where it was going along fine with
no problems on the 780 #1, and #2 then started #3 on the 8500. All went well, I
had rebooted to show the desktop and it was logging off when I received the not
genuine message. This came totally out of the blue. We checked and it's licensed
and then changed the battery and its not been the same since.

Obviously #3 did connect at the time otherwise I couldn't of cloned it but whatever
the battery did it's affected every drive I connected to it afterwards as you said.
That's why #3 wouldn't connect even though I had just taken it out of the 8500 and
why the WS external hd did connect because it was created long before the battery
change. That's also why the Patriot Key works because it isn't tainted.

So #3 and #4 needs some work so that the 8500 recognizes them. I can go into the
DOS screen and enter the commands but can I safely logoff?

I see what you're talking about now with the Active. Hmmm strange,..on the 8500 it's
in the Recovery partition and on the external Western Digital hd in I: partition. How
weird? I hadn't noticed that before.

The bottom item is the WD external hd with the Mrimgs for the 8500 so we don't want
to touch it! I was just showing you that it connects just as the Patriot Key does.

So do you want me to put #3 or #4 and enter the commands in DOS? Remember #3
is the only backup hd I have for the 8500 and #4 has no OS. So which do choose.

If I bought new hd's would they work since they haven't been tainted and we could start
fresh? That might be a better option.

Robert

You are allowed to re-clone.

If the attempt to clone to a particular drive didn't go well,
you can remove the contents.

For example, install disk to be "cleaned". Boot Macrium CD.
Open a Command Prompt window using the black icon in the lower left area.

diskpart
list disk === verify the target disk is present
select disk 0 === safety first, always check targeting
clean === this removes partition table, instantly
exit

Notice just how deadly diskpart (command line disk management thingy) is!!!
All it takes is one typing mistake, selecting the wrong disk, could
spell trouble. These are good reasons, for only a disk drive
needing erasure, to be present at the time.

This would cause the one and only disk drive to appear empty
and never before used. The 8500 UEFI BIOS should not be sniffing it
at this point, so it won't boot from it. It would complain there
was no boot drive.

If you have a recent-enough Macrium CD, there should be
a shutdown option around the lower-left area somewhere.
But it's not a very polite shutdown though (doesn't kick out CD).
You can open the tray and remove the CD, before selecting Shutdown,
because Macrium and similar CD constructs, they load the media
content into RAM and accessing the CD is then not necessary.

At this point, you can consider what your next step is. Remove
drive from 8500, place in enclosure ? Install 1TB original drive,
ready to be cloned ? Boot from CD, clone over ?

After the clone is finished, you can even switch over to the
Command Prompt window again, and use diskpart to "review" what
is what.

diskpart
list disk === to review in your own mind, what's in the machine

select disk 0 === examine each partition, check the Active flag
list partition
select partition 1
detail partition
select partition 2
detail partition

select disk 1 === examine each partition, check the Active flag
list partition
select partition 1
detail partition
select partition 2
detail partition

exit

The diskpart interface is a bore, that's for certain. But it
can give the info needed sometimes, before a next step.

These are examples of things I might do, if wishing to verify a
cloned item, before shutdown and moving my materials around
for the test-boot.

You have your note paper. You're keeping track of what each
drive is for, what step you're at currently.

You do the planning, I provide the mechanics... :-)

Paul

The problem with the shutdown on Macrium is that it shuts down Macrium and
reboots. Although this time I removed the CD and it gave me an option of shutting
down or rebooting. It didn't do that with #4 hd maybe because I left the CD in?

I already removed #3 hd and put the 1TB back in the 8500. I'm not understanding
what you mean by boot from CD and clone over? If you mean clone the 1TB hd
that's what we've been trying to do all this time but the external hd's it won't connect.

I have no idea what to do, everything was going according to plan until this not
genuine OS came from no where and screwed and it hasn't been the same since.
We were nearly finished when this happened. I don't know what to do if the external
won't connect, its beyond me and I have been connecting/ disconnecting allot and
changing allot of hd's and trying to keep it all organized at the same time. I have
labeled all the hd, static bags and boxes.

As far as I can see I'm at a standstill as far as cloning with no options because the
drives will not connect because of this Not Genuine OS issue despite being licensed.
It did affect something which is why nothing will connect now. I'm leery of going into
the DOS prompt for the very reasons you gave. I could make matters worst. So I have
no clue as to what to do.

I wasn't having any problems up until #3 and that message. It totally came from no
where so I have no idea how to proceed. If all was well I would say lets finish cloning
and then go back and adjust the partitions on the drives.

Robert

If I buy (2) new hd would they connect to the 8500
via USB so we can resume cloning? If so then that's
what I want to do.

We can play with the #3 and #4 later but I want to complete
the cloning process. That's the main objective in all of this.
To have the cleanest possible hd and then clone it which we
were in the process of doing.

I want to start fresh and finish what we started instead of
wasting time on #3 and #4, lets move on if possible.

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
The problem with the shutdown on Macrium is that it shuts down Macrium and
reboots. Although this time I removed the CD and it gave me an option of shutting
down or rebooting. It didn't do that with #4 hd maybe because I left the CD in?

