Making HD copy a bootable disk with TI.10

[Granger]

Okay, so I made a disk-copy with TrueImage 10, Build 4,871. I did this by taking the boot disk from my laptop, connecting it to my desktop PC, connecting a virgin HD to my desktop PC and using TI 10 to do a disk-to-disk copy. The two drives are the same size (60GB). The source disk is a boot drive.
In Windows Explorer the Copy HD is identical to the source, but when I insert the copy-HD into the laptop, the laptop will not boot. After it posts it asks me if I want to boot from the HD or the CD, I choose HD, then I get the Blinking cursor and no farther.
So I made a CD from that ISO image that Acronis tells you to use to rebuild the MBR (Master Boot Record) on the copy-HD. But my laptop will not boot from that, when I direct the laptop to boot from this ISO-CD it just sits there and does nothing and I can hear the CD drive zoom up to read it, then zoom down when it is found unreadable. When I examine that ISO-CD on my desktop computer it is filled with a zip file. Nonbooted PCs do not know what to do with a zip file...how useless is this?? And yes, I followed Acronis' directions on how to use Nero to burn this ISO-CD.
Next I inserted a Microsoft Windows XP install CD and booted the laptop from that, into "R"epair mode. I rebuilt the MBR on the copy-HD. Tried to boot from the copy-HD again, same thing, just a blinking cursor. Booted from the WinXP CD again and this time did a bootcfg /rebuild and rebuilt the boot.ini file on the copy-HD, which went fine (repair mode found the Windows installation on the copy-HD). Tried to boot from the copy-HD, still nothing but the blinking cursor.
Went back to the beginning and did a clean HD-to-HD copy with TrueImage again, did all steps again. Same result.
Anyone see a problem in my work?
I would pay $1,000 for a piece of software that actually does a boot HD copy in one damn step without all this %(@*^(&^%)!!!
thanks in advance for any suggestion that actually works,
Granger

[Granger]

BTW, in case it is not obvious, by "copy" I meant "clone".
thanks,
Granger

[Ralphie]

Not sure if you used the TI Clone feature from within the TI software that was installed in Windows (on the desktop) or from the bootable TI Rescue CD. I suspect it was from the installed software - try from the bootable Rescue CD. This CD has all the Backup/Recovery/Clone features of the installed software.

[Granger]

Ralphie, thanks for the quick response.
Yes, I did use the installed TI.10 version on my desktop PC and it is a full, registered license.
I do not have faith in using a boot-CD TI.10 to make an image of my boot HD, but if all else fails I will try it.
Right now I am attempting to use Maxtor software ("MaxBlast") to make a raw bit-copy clone of the source HD as described previously, and see if this works. I have used this software successfully before to make a one-step clone of a boot HD, but Maxblast will not upsize the boot partition like TI claims to do. Since the HDs are both the same size this won't matter in this instance.
But I am still interested in trying to make TI.10 work since I PAID for it! (Maxtor's utility was free).
thanks,
Granger

[Acronis Support]

Hello Granger,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Could you please do the following?

- Plug both drives (source and destination) to your desktop computer;

- Create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317).

This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disks partition structure.

Then submit a request for technical support (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/support/). Attach all the collected files to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

P.S. I have tested the mentioned utility that fix Master Boot Record (the ISO image) and it works just fine.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov