My God What am I doing wrong

Common now, if everyone else can restore an image of a hard drive that is bigger to another drive which is smaller (data does not exceed the size of the smaller drive), then why can't I Original drive is a 200GB with only 14.5 GB of data on it. I tried and tried and tried to restore it to a 56GB drive with absolutely NO LUCK at all. I went out and purchased another drive, 250GB (50GB more than the original), went through all the same exact steps for restoring as I did before when using the other smaller drive, and low and behold it worked. My question is AGAIN, why can others do it but not I? If the software really has the ability to do this (and the makers of TI is the ONLY ones the say there software can do it) then why can't I do it...boy this is really frustrating. I sure didn't want to go out and spend more money for another drive. I didn't want to start my system over again from scratch on the smaller drive. Anyone got any ideas? I would love to be able to just take this drive back and get my money back if someone can help me out with my problem.

TIA

QD

 

When MiniMax was here, he would have answered this with "I'm not a mind reader". You'll have to tell us what your system is, what your drive types are, what version you use, and what the error is. (For starters)

 

I'm running Windows XP Pro. Drives are EIDE. TI 8.0 (build 903). There is no error persay. Everything goes without a hitch except, when I go to boot on the restored drive, I don't see the welcome screen as usual, but only a windows xp logo in the background of a blue screen. It just sits there doing nothing. But no errors within TI during the resotre, in fact it says it restored successfully.

If you need any more info let me know.

QD

 

Might be the old MBR problem. I'm assuming the small drive was used before. Try booting from a dos disk and running fdisk /mbr on the small drive. then restore the image again and try the boot. (You can even try the boot right after the fdisk /mbr)

 

Yes the smaller drive had been used before, but not for an operating system. I've used it for simply for storage of purchased programs, pics...etc...etc, but I've never had an operating system on it. I would appreciate anymore suggestions that you have (I also appreciate this one but as you can see by my reply, it doesn't seem to be the problem).


Thanks for the continued suggestions/help

QD

 

You'll have to trust me on this or research some other similar threads to satisfy yourself. It's 95% likely to be the problem. Be sure to do the restore from the boot disk and don't let the old Windows see this new drive after you fdisk it.

 

As Beenthereb4 says, it sounds like a MBR problem. Trust him.

Just run fdisk /mbr and then see if the HD boots.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method3

See Method #3

" Note: you need to use the newer Fdisk program that works with HDD's bigger than 64 GB's, and you need to be using a Win98se or ME boot disk. You can find the newer Fdisk program here:

http://radified.com/Files/ "

 

How do I get around "incorrect dos version" while trying this procedure? If I'm using an "ME" boot disk and copy the fdisk.exe file over to the disk, I keep getting this error "incorrect dos version"!!!! I downloaded the fdisk file from your provided link. Help

QD



" Note: you need to use the newer Fdisk program that works with HDD's bigger than 64 GB's, and you need to be using a Win98se or ME boot disk. You can find the newer Fdisk program here:

http://radified.com/Files/ "[/QUOTE]

 

I think you'll want a Win98 boot disk, you can use the fdisk that comes on it.

Bootdisk.com

Edited - for brain failure! (Win98boot disk)

 

Dan Goodell specifically mentions a Win98 boot disc so my reference to WinME may be incorrect.

 

And try the original fdisk file on the Win98 floppy before trying the fdisk file you downloaded.

 

WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOO Well in case you havn't guessed, it worked!!!! I distinctly remember using fdisk /mbr on this problem way back when (forget how long ago), but the difference must have been this newer fdisk. Thank you so much to everyone that had a helping hand in this problem of mine.

Thanks again, and I hope I can be of some help sometime in the future for someone else here.

QD

 

Great, thanks for posting back!!

 

Quickdraw, which disc and which fdisk worked for you?

I'm glad it's fixed.

 

Hello quickdraw,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

I'm glad that your issue has been solved.

Thanks beenthereb4 and Brian K for their help.

Please note that you can also fix your MBR in the following way:

1) Insert a diskette into the floppy drive and run the file available by the link below:

http://www.acronis.com/files/support/mbrautowrite_en.exe

Once the floppy is written, boot the computer from it and confirm that you want to fix the master boot record.

2) Use the following ISO image to create a special CD:

http://www.acronis.com/files/support/mbrautowrite_en.iso

You can read how to record a CD with an ISO image at the following links:

http://trb.org/publications/burning_iso.html
(Nero Burning ROM and Roxio Easy CD Creator)

http://members.home.nl/lsnoek/iso.htm
http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm
(other applications)

Once the CD is written, boot the computer from it and confirm that you want to fix the master boot record.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Hi Brian, well believe it or not I went with beenthereb4 original post (it seems that he has edited it since posting it), but anyway, originally it said to use dos 6.22, so I downloaded it and it was a self extracting file which goes to a floppy. I booted with that disk, used the fdisk /mbr from that disk and everything turned out ok. Boy I'm glad it all turned out ok, I was really getting frustrated from the whole thing

QD

 

Thanks for letting us know what worked. We all learn.