Possibly. I haven't really studied the logic, to see if
there's a pattern. All I know is, I have five CDs or so,
and at least some of them offer a shutdown. And they all
work the same way, in terms of reading in the .wim file (350MB or so)
at boot time and storing that information as the drive letter
X: as a RAMDisk. That's how the OS is able to continue working
on the Macrium CD, even though you've pulled the CD from the
tray. It's cached as drive letter X: and lives in the RAM.
When the power goes off, all traces of Macrium in the RAM
disappear.


I already removed #3 hd and put the 1TB back in the 8500. I'm not understanding
what you mean by boot from CD and clone over? If you mean clone the 1TB hd
that's what we've been trying to do all this time but the external hd's it won't connect.

One reason for the enclosure to not connect, would be if the drive controller
has a size limit. Now, I have an enclosure with the same chip, and I think
it will do at least a 6TB drive. Or maybe it was tested with an 8TB.

Since your 1TB is back in the 8500, you're free at this point to be
playing with the enclosure and trying various things. The only warning I
have, is to use Safely Remove before unplugging the enclosure and disk
under test. If no Safely Remove item appears in the tray area on the bottom
right, then that's OK, the partitions didn't mount, and there's nothing to
Safely Remove so it can be unplugged again. And switched off.

I tested my controller that has the same part number as yours (the ASMT
number). With no drive connected, mine won't respond. It doesn't say
anything about "No Media".

*******

I think your rear USB3 ports may work better with this. This is a
driver for the Intel USB3 interface, suitable for Windows 7 x64.
The driver says it's for a C216 PCH (Southbridge). You can
check in your Programs and Features, using an Administrator account,
and see whether it's already installed.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...00&oscode=w764

You can check in your Programs and Features, using an Administrator account,
and see whether it's already installed.

"Intel USB 3.0 xHCI Driver(USB3.0 driver)"

I could find one discussion thread, where a user notices the front two
USB3 ports work better than the back two USB3 ports. Which is a deviation
from how it normally works. The USB3 ports should have blue tabs on them
to denote Superspeed.

Summary:

1) Investigate driver situation. See if Programs and Features already
has that driver. Install it, if you cannot find any other reference to it.

2) Try the front USB3 port with the enclosure. The documentation for the
C216 chipset, draws no distinction between ports 1,2,3,4, but the user
found a difference, which is "unusual".


I have no idea what to do, everything was going according to plan until this not
genuine OS came from no where and screwed and it hasn't been the same since.
We were nearly finished when this happened. I don't know what to do if the external
won't connect, its beyond me and I have been connecting/ disconnecting allot and
changing allot of hd's and trying to keep it all organized at the same time. I have
labeled all the hd, static bags and boxes.

As far as I can see I'm at a standstill as far as cloning with no options because the
drives will not connect because of this Not Genuine OS issue despite being licensed.
It did affect something which is why nothing will connect now. I'm leery of going into
the DOS prompt for the very reasons you gave. I could make matters worst. So I have
no clue as to what to do.

Microsoft is ultimately responsible for Activation issues. If you use
SLUI 4 ("phone activation"), then stay on the line, a human will
be made available for activation issues. They should NOT ask for a
credit card. You can explain to them your OS was perfectly Genuine,
until this happened and not it's Not Genuine and "fix it". What they
can do at their end, is have you run SLUI as Administrator. In which
case it might resolve on its own. They can also generate an activation
code on their console, which you can use to enforce activation.

The only problem with this, is they get huffy if you do this
too many times. But they also have to remember, the hardware hash
that appears on their screen for each occurrence, is exactly
the same as before. It's not like you're copying the OS and
selling it. Each of your queries would be against the same
XPS 8500 with the same serial number equivalent.


I wasn't having any problems up until #3 and that message. It totally came from no
where so I have no idea how to proceed. If all was well I would say lets finish cloning
and then go back and adjust the partitions on the drives.

Robert

I explained that one source of "Not Genuine", is a time clock which
is off by years. As for any other reasons, there is no documentation,
and what we rely on, is one Microsoft MVP and his impression of
how it works. The story is necessarily thin on details. It's
because of this uncooperative nature, that

MICROSOFT HAS TO FIX THIS

Only Microsoft can cut an activation code. I can't debug the
root cause from here. It could (remote possibility) be related
to a RAID setting, but at this distance, my microscope just
doesn't work that well. And I don't know if the activation
console of the "helper" at Microsoft, includes a detailed
analysis of why the thing is Not Genuine. Their task is to
evaluate your forthrightness, cut you a code if there
are no warning signs that anything is amiss.

If they ask for details, you can say you were "preparing
a replacement hard drive, for the original", which is exactly
what you were doing.

Paul

Robert in CA wrote:
If I buy (2) new hd would they connect to the 8500
via USB so we can resume cloning? If so then that's
what I want to do.

We can play with the #3 and #4 later but I want to complete
the cloning process. That's the main objective in all of this.
To have the cleanest possible hd and then clone it which we
were in the process of doing.

I want to start fresh and finish what we started instead of
wasting time on #3 and #4, lets move on if possible.

Robert

See other post.

You haven't checked out the FRONT USB3 ports.

Paul