Problem Cloning to Larger HDD

I have been futzing around with this problem for almost three weeks now. I have yet to find the right solution.

Here is the scenario. Am running XP Pro on a 120 GB drive with SP3 and IE7 installed. It works perfectly. This is a PATA drive on a P4 system.

I would like to clone the 120 GB drive to a 150 GB drive. I have done it with TI 10, T1-11, directly (PATA to PATA) and indirectly with one drive in an external USB case.

The cloning goes AOK - proportionally - according to TI. But the resulting product will not boot. It starts to load Windows XP, and then keeps going with the passing blue squares until it gets a BSOD flash and reboots.

I have tried AS IS and porportionally. I have used Windows ASR.m Nothing really works right. Is the problem SP3?

Suggestions?

 

CorkyG,

Have you tried it this way?

Delete all partitions on the new HD from Disk Management. Have it as unallocated space.

Put the old HD in the slave position and the new HD in the master position.
Boot to the Acronis TI CD and perform the clone.
Remove the old HD.
Attempt your first boot to the 150 GB HD.

 

That is exactly what my first attempt was. It results in a XP that tries to boot, but is not able to. The most success I have had was doing that, and then running a upgrade reinstall using the XP Pro bootable CD. That ended up with internet issues. But, it booted just fine.

Yesterday I ran Windows' Automated Recovery System, and it worked except the result was the exact same size. partition as on the original. But, that booted and everything ran OK.

I then used Acronis Disk Director to change the partition sizes to use up the unallocated space. That put it back in the same "try but fail" boot mode.

I'm about to give up and just do a fresh install on the larger drive.

I now have a workable "old" XP Pro with SP3 and IE7 both removed. Doesn't seem to change anything.

 

CorkyG,

You have given it a good try. I'd do it with the image/restore technique. Nobody has tried harder than you to make cloning work.

 

Not clear if you've tried these options..

Have you tried to create the new 150GB drive by restoring an image to it (vs cloning)? ie. Current HDD Image ->Intermediary drive -> New 150GB HDD

Also, have you discounted the possibility that the 150GB drive may be bad - tried a different drive.?

May be possible the disk geometry is different between the drives.

 

Corky:

Make sure that you haven't skipped this step from Brian's advice in post #2:

This step is critical to success. You do not want the registry on the source disk to contain any partition signatures from the destination disk.

 

It's a definite "partition ID" drive letter change problem. It happens with true image and xp. I saw this post yesterday and was going to point that out, but I saw other people where trying to help you fix it.

The problem is in most cases unfixable. I'm an expert on drive letters and I couldn't fix this problem without a "boot corrector". If you encounter this problem once, you will probably see it again. I always fix the drive letters instead of trying to figure out what cause the problem. It's a common occurence when restoring windows xp and I have learn to expect the problem will happen from time to time.

My advice before you do a "clean install" of xp (which will definitely fix the problem), is to check your system "partition ID" drive letter (not the "mounted device" drive letter). This at least will let you know what the problem was. If it's a "partition ID" drive letter problem, that's a simple 5 minute fix.

 

jonyjoe81,

You are certainly entertaining.

 

jony:

There is no such thing as a "partition ID drive letter". Please read post #11 of this thread to understand how drive letters are stored in the registry. An "expert on drive letters" like yourself should know better.

 

I'm beginning to feel that I'm missing out on something ... not ever having had a "drive letter/partition ID" problem ..... NOT!

 

It is not a drive letter problem. I completely wipe the HDD before attempting to clone. It is ergo, cherry - all unallocated. The source drive is a two partition affair.

The normal cloning process would be (using Rescure Media Boot) manually select source and target, and go Proportional.

The problem is not the drive - I have two of them - brand new Seagates, and both work fine in other modes.

The problem seems to be that Windows cannot find certain files during the load cycle - the three blue boxes sail by over 30 times - then a flash of blue and a reboot.

I removed SP3 and it made no difference. Will try again tomorrow using ASR.

BTW - I was able to get a good bootable clone using ASR, but as soon as I enlarged the partitions - same old problem.

 

Have you tried cloning with different software? I know you have tried all sorts of ways to complete the task.

 

CorkyG,
You already have the help of experts so I'm not sure I have anything to add. You might review my Manual Mode Cloning PDF and see if there might be a tidbit of info that hasn't already been considered.

 

CorkyG:

What is on your source drive? Is it possible to post a screen shot from Acronis Disk Director showing the disk layout?

 

http://[IMG]http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k315/HGabbert/Layout.jpg[/IMG]

Hope this works. It is a rather simple layout - I clone it every week with no problem to the same size drives. I keep three copies on hand always.

I have checked all of GroverH's excellent articles - nothing seems out of place.

And, I have never tried the backup and restore or other imaging software.

It may have something to do with the 139 GB limit - but I doubt it.

 

CorkyG:

Boy, that's about as plain-vanilla a layout as they come. There is no way that Windows can accidentally mix up drive letters on a layout like that, so that explanation is out.

Based on your comment about being able to induce the symptom by resizing partitions, it may be helpful to see the partition table on your disk. If you don't mind, start Disk Director, click on the disk in question and choose "Edit" then "View as partition table". Please post the view similar to this one from my disk: View attachment 200589

 

OK - put in a few more hours. I can now rule out any LBA problems. I got a workable 250 GB drive, but it wasn't easy. I had to do an upgrade reinstall of XP (with SP3 slipstreamed.) It took a while - but it booted! And the full drive was used following a proportional cloning by TI-11.

I got that drive reasonably cleaned up and working, and decided to try cloning it directly to another 250 GB drive.

That only took about 14 minutes total, and - the clone booted perfectly! That was a 250 to 250, AS IS cloning using the Rescue Media for TI-11. (No point in doing it from within Windows because it has to reboot and the resulting GUI sucks.) Use the media and get a better GUI and control.

So - it obviously is not an LBA problem.

I have no clue as to what happen, but XP really gets thrown into a tailspin.

Anyway - I now have two copies of the system on two 250 drives.

Appreciate all the suggestions and comments. I think I'll put this in my "cold case" file.

 

Hello CorkyG,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please collect some information to let us investigate the problem thoroughly?

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post of the original drive.

Please also create Acronis Report of the cloned (unbootable) drive in the way described below:

- Download and run Acronis Report Utility;
- Select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Sorry - the information is no longer available. I successfully cloned from the 120 GB source drive to a 160 GB. I will eventually try from there to a 200 GB drive, and maybe then to a 250. I tried 160 to 250 - no change. That didn't work - same problem. The problem seems to be too big a leap.