In the purest form, cloning is done when two hard drives can be connected to the same motherboard. But, that's usually not possible on most laptops. That's what most Cloning software is expecting to see.
That is absolutely false. Any decent disk cloning software DOES support external disks and works flawlessly.
So the alternative,... is to make a backup image file of either your C: partition or your entire HD and save it to an external drive. (it seems like that has already been mentioned)
...
This applies to those disk imaging softwares which don't have cloning functionality or if you don't have access to the two drives at the same time. (different location for example)
If it is a striped volume then it is a dynamic disk (not a basic disk).
Describes the steps to establish a striped volume (RAID 0) in Windows Server 2003.
learn.microsoft.com
Yes that could be ,but whydoes it matter ? A cloning operation is designed to erase the disk and replicate the layout as well as the data.
HP Laptop14-cf1020od
The computer uses Intel Rapid Storage Technology Drivers (IRST).
Download the latest drivers, firmware, and software for your HP Notebook - 14-cf1020od.This is HP’s official website that will help automatically detect and download the correct drivers free of cost for your HP Computing and Printing products for Windows and Mac operating system.
support.hp.com
Looking for upgrade or update information? Trying to find the names of components or programs? This document contains the technical details for this product.
support.hp.com
Thank you for identifying the model. Using Intel RST drivers is not a problem ,in most cases WADK 10.0's built-in drivers can handle it.
However, if for any reason, the computer is set to operate in RST mode (this is the case on many new generation notebooks), then
you will have to build the recovery media on the computer , it has to be WADK 10.0 based and has to manually include Intel RST drivers, in this case the standard SATA drivers are not sufficient.
This could be a possible reason for the cloning issues OP is having. Maybe the others haven't seen a new generation notebook as of yet (I mean, Intel gen 8, 10, 11 or 12) - I have seen plenty and this RST mode is turned on by default on a lot of notebook that come with preinstalled Windows. Some of them, including my Dell, have two M.2 slots which is fantastic. But they are sometimes even turning it on if there is only one slot. It also has to do with Intel Optane support not just pure RAID.
However, a cloning attempt without a proper driver would fail with Intel RST mode ON, and even drive identification is problematic without RST drivers. As well as initialization would fail too, because RST support also enables support for Intel Optane, so the strange one-hard-drive-RAID you have been seeing actually could be caused by RST mode, with the "other drive" being Intel Optane actually, or just support for it.
This option can be turned on or off is UEFI settings however the installed Windows won't boot anymore if you change it. That is why you have to adjust the recovery media , to fill it with drivers for the cloning operation.
It is my experience that cloning such systems are a nightmare. Unless you want to use Intel Optane technology (and you have the dedicated hardware for it) or you want to use a RAID configuration, you might just want to disable RST mode and reinstall Windows from scratch. That way cloning will work as well, unless the drive really is faulty.