08/06/2014
Currently circulating pirate copies of HDClone 5 may cause damage.
According to information we currently have, pirate copies of HDClone seem to circulate, which can apparently cause massive problems. This misbehavior most likely results from illegal modifications to the original program files. However, intense testing and a revision of the original source code allow us to deny this problem for any regular, legal version of HDClone. HDClone has always contained special access protection mechanisms, making such misbehavior impossible for versions officially published by Miray.
Therefore, we are explicitly warning all users, not to use such pirate copies. We further ask for your understanding that we cannot offer support for errors resulting from pirate copies or other improper use.
We would like to use this occasion to appeal to all users of pirate copies to abstain from using pirate copies in the future. For good reasons, up to 50% of the time required for finalizing a new release (even for a free service release) are required for testing the application. Therefore, we can only recommend you to use legal, tested software in the future, also in case of HDClone.
Update (08/18):
Meanwhile, we had a chance to get a further look on this problem. As described above, HDClone has a security mechanism reliably ensuring HDClone will NEVER write data to any other drive than the target drive(s), neither intentionally nor by mistake.
The illegally modified circulating “portable” version seems to have corrupted this security mechanism through changes made (illegally) to the software. The error message appearing is kind of a “remainder” of the said security mechanism, which is no longer working properly in the modified form. According to the result of our examination, the illegal pirate copies seem to spoil the source of the cloning process. We could reproduce that in 3 out of 20 attempts.
WE ASSURE ALL USERS OF HDCLONE, THAT IN THE OFFICIAL, LEGAL VERSIONS OF HDCLONE, OFFICIALLY RELEASED BY MIRAY, THIS SECURITY MECHANISM WILL ALWAYS WORK ABSOLUTELY CORRECTLY AND RELIABLY (and that for about 10 years now!). This is also ensured practically by perpetual, intense testing. A version of HDClone, tested and legally released by Miray will NEVER write anything to the source drive of the copying process!
HENCE, FOR YOUR OWN BENEFIT, WE RECOMMEND ALL USERS OF HDCLONE (WHO IT MAY CONCERN) NOT TO USE ILLEGAL OR “PORTABLE” VERSIONS OF HDCLONE!