Last week, I bought a 2015 11-inch MacBook Air to replace my 2012 MBA model. I used Migration over Thunderbolt during initial setup, so, of course, every part of the Mac side of things transferred perfectly. Both macs running 10.15.5 Catalina.
I want to pass the 2012 MBA on, so I needed to move my trusty, rarely-used Windows 10 Boot Camp partition. After some search, I came across Winclone and laid-down the $40 to purchase it. After forcing a CHKDSK, I made a WIM-based image of the Boot Camp partition and placed it in the meager remaining storage of the MBA.
I then went through the sysprep.exe process to ‘Generalize’ (which for some reason required uninstalling Twitter and 1Password from Windows), then Shutdown. As that was processing, I created a new ExFAT partition on the new MBA to become the space for Boot Camp. I then placed the new MBA in Target Disk Mode, and used Winclone on the 2012 to perform a volume-to-volume migration.
(Note that I have never knowingly used any method of sleeping/hibernating in Windows on this MBA, nor was there any mention of checking for this in twocanoes’ KB instructions for the process.)
After several hours, I was presented with a dialogue telling me that the migration was a failure due to the presence of a hibernation file on the original Boot Camp volume and that the $40 Winclone was unable to open the drive Read/Write to remove it. (“The Windows partition could not be mounted Read/Write to create the boot folder at the root of the Windows partition. Mount the Windows partition Read/Write, delete hiberfil.sys, and then try setting legacy bootable manually.”)
After a huge series of hoops jumped-through, I finally downloaded a trial of Paragon NTFS for Mac. Using it via another Mac, I was able to mount both MBAs in Target Disk Mode and remove the hibernation files from each.
I went back into Winclone and had it set the Legacy Boot method manually on the 2015 in Target Disk Mode. I booted the new Mac holding option. No Windows boot listed. Back again to Winclone and the 2015 in Target Disk Mode. After the necessary side trip into Recovery to disable SIP, I set it to EFI boot, and Windows subsequently appears as a boot choice. But, when I boot it, the display is off. I can hear Cortana in the background suggesting I click this or that… but I can’t see anything. The Screen Reader it offers is also no help.
So, I wipe the 2015’s Boot Camp partition, and start over with a volume-to-volume clone from the 2012, now sans hiberfil.sys. After several hours, the clone operation completes and I set the boot method to EFI. Again, Windows appears in the option boot. But, it still boots to a black screen with Cortana asking me what I want to do.
Frustrated, I try to boot the 2012 into Windows in Boot Camp. Guess what? Now it also boots to a black screen with Cortana asking me what I want to do. Dang.
Oh, but wait! I made that WIM image of the original, fully-functional Boot Camp volume! I’m not going to lose my data!!
So, I launch Winclone again. I restore my WIM-based image file to the local Boot Camp volume. But, oh!, there’s yet another random problem with the app, the image, or the process! My restore won’t work. I’ve lost my trusty Windows Boot Camp, all of its data, all of the programs and documents saved on the drive, and spent $40 to accomplish this disaster.
Please tell me there’s a way out of this that results in a working, recovered Windows 10 Boot Camp with my stuff in it.