Clone success going from 6GB drive to 120 except NTLDR is missing

I cloned a ~6.7GB Fujitsu drive to a 120GB Western Digital and the operation was a success, according to Acronis version 8.059. When attempting to boot off new drive (set to Master of course), I get the infamous "NTLDR IS MISSING" message in DOS.

Before trying a more current version, I want to know if there are other suggestions and what does this error mean?

Secondary thought: is NTLDR part of the MBR? If so, I'll try to clone the MBR using version 9.

 

Okay i guess a question i should have asked: is it possible to get a successful clone from such and old drive to such a new? Could that be the issue?

 

Hey Wedge1,
Try to clone the drive with the MBR like you said. In most casses it should fix your issue. The MBR reads the boot sector which is the first sector of the active partition.This sector contains the code that starts Ntldr which is the boot strap loader for Windows XP.

Corey

 

I'm assuming you are using XP.

 

XP right. Funny - i just came back to post that I am indeed using XP Home Edition, realizing that is critical info. It will be tomorrow before I can try again, but i will post back then.

Just for the sake of entertaining all possibilities, other suggestions are welcome, though I will try to restore the MBR as a first course when I have access to this PC again.

 

If you have version 9 make an image to another hard drive. Then restore the image to the new drive. See the excellent instructions from Menorcaman https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=769388&postcount=5 for the details.

 

Not sure if this applies to me as I am cloning the master drive to a new drive. Unless things have changed with version 9, there is a fundamental difference between restoring and cloning. Please don't be offended if i am simply unaware that version 9 allows for image restoration in place of cloning. I am not as familiar with it as I am version 8, but this is the perfect time to enlighten me if v9 will substitute restoring for cloning.

 

Yes you can use restoration in V9 instead of cloning. There are currently a lot of reports of issues with cloning, although it has worked well for me. Use at least v9 B3677 and follow Menorcaman's instructions.

 

Hello Wedge1,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

We would recommend that you download the latest build (937) of Acronis True Image 8.0. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

Please also notice that when cloning a system disk it is strongly recommended to remove either source, or destination disk after cloning and before booting the system. If the computer is booted with two identical system disks, Windows can get confused and become unbootable after removal of one of the disks.

You did not mentioned the hard drives types (IDE or SATA), however, I would recommend that you have a look at this article article describing the transferring of the operating system from IDE to SATA hard drives.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Thank you for the support Aleksandr. Since a day after my inital post, I was able to make a successful clone using version 9.xxxx.

This time around I did NOT get the "NTLDR is missing" error. However, I did run into a nice BSOD and ensuing restarts with every attempt to boot up. This problem turned out to be a BIOS misconfiguration riddle that I was able to solve. Now all is well.

By the way, I am a registered user of version 9. You referred to version 8 but I see nowhere on the Acronis update page where version 8 (or iterations thereof) are available for download.

At any rate, thank you for the response.

 

Hello Wedge1,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

I'm really glad to hear that the issue was solved successfully.

As for the updates for version 8.0 of Acronis True Image (or other old versions of Acronis products), please note that the updates will be available as soon as you register the serial number for the Acronis product. Having registered you will be able to download the latest build of the respective product from "Product Update" section of your account.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov