cloned disk does not boot

(Forgive me--I know this question has come up earlier.)
I have tried three times to clone a boot disk, but the clone does not boot.
One drive is in an external USB enclosure. The last time I tried, I did a "reverse" clone (using TI recovery CD), but this still fails to boot. The cloning finishes sucessfully, though. To clarify, I put the destination drive in the machine in place of the original C: drive. I put the original C: drive in the USB enclosure. TI called this external drive "D:".

The only clue I might have is that the reverse cloning process said it was calling the clone "D:", even though as the destination drive it was "C:".

Each time I do this, I can check that the cloned drive is readable by putting it in an external enclosure and connecting it to another machine. It looks fine--the data is all there. So, I think there is some final step that is messed up. But I thought a reverse clone would avoid the partition ID problem that has been talked about on this forum.

Any help will be appreciated.

Configuration:
Gateway 700X desktop, Pentium 4
OS: WindowsXP SP3
Old drive: WD 80GB (ATA).
New drive: Seagate 400GB (ATA).
(Not SATA.)

Thanks.
Scobie

 

scobie,

It should have worked.

Did you disconnect the USB HD before the first boot from the 400 GB internal HD?

Did you have any partitions on the 400 GB HD before you cloned?

Don't worry. It can be done, one way or another.

 

Yes, after the cloning finished, before rebooting, I turned off the external drive.
The new drive did have my previous clone job on it (for the same original disk). I had started with a newly formatted 400GB drive, but then just kept trying to clone, deleting the old partition.

What I find odd is that Acronis indicated that the new clone was named D:, which is what the source drive was. I would have thought it would have kept it as C:.

 

I can add this. If I boot off the WinXP install CD, and go to the recovery mode, I CANNOT read the C: drive. If I do "dir" at the C:\> prompt, it gives me an error "An error occurred during directory enumeration." So, then I cannot do fixmbr, fixboot, or anything there.

I am looking into using the demo of JustBoot Boot Corrector, in case the tip I saw about that will help.

 

scobie,

Is the 400 GB HD jumpered as Master or Cable Select?

Could you try this? Delete all partitions from the 400 GB HD and try the reverse clone again.

My preference however is to delete all partitions from the 400 GB HD. Install the 400 GB HD as an internal Slave (remember to adjust jumpers). Boot from the TI CD and clone. Shutdown, remove old HD from computer and configure the 400 GB as a Master. Now try to boot.

 

I just tried using the demo of JustBoot Boot Corrector.
It is telling me that drive 0 is 128GB and the file system is invalid.
(But that is crazy too, because I just inspected the drive, putting it in an external enclosure on another machine. It is NTFS 400GB.)

I guess I have no other choice now but to try what you just said--though I see know reason why that should work any better.

This is day #2 of trying to get this to work. This is the last time I'll be getting Acronis. A low-level utility like this should just work.

 

I set the reverse cloned drive as Master, not Cabled.
(I tried Cabled before, when I clone forward to the USB drive.)
This ain't the problem, because the BIOS does see the new drive and has it set as the boot drive. There is some sort of error accessing the disk or finding the OS.

 

scobie,

In that case don't use USB for the clone. Use my second suggestion.

 

I have the destination drive as internal slave. I deleted the partition.
However, WindowsXP reports this drive as 128GB (just as Boot Corrector did). I think there is something else wrong here. I appear to be hitting the old 128GB capacity limit.
I have tried to correct this by changing this registry setting:
enable the support in the Windows registry by adding or changing the EnableBigLba registry value to 1 in the following registry subkey, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameters.
But that doesn't fix it. There is something lower level creating this limit. I don't get it.
I think if I could fix this limit issue, then the reverse clone would be fine.
If anyone knows more about where this limit is coming from, please tell me.

 

It must be your BIOS. Can you update? It's not your OS.

 

What exactly are the symptoms you get when you try to bootup the computer? does the clone drive hang? reboot? blinking cursor?

Do you at least get the windows splashscreen?

The demo of the justboot corrector is obsolete (hasn't been updated since 2006) but there are other utilitys you can use to troubleshoot your problem. A reverse clone won't prevent a "partition ID" problem, it will only prevent a "chs geometry" problem on laptops.

If you can get past the 128gb problem, and still have a clone that won't boot. The below post has more things you can try.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=210322

 

Perhaps there might be something useful in this link as it relates to cloning.

My guide to Manual Cloning using the TI Rescue CD

 

Thanks. The symptoms are that it does not get the Windows splash screen, but shortly after the Gateway screen (to get to BIOS setup), it gives me the screen that says there was a problem, letting me choose safe mode or normal mode, etc. Sometimes just before this I get a glimpse of a blue screen that flicks by--but too fast to read it.

When I put the cloned drive in the second internal bay as a slave, and then boot on the original drive, then I can see in Windows that the new drive is not being recognized as 400GB--just 128GB. (With the USB enclosure, of course, I did not see this.) So, there is a clearly a problem with hitting the old 128GB limit. I think if I can fix this, the cloning will work.

I am trying to find a BIOS update for this older machine, but so far no luck. Will keep looking....

 

You've found the problem. Your old machine doesn't support drives larger than 127GB. Although there are ways to make a 400GB drive work, I don't think those methods will work in cloning or restoring a backup image.

Unless there is a BIOS update to support large drives, which isn't likely because this is usually a limitation of the chip set on the motherboard, the best solution would be to buy a 120GB drive and settle for a 50% increase in size of the boot drive. You could then probably use the 400GB drive for data only under Windows using one of the jumper settings.

 

scobie,

If there is no BIOS update you could transfer your OS to the first 128 GB of that HD. Does that suits for the time being?

 

Ok everyone, thank you--I solved all my problems.
After a hard search and a few gotchas, I updated the BIOS.
The machine recognizes large disks now.
I did the clone, forward, to an internal slave.
The clone boots just fine, first time.
I be happy camper.

Thanks.
Scobie

 

Scobie,

Great news. Could you post the link to the BIOS update. Others may benefit from your search.