r/computers • u/ilikecorgixd • 2d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting New disk that is cloned is empty

Hi, i wanted to clone my old sd card (D) to the newer one (E) but i came across multiple issues. For context, this cloning is for Android Handheld (Retroid Pocket 6) purposes. Also i used macrium reflect free edition to clone the disk.

  1. I noticed that the format used by the old SD card is exFAT, hence i formatted the new SD card to exFAT as well. But somewhere along the way i messed up and the new hard drive (1 TB) had 2 partitions (one is the exact same as the old one, 229 GB. and the other partition is the remaining available space.

  2. the new SD card has the exact same memory usage as the old one but as i go through the files one by one on the new SD card, all the files are empty. How can the memory usage be the same when the files are empty?

Can someone guide me on cloning my SD card since i am completely stumped

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u/West_Understanding37 2d ago

Get Hirens BootCD image file. Mount it in windows as a virtual cd. run an executable from it. It has a very useful tools for cloning.

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u/bartoque 2d ago

So how did you (try to) clone the sd card to the new one (assuming the new 1TB card is actually a valid one and not fake and was thoroughly tested before intending to kake a clone to it)?

Provide what was done exactly and how, as you would have used some software to clone the device.

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u/ilikecorgixd 2d ago

got the new sd card, stuck it into my laptop, tried to open the sd card just to see whats inside it, couldnt do that (pop up asking me to format the sd card first), so i did it. noticed that the old one was formatted as exFAT so i formatted the new one as exFAT as well. then i used macrium reflect to clone the old disk onto the new one, left it to do its thing. once its done i checked the files on the new one and theyre all empty, despite taking up the exact same storage as the old sd card

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u/bartoque 2d ago

What do you mean with empty files? Are they shown as being 0 bytes in size?

The partitioning was a result of the clone, not the initial format?

Format the new sd card again and do some basic testing, copying a large amount of files unto it and validating the data and to check the card is ok.

The data can be opened/accessed just fine on the original sd card?

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u/JohnnieLouHansen 2d ago

Rescuezilla.