Cloning HDs, the new one can't boot..

Hi,

here's my story: i'm using TI 2009 (12), i'm going to clone my old laptop hd into a new larger one (both Sata drives). So i'm using the "clone" tool inside TI.
I have two primary partitions to clone.
First time i tried, cloning was successful but once i swapped HDs, the new one could not boot. I tried to do a fixboot and fixmbr from xp recovery console, but it only saw C: drive, can't browse it, can't detect any windows installation, fixmbr detect a "non standard MBR" and try to fix it (with no effect) and fixboot can't do anything since can't see any system drive.
I installed ubuntu 8.10 with his boot loader, which automatically sets a multiboot menu if it detects any windows installations. It could boot linux with no problems, but if i choose a windows system, it gives a generic error and it doesn't boot.
Then i deleted all partitions, formatted whole drive, and installed xp from scratch. At the end of installation xp could boot normally.
Then i swapped drives again, putting the old and the new on a usb case and tried to clone old drive once more,with "AS IS" option, deleting all the everything on the new one (mandatory).
At the end of the process, swapped drives again, and still no boot from new. But this time Recovery console could see all the partitions and XP installs on the new drive. Then i tried fixmbr (still "non standard MBR" warning) and fixboot (this time no errors) but no changes at all: no boot (same error than before).

Any advice is welcome. I'm getting tired... sorry

Thanks

 

carbonextreme:

This could be one of two issues:

1. Your laptop (which brand?) may use a different disk geometry than the machine you are cloning on. Some IBM/Lenovo and Compaq laptops, for example, use a 240-head BIOS geometry whereas most everyone else, including all USB drives, uses 255-head geometry. The upshot of this is that the target of the clone must be installed in its final location to get this correct. So you should do what is called a "Reverse Clone". Install a completely blank hard disk (delete all of its partitions) in the laptop. Install the drive to be cloned (the source) in an external USB enclosure. Boot the laptop from the TI rescue CD and clone from the external disk to the internal disk.

2. The other issue arises if Windows detects two identical disks at first boot. So after the clone process has completed you MUST disconnect the source disk and boot with ONLY the destination disk attached.

 

laptop is a packard bell (2,5 years old)

anyway, done a "reverse cloning" and everything worked perfect this time!

now the new drive is booting and everything is ok!

Thank you very much!