TeraByte Unlimited

Hi. I am trying to image my Dell Inspiron 15 5510 Windows 11 laptop with IFW. The version is 2.99, so I know that it is very old but I am hoping that it still works with a newish UEFI laptop like mine.

The laptop has two M.2 NVMI SSDs, both being nominally 512GB. I am trying to image the system drive onto the other drive. There is plenty of space to do this. All went well until about 2/3 of the way through byte-for-byte validation. At this point an error popped up saying that byte-for-byte validation had failed.

There is documentation on the TBU website about such failures, suggesting that there could be a memory fault causing this. I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic and no memory errors were found. I know that this tool is not the best for this purpose and I have tried to use Memtest86+ to do a more extensive test, booting from a USB stick. However, I have not been able to make this work. I have been able to create a bootable memory stick, with Memtest86+ on it, and the system tries to boot (Secure Boot turned off) from it, but this just throws up an error. The Dell laptop does not support legacy BIOS, so I have to use UEFI.

Earlier, I tried to create an image using a portable USB hard-drive as the target. However, this was very slow and was very picky about the size of the RAM cache; it was either too small or too large.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

I had the same issue a couple of years ago, and switched to "Validation".

No issues since.

Thanks OldNavyGuy. Over the many years that I have used IFW, I have always used byte-for-byte validation and never had a failure till now. However, this is the first time on this machine and the first time with UEFI and imaging between two SSDs. I am wondering whether the use of Trim may be affecting the integrity of the process.

V2 isn't going to support your new machine properly.

Gordon2M wrote: Sat May 03, 2025 6:50 pm Thanks OldNavyGuy. Over the many years that I have used IFW, I have always used byte-for-byte validation and never had a failure till now. However, this is the first time on this machine and the first time with UEFI and imaging between two SSDs. I am wondering whether the use of Trim may be affecting the integrity of the process.

I never had an issue with byte-for-byte validation...until I did.

System was Windows 10 22H2, non-UEFI, and imaging from an internal SSD to an external USB HDD.

I tested Trim on and off, and it made no difference.

Thanks for the reply, TerabyteUnlimiited. By "properly", do you mean that 2.99 is totally unsuitable for imaging between two SSDs? Is it the fact that SSDs are involved that is the problem? Can nothing be done in "Settings" to solve any issues?

If I want to upgrade to the most recent version of the Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite, is there an upgrade path or do I have to purchase the Suite as if I was a new customer?

Thank you.

More having to do with UEFI/Windows versions. V2 is not supported.

Gordon2M wrote: Sun May 04, 2025 1:27 pm If I want to upgrade to the most recent version of the Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite, is there an upgrade path or do I have to purchase the Suite as if I was a new customer?

This KB article has the upgrade discount information:
https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/kb ... formation/

Thank you TBU for the upgrade information.

I have just realized that I did upgrade from ver 2.99, so I have ver 3.64 available. Would this be suitable for imaging between 2 SSDs on a UEFI machine?

Thank you

You could try it. It is a much more current version than 2.99. However, using the current version is recommended.