Disc clone failure - Software says destination drive is in use when it's not
I am trying to clone my C drive (120 GB) to my D drive (2TB). My AOMEI Backupper Pro is saying that my cloning destination drive is in use, and keeps asking me if I want to 'continue' in 'restart mode'. But saying 'Yes' to this simply restarts the computer, and AOMEI does nothing beyond that.
I have removed all the files and folders from my D drive. I don't see how it could be 'in use'.
Below is a screenshot of the error message.
AOMEI Error message
"Something" has an open handle on that drive.
- Get yourself a copy of the process explorer.
- Select menu item
Find -> Find Handle or DLL - Type in D: or C: or whatever you are trying to clone.
- The results in "Process Explorer Search" should show you the culprit.
Either kill the offending task (probably safer) OR close the open handles via the gui (probably less safe as the app won't have time to cleanup.)
This might also clue you into some POS program doing something that it shouldn't be doing.
If it is the windows explorer, it is probably a 3rd party shell extension but microsoft code can also be keeping handles open while doing crap like trying to make thumbnails or search indexing. Yes, I read that you have no files there but I can't tell you what the explorer code is doing under the hood.
If for some reason (which I have never seen myself), you don't get any hits on the drive you are searching for, either a device driver or root kit is holding a handle open. I have never seen this but it is theoretically possible.