Bootable Clone

Hi Brian,

I had tried setting the BIOS to "large" without success. But I set this after I had cloned.

With the BIOS HD setting as "lge" neither HD would boot. It seems that I would have to clone with the lge setting, from a rescue CD. It is an issue if my working HD won't boot with that BIOS setting.

On a NG it has been suggested that my antivirus wrt the BIOS could be the trouble. I don't know anything about Bios viruses.

Doug

 

when i purchased 10 i downloaded it off the internet and also bought the bootable disk witch i received thru the mail
i have two computers in our home, can i run the disk on my second machine without the download from the internet?

Also, everything took right off and seems to be working great, i purchased an additional hardrive and am just backing up from my c drive manually. Haven't figured out how to get it to do it automaticaly and have tried several times to get notifacation when the backups have been completed with no luck.
I am using eudora for a mail agent and am wondering if that is a problem

 

Morning Doug,

You are obviously one step ahead here. I don't have the LARGE setting and had never heard about it before. BIOS viruses must be like rocking horse sh.... so I'd put that explanation well down the list.

Oh well, clone again and see what happens. Deleting the partitions and cloning into unallocated space is worth a try. Let me know.

 

Hi Brian,

Before I start anything more, I don't understand what is meant by "unallocated" space. Does this mean unpartitioned?

I have been looking at the Samsung again. Here is the manual in PDF (approx 5.6MB).

Note that the manual only gives a definition of one setting for the jumper, and that setting is for limiting the SATA transfer rate. I have tried both (with and without the jumper). Note that there is no reference to any other jumper settings. Can you see any thing wrong here?

 

I usually work with Partition Magic but I think WinXP uses the same term. Unallocated Space is what you get when you delete a partition. If you delete all partitions (which you should do here) then the whole HD is Unallocated Space.

You have tried SATA 1 and SATA 2 jumpers (thanks for the pdf) and neither work. Is your other HD a SATA 1? Shouldn't matter. I've mixed SATA 1 and 2. You have tried various BIOS setting and we know that the HD is detected as a "slave" and shows as 400 GB in Windows. But it doesn't like being a "master". Weird.

If it was me, I'd try cloning again and if that fails I'd create and restore an image. You only have a single partition on the 300 GB HD I think. There is no diagnostic partition in front of the OS partition? If that fails you will have to use the HD in the "slave" position but that shouldn't be so bad. Any major reason why you would like the 400 GB HD as "master"?

 

OK, we agree on what unallocated space means. Ta.

Yes my older drive is SATA1.

Will try after some medical appointments that I have this morn. Getting old is no fun.

Regards
Doug

 

The body may be old but the brain seems fine.

 

Hi,
As I follow along this thread, one thought came to mind. The error was "Error loading operating system". Maybe its looking for the wrong drive--even though there are no others installed. Brian did recommend that the SATA2 be turned off in the bios. The completed cloned drive is connected to SATA1.

My suggestion is to look in the Bios. On my system, under "Advanced Bios Features", there is an option "Hard Disk Boot Priority" which lists all the drives including the SATA, IDE, USB & Raid. On my system, whatever drive is listed as item 1 of this listing is the boot drive. I would look at this option and confirm that the correct drive identification is being selected as the first item or boot drive.---Then again, this may not apply to your system...... if so, I apologize for the intrusion.

Brian, You have a lot of great posts over a variety of threads. I have seen many and learn a lot from them. Thanks for sharing!
Grover

 

Even if you don't have any partitions what-so-ever on your HD, ...I believe Windows will assign 7mg of Unallocated Space by default...when installing XP. Or at least, I notice this with Dell computers... using the OEM Windows XP disc from Dell.

Anyone else notice this?

 

GroverH,

Thanks for the pat on the back. Your suggestion needs investigating. There seems to be a variety of different BIOS choices for SATA. My BIOS only allows for the ports to be turned ON or OFF. I don’t have a menu for "Hard Disk Boot Priority". SATA port 0 boots before port 1 etc.

If Doug uses his 300 GB HD then the OS boots. If he uses his 400 GB HD then the OS doesn’t boot. Same BIOS settings. Strange.

 

Brian, you deserve the "pat on the back". Another thought would be to remove the "enable" on the Bios settings and reboot without any drives selected. Then re-enable only the first SATA. I step out at this point.

 

starsfan09,

I'm a Dell fan too.

If you have a Primary Extended partition (containing logical volumes) on a HD with no preceding Primary partition then you will always have that 8 MB of Unallocated Space. If you create a Primary partition as the first partition then there is no preceding Unallocated Space. You may be correct about installing WinXP on to a blank HD. I haven't tried that as I always create a partition before installing the OS.

 

This thread discusses the 8 MB of Unallocated Space.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=62131

 

Doug, have you tried swapping data cables. You are probably using the same cable with the 400 GB HD each time. We know that the 300 GB HD and its data cable works.

 

Hi Brian,

Success! The only thing I did differently was to remove the partition from the new Samsung. ie made it unallocated space as you suggested!

It went beautifully. As soon as it shut down I removed the new Samsung and booted from the old C: (because it would be a major problem if I lost it, tho I do have good backups).

Then I shutdown the PC, changed drives to the cloned Samsung and booted. Initially in the early parts of the boot, it said that TI was examining the partitions, and then proceeded to complete a successful boot.

I am writing this message from the new Samsung-booted OS.

But here is another issue that is curious. I remembered that I had a copy of Ghost10. So before removing the partition from the Samsung, I cloned it with Ghost. And guess what? It wouldn't boot and gave exactly the same error message "Error loading operating system.

Brian, you cracked it!

For my paticular setup with TI (and possibly Ghost) the new HD has to be unpartitioned.

You don't know how pleased I am! I have had three strokes and long-running issues like this really rattle me.

I hope Acronis see fit to put this in their FAQ.

Many, many thanks.
le0pard32@gmail.com

Doug Price

 

Doug, I’m really pleased for you and I’m glad I could help.

So it wasn’t a BIOS problem. It was a partition problem as outlined in …

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000730.htm

Cause 3.

It wasn’t an Acronis or Ghost issue. Any backup application would have given the same result. Something, I don’t really know what, was wrong with the partition.

As far as cloning into a partition is concerned, I did some testing with Ghost 10 but the same principles apply to Acronis TI. It’s a WinXP issue.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1148252120;start=#1

Reply #1. There are some other interesting scenarios too.

This is the first time I’ve seen your particular problem.

It’s raining here but I guess we need it.

 

Doug,
Congratulations on your perserverance.
You indicated your cloning was successful. Within the cloning options, did you use automatic or manual?