Disk Signature reassignment during disk cloning

A clone is an identical copy of one drive to a second drive, which includes duplicating the source disk signature on the target drive.

When cloning, it is always recommended to shutdown after the operation completes, then remove the source drive and replace by the target drive before attempting to boot into Windows.  Booting into Windows with two drives holding the same disk signature can cause serious issues so should be avoided.

Doug,

Cloning is very misunderstood. I can't speak directly to your question of whether TI 2017 will duplicate the disk signature during cloning. I have tested this with TI 2019 and can tell you for sure the disk signature will NOT be duplicated from the source to the target drive. This is very good because having a clone with the same disk signature as the source is very dangerous with modern UEFI/GPT Windows systems.You shouldn't boot a UEFI/GPT system with two drives present with the same signature. Some UEFI systems (not all) will re-write the entries in the Windows BCD file used to control booting. This can actually result in BOTH the source and target disk becoming unbootable when they have the same disk signature. 

To display the disk signature use diskpart.exe from a command window run in administrator mode. Enter these commands:

diskpart

list disk

select disk X     (Where X is the number of the disk in question.)

uniqueid disk    (The disk signature will be displayed.)

exit

If it is important for you to have the same signature in the clone, you can use diskpart.exe to assign the signature of the source to the clone after cloning is finished. Just be sure to NEVER boot with two disks present that have the same signature! Bad things can happen.

Apparently the Clone Tool included with ATI 2019 creates a new Disk Signature with each cloning.

I had no trouble booting.