2015-05-23

[SOLVED] Samsung Data Migration "An error occurred while writing to the Target Disk" 301001

QUICK ANSWER:
Make sure your source drive is Disk 1 and target is Disk 2 (whether that is forced via physical connections or configured in your BIOS) -- please leave feedback if there is a better way to articulate this answer!

Read on below for more details if you need them...

Today I was required to clone a Samsung 840 EVO SSD that has been intermittently failing ever-increasingly in the past couple of weeks.  My new drive is an 850 EVO.

I connected the 850 EVO via a Thermaltake USB 3.0 dock.

The Samsung Data Migration software happily detected both drives (although the software listed my 840 EVO as a "Generic- Compact Flash USB device"), but when I started the clone, after about 8 seconds, the software stopped with the following error:

"An error occurred while writing to the Target Disk"
(with the error code 301001)
Perplexed because it detected the drives fine, I began investigating.

After playing around with a few ideas, I had the thought that maybe it didn't like the fact that I was plugged into an external dock.

Unfortunately I didn't have any extra cables, so I had to unplug a secondary internal drive to be able to plug my 850 EVO in.  This worked like a champ and I'm about 46% finished cloning as I'm writing this.

I began writing this with the intent to tell my readers that you need to plug it in to the internal and not use an external adapter.  However, with further investigation, I discovered the following in Samsung's Data Migration Software manual (English - other languages here) under "Limitations" on page 5 of the PDF:
#5. "On systems with two(2) drives of more (e.g. "C:", "D:", and "E:" drives) with the operating system installed on the "C:" drive, only the first two drives will be cloned.  The "System" partition that is created during Windows installation is automatically replicated.
Now I may have read this incorrectly, but it suggests to me that you need the Source disk as your first HD and the Target as your 2nd (whether that's configured through plugging into the correct ports on your motherboard or set in your BIOS I am not certain at this time) for this to work.

I think it worked for me because I limited myself to the two SATA drives so there would be no confusion (though that only happened because I needed to use the storage drive's SATA cable and power.  LOL

I would love to hear from you if you have had a similar situation... especially if you kept more than two drives connected and/or if you successfully used a USB/SSD dock/adapter.  I would imagine those with thin laptops that can't connect a second drive would need that to work.

I hope this helps save someone some time!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi,

Thanks so much for your info. I was trying to clone an EVO 840 256GB SSD to a brand new 850 500GB SSD via a no-name USB adaptor (it's worked fine for a couple of years). I kept getting "...error...writing to Target Disk.". I even tried running the Data Migration program in Safe Mode (hint: Don't bother!).

After coming across your blog, I opened the case (Desktop PC) and replaced the SSD on the DVD drive's connections. This then made the boot drive as Disk 1 and the new drive as Drive 2.

IT'S WORKING!! :-)

Interestingly, when I restarted the PC and before I launched the Data Migration program, Windows 7 informed me that it has successfully recognised and loaded drivers for the new 850 SSD. This had not happened when it was plugged in via the SATA/USB adaptor. I wonder if this was relevant??

Thanks.
Chris
Brisbane, Australia

Dun said...

Hi, I am facing the same issue. And the source disk of my pc is disk 0 and the ssd installed in the optical drive port is disk 1, I tried searching change the disk 0 into disk 1 method, but did not find any, could you kindly show me how you did that?

Than you!
Regards,
Dunzhi

That One Guy said...

@Dunzhi - Do you only have two hard drives connected? If so, and you are still seeing problems with source and target disks in the migration software, will you try swapping the SATA connections at the motherboard level? (make sure the computer is powered off first, of course)

Hopefully doing so will swap the drives appropriately for you to be able to do your clone.

Good luck!

Dun said...

Hi, I opened the pc cover and swapped the two drive connections. And now the SSD is disk 0 and HDD is disk 1(I can see it under disk management ), but somehow Data Migration software asks me to insert SSD...

Any ideas?

Regards,

Dunzhi

Dun said...

Hi, thank you for your help. I just reinstalled the system into the SSD. And everything is fine now.

Regards,

Dunzhi

That One Guy said...

I'm glad you got things working for you. Too bad you weren't able to get the clone to work.

Anonymous said...

I have just bought the 850 samsung and was having the same problem with the error, so i unpluged one of the other samsung ssd and hooked the 850 up and unplug my external drive and ran the data migration program worked beautifuly.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your posts. I had a similar issue today with a 500GB 860 EVO that was physically installed on the 3rd SATA connector (SATA_2 on the MB) (original HDD on 1st (SATA_0); BD-R on 2nd (SATA_1)). I got the error "Error reading from disk 301001..." (or similar) within about 30-60 seconds of starting the clone operation. Once I saw this post, I switched the new SSD to the second SATA port (SATA_1) and everything seems to be copying fine.