Clone worked great but getting MBR error on 2nd drive

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by Chris Boar, Jul 5, 2006.

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  1. Chris Boar

    Chris Boar Registered Member

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    Pleasantly surprised to say that I managed to upgrade from a 120Gb to a 300Gb maxtor SATA drive no problem via a cloned drive, using the Acronis boot CD to do the clone.

    Once complete disconnected my old boot drive, and the new one booted first time. Yipee!

    Now here is the problem. Connected an older drive for a 2nd drive, and now getting an MBR error on boot up. Re-partioned and still getting an MBR error on boot. Have to disconnect the 2nd drive before the primary will boot.

    Is this resolved via the 'MBR fix' via the window install CD, before I attempt it?

    Thanks.

    Chris
     
  2. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Chris,

    Could you check your BIOS as it sounds like the second HD is the boot HD when you have both connected.

    Is the second HD a SATA HD or IDE?
     
  3. Chris Boar

    Chris Boar Registered Member

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    They are both sata drives. I can't find anything in BIOS that let's me choose one HD over another for boot priority.

    Will keep looking.
     
  4. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Chris,

    To which SATA ports are the drives attached? On my Dell the boot drive is SATA 0 and the second HD is SATA 2.
     
  5. simusphere

    simusphere Registered Member

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    Not sure but maybe the second hard disks still has the bootable flag set on it. You can have only one bootable partition at a time. Personally I would first zero out the first few sectors of data from the 120G drive. I usually do this with a linux boot CD but there may be a better way. Note this is with the drive you want to zero out as the only drive in the system just to avoid confusion.
    Code:
    # dd if=zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=4
    [MOVE][COLOR="Red"](not sure about the device name for sata drive though)[/COLOR][/MOVE]
    Then you can put the new system disk and the zero'd out drive back the way you had it before. It should show up as a new drive with unallocated space. Reformat as necessary.
     
  6. Chris Boar

    Chris Boar Registered Member

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    Got it sussed. I swapped around the sata cables, and it works fine. So as I don't have a sata boot priority setting in BIOS I'm guessing the MB must check either port first to see if it can find a bootable drive. And in the case of having two drives connnected it must require the boot drive to be on the correct port. And I just happened to have it back to front on the first attempt.

    Thanks,

    Chris
     
  7. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I'm pleased. I'd be interested to know what are the port numbers. I assume that port 0 will be selected for booting before port 1 etc.

    Am I correct in that your current second HD is not your original 120 GB HD?
     
  8. Chris Boar

    Chris Boar Registered Member

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    Yep, the boot drive is in port 0, and my current backup 120G drive is my old backup drive. I need to buy a 300Gb backup drive to complement my new main drive.

    Chris
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Thanks for that info Chris. We have all learnt a bit about SATA port 0.

    Another option for you is to buy an external SATA enclosure and use your spare HD as an external drive. I have one of these enclosures. It connects to USB ports as well as SATA ports.
     
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