Failed Clone of New Hard Disk Question

I just purchased ATI and attempted to clone my current XP boot drive to a new internal hard drive. My system is functioning "normally" but when routinely checking the Event Monitor, I noticed that for the past week there are multiple instances of "bad block" entries. I have run chkdsk and repaired the boot drive but despite having done this, the "bad block" entries continue to show up and HDTune shows several "corrupted blocks" on the drive.
I installed ATI 10 and attempted to clone the old drive to the new internal drive (created a bootable NTFS partition on the new drive during the process). The cloning process fails toward the end and displays an error message describing a corrupted sector. The program freezes at this point.
I have read the manual but there are no references to this kind of failure and no suggestions for resolution.
I would appreciate any help regarding how to proceed. Thanks.

 

Hello Istern

If I understand correctly you have your original Windows system disk and the cloned disk in the PC at the same time... is my understanding correct?

Assuming that my understanding is correct then.....

You may only install ONE instance of XP with the same Product Key on the same computer at the same time. If you install the same copy of XP twice on the same machine at the same time, legally you will be in violation of the EULA and technically you will experience problems if both instances are active when you start the computer.

To remain both legally and technically correct the only way that you can have 2 installations of the same license is if you:

* purchase a spare disk
* image your system disk using ATI
* restore the image to your new spare disk
* swap the two disks when you need to


Having only the original system disk OR the spare disk installed in your system at any point in time ensures that you remain legally within the EULA and that you will not experience any technical issues.

PLEASE NOTE:

The above also applies to a virtual machine such as when you use virtulisation software e.g. VMware

 

Thanks for your response. Does your answer explain why the program freezes during the cloning process ?? If it does, then the proper way to clone my original boot disk is to first create a backup image of the original boot drive (I have several nonboot internal drives), then remove the original drive, replace with the new "bare" disk, startup from an ATI rescue CD boot disk, and finally restore the backup image to the new disk ??

Please let me know if the above procedure is correct. If not, let me know the best way to accomplish. Thanks again.

 

Opinions on this Forum vary as to the best procedure but my personal preference is the following...

The Clone process should be used only when you want to transfer an existing bootable system from a small disk to a new large disk with the view to replacing the existing small disk with the new large disk. My preference is to perform this task outside of Windows, using the bootable CD (Linux shell).

If all you want is to create another bootable system disk as an emergency standby then the following procedure is my preference:-

• Prepare the system disk by doing a cleanup and defrag if necessary
• Restart and boot using the CD (Linux shell)
• Create an image of the system partition (include the MBR the first time you do this)
• When complete reboot into Windows
• Start ATI and validate the image
• From within Windows restore the image to the destination disk (include the MBR the first time you do this)
• Shutdown
• Replace the existing system disk with the new system disk
• Try to boot from the new system disk
• Once you have booted into Windows setup chkdsk c:/r and restart
  

This process takes some time but it is such a critical process that it is essential that you get it right.

Using a Trayless Rack (SATA disks) or a Caddie & Cartridge (PATA disks) greatly facilitates this process.

 

Hello Istern,

From your description of your existing drive it appears that it is in the process of failing. So the sooner you can make an image of the drive the better.
When error messages come up during the imaging try the "retry" button at least twice at each appearance before moving on using the "ignore" button.

Once the image process has completed remove the old drive and restore to the new one. Normally this would be a one stage restore process but as you will have "bad" areas brought forward in the image these locations will be logged as bad on the new drive, there is a way of avoiding this by resizing the partitions when doing the restore.
Acronis and others have posted details of how this can be done or find out about it in the manual.

Xpilot

 

Thanks for your help. Unfortunately, I have another problem. I just created a rescue boot disk without problem. I started up from the cd rescue disk that appropriately loads. However, my USB mouse and USB keyboard are "dead" with the graphical window frozen on the screen. I can't start the program! Very frustrating.
Any ideas ??

XPilot, related to your reply: when I originally tried to clone the boot drive to the new drive, at about 80-90% completion, the program froze with the choices of "retry, ignore,etc" on the screen but I couldn't select any of these due to the "freeze."

 

Clone dosn't work for me either.

system just hangs after a reboot during the cloning phase. Also, it won't reboot after an image restore of the C: drive.

The progam is either buggy or too compelx to use?