Why Won't Cloned Drive Bootup?

My son filled up his 3OGB HDD on his Dell Dimension 4550, so he bought a 200GB and used ATI 9.0.3633 to clone the smaller drive to the larger (using the Automatic option). Before cloning, I told my son to disable GoBack (which he uses) to make sure that it wouldn't affect the process.

The cloning completed successfully. He then removed the 30GB and set the jumper to make the 200GB his Master drive. Upon booting, it gets as far as the WinXP splash screen and freezes. I checked his cable connection and jumper and they are correct.

Figuring that something went wrong during his cloning operation I tried to clone his 30GB drive to the 200GB and just as before, it failed to bootup. Re-connecting his 30GB drive, the system boots completely.

Any ideas as to why the cloned drive won't boot?

 

Well at least the process did not trash the original drive as happened to some others. What might work is to do a Repair install of Windows if you have the actual windows OS cds - not the Restore CDs that some makers provide.

If you have the OS cds, the Repair function you want is the second one - bypass the first offer to Repair and in the next couple of windows (I think it is right after the EULA agreement) you will get another Repair feature.

If that does not work or you don't have those CDs, try making an Image of the Source instead and then do a Restore to the 200 gig. You will have to find another hard drive to hold the Image backup.

 

Thanks for the reply. Dell only provided a WinXP Restore CD with his PC, so the repair approach won't work.

I'm beginning to think perhaps the problem may be that the (3-year old) BIOS may not support that large a drive. I'll try to see if I can find that out on Dell's site.

 

pvsurfer,

Out of interest, was the new HD partitioned or was it completely blank (Unallocated Space). I've never tried a "Clone" with TI but I've done dozens with Ghost 9/10. If you want a certain failure with these apps then you clone to a partition. Cloning to Unallocated Space is always successful.

I suspect your situation could be fixed in 30 seconds by Method #3. You have nothing to lose.

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

Let us know.

 

Hi Brian:

The target drive was new (out of the box) but in any case I fail to understand why that should matter when cloning. Isn't the cloning operation concept to exactly replicate the format and total contents of the source drive onto the target drive (destroying any previous format/contents on the target drive)?

But I do appreciate the feedback. ~pv

 

Yes, and if you read all of the referenced link you will see that is exactly the problem. The cloned drive has the same partition signatures and this will confuse XP if both drives are in the machine at the time of the first successful boot after cloning. After the first successful boot it is OK if they are present.
This doesn't seem to be a black and white issue as some users report no problem with not removing the drive after the clone and first boot but good practice says to do it.

 

Thanks for the idea, but I did remove my son's original (source) drive when I attempted to boot his system with the newly cloned (target) drive. It gets as far as the Windows splash-screen and then freezes up.

Since my last post, I downloaded the latest BIOS for his Dell Dimension 4550 (thinking that his 3-yr old BIOS may not support a 200GB drive). I'm planning on flashing his BIOS this evening when I return home. Hopefully, that will solve the problem!

 

When I read your original post I got the idea that the system was booted with only one drive.

Before you flash the BIOS you could have a look and see how the current BIOS is recognizing the drive.

Good luck.

 

You are correct, and that's what I am re-stating.

Thanks, I already checked his current BIOS and it does show the 200GB drive as the IDE 0 Master, but does that imply it fully supports the drive? If the problem isn't one of BIOS support, then what else could it be?

 

pvsurfer,

It sounds like you did everything correctly. Have you tried fdisk /mbr?

This link is not what you have done but it illustrates how fdisk /mbr can correct a boot issue. And the boot problem was just like yours.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1148252120

 

Brian, thanks for the idea and link. I have not tried an fdisk /mbr, as I assumed the cloned 200GB drive would have the same mbr as the source 30GB drive (which boots up fine). But based on the failed cloning threads which I've since been reading here, it's probably worth a shot.

 

When I did that test I made clones with copying the MBR and some without copying the MBR. There is a choice in Ghost 9/10 but naturally the correct choice is to copy the MBR. It made no difference when copying to a partition. Both "clones" failed to boot.

 

That is what is supposed to happen but cloning does not appear to be TI's strength.

I haven't tried cloning with TI so I cannot contribute on that aspect but if running fdisk /mbr does not solve your problem then restoring an image should work.

 

OK; we're going to give this thread another chance - I have removed a few off-topic posts and reopened this thread for discussion.

 

Hello pvsurfer,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Could you please tell if you use Acronis True Image Bootable Rescue Media or did you use Acronis True Image in Windows in order to perform clone procedure?

Please also try to prepare Windows using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) prior to the cloning as it described here.

You may also find this post helpful.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Aleksandr~ As there was very little space left on the 30GB C-drive, I used ATI's Boot CD (booting up in Linux) to perform the clone. However, I did not do a sysprep. Do you really think that may be the reason the cloned 200GB drive wouldn't bootup (I thought that was only necessary when migrating to another PC)? ~pv

 

Hello pvsurfer,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

If your new hard drive is of the same type as the original disk (I mean that you are not moving from IDE to SATA or SCSI) then there is no need to perform any special preparations in order to perform the disk cloning procedure. I believe that Aleksandr has suggested you to use Microsoft System Preparation Tool just in case.

If you are still unable to boot into Windows from the newly cloned hard drive then we recommend that you try creating an image of the entire original hard drive saving it to any type of the supported media (e.g. any external or network drive, CDs, DVDs, etc.) and then restoring this image to a replacement disk.

If the restored operating system still does not boot then please do the followg:

- Boot into Windows from the original hard drive and create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

- Launch the Acronis Report Utility once more;

- Select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;

- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;

- Turn off the computer and swap the drives, i.e. completely unplug the original disk and install the new one in it's place;

- Boot the computer from the beforehand created diskette and wait for the report creation process to finish;

- Collect the report file from the floppy.

- Rename the files collected to report_source.txt and report_destination.txt accordingly.

When booted into Windows from the original hard drive, please also create Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then please submit a request for technical support. Provide the files and information collected in 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 investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov