Error After Cloning

Using Windows XP Professional (SP2), I recently tried to clone the contents of a 160 GB Maxtor SATA 1 hard drive to a brand-new 250 GB Western Digital SATA 2 hard drive using True Image 10 (trial version). There were no errors during the actual cloning process, shut down the computer after it was done, restarted it just to make sure everything was complete, then shut it down, opened it up, and took out the old drive, putting the new drive into the primary SATA slot. Upon starting the computer up now, I get the error "Cannot boot operating system" (or something along those lines, don't remember the exact error). I have since been forced to put the old hard drive back in and use it for the time being.

I'm not sure what the problem is, has anyone experienced the same error?

 

drnick311,

How long did it take? How much data is on your old HD? (Used space in GB)

With both HDs connected, is there that amount of data on the new HD?

 

The mistake was to re-boot after the end of the cloning process with both drives connected. This confuses Windows as it sees two identical OS at the same time.

 

Yes, I checked, both drives contain the same exact amount (32.7 GB used), and it took approximately 30-45 minutes.

Xpilot - Is there anything I can do as of now besides formatting the 250 and attempting the clone all over again?

 

See this very informative thread:

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

Kawecki's trick is easy to do if you can make the W98 media.

 

There should be no need to format the 250 as TI will wipe out the drive before proceeding with the clone. Once the clone is finished, TI needs to reboot your computer. As mentioned by Bobdat here, how do you go about doing that? Other than pulling the plug on your computer, another method is suggested by Acronis Support here. I would be interested in finding out if this suggested method works!

 

The problem with Acronis' suggestion is that it's not possible or practical to get there from where you are on clone completion.

Once cloning is done, anything you click executes a restart. Unless you hold an F key to interrupt the Acronis auto-reboot, you'll end up booting with the source AND destination drives active, resulting in corruption.

The only way you can safely prevent TrueImage from rebooting with the master and clone active is to press your F12 key (or whatever gives you a one-time boot sequence); select the CD/DVD drive as the boot drive; insert the Acronis Recovery CD (which you had better burn before you try to clone a hard drive, even though Acronis doesn't warn you about their program's continuing failure to work correctly after two years of complaints by users) and boot up. Only after that stupidly cumbersome procedure can you safely shut down your computer.

Like I've said before, Acronis' amateur programmers just don't get it!!!

 

Or as the system is rebooting, when the POST is showing, remove the CD, then you can safely pull the plug and remove the original drive, then restart and let the system boot from the newly cloned drive. I've done that many times.

 

Hi bobdat... Would you tell me if the following would work:

1. Initiate the cloning using the TI Rescue Disk. Keep that Rescue Disk in your optical drive.
2. Once the cloning is finished and TI wants to reboot your computer, the reboot will be to the TI Rescue disk and thus to the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media interface.
3. Do as suggested by Marat Setdikov and choose to shut down your computer by clicking on the button in the lower left corner.

Since the reboot in Step 2 was to the TI Rescue Disk, at no time was Windows rebooted. I can't see then that Windows would be confused as to which is the OS drive.

 

That's the conventional wisdom and is confirmed by several other members in this thread. However it's not my experience. I've deliberately tried to make the Acronis TI cloning process fail, in many ways, and can't. One of my tests was to reboot a few times before removing the old HD and installing the new HD as Master. It always booted normally. On my computers, TI seems to break Dan Goodell's cloning rules. Here's a quote from Dan Goodell concerning his rules...

 

I can confirm a similar situation to BrianK. As a test I had my Source drive as master on the Secondary ide controller and the Destination drive as master on the Primary ide controller. Upon completion of the Clone process I simply rebooted and the system rebooted without complaint from the Destination drive.

 

Thanks Ralphie. That's a demonstration of Rule #2 being broken. I've broken that rule too but in a slightly different way. After rebooting, did you notice that there were no drive letters assigned for the HD on the secondary IDE controller?

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

 

BrianK, I just tested my cloning arrangement again since I hadn't looked at drive letters before. The normal drive letter for my setup was allocated to the drive on the Secondary. I'll see if I can insert the pic I took of it:



Note that the cloned drive, in this case C, takes on the volume label of the Source (E) so both drives now have the same label. I would then change the volume label to a more appropriate one.

In case anyone is wondering how I can be sure it is the newly cloned drive that is booting when I hadn't removed the Source, that is one of the conveniences of having removable trays for the drives. Each tray has its own drive activity light. So I simply have to look at the lights to tell which drive is booting.

 

Ralphie, I appreciate your running that test again. I used WinXP so maybe that explains our different drive letter results or maybe that I did it from Windows and you used the CD. This is what I did...

Old HD had C and D partitions. New HD had a primary and an extended partition, E and F, both containing no data. The True Image clone process was started from Windows and the computer was shut down when the clone was completed. (My computer actually gives the message, "Press any key to shutdown".) The new HD was set as Master and the old HD was set as Slave. Early during start-up there was a brief Acronis message about “assigning letters” then a reboot and WinXP started up normally. The new HD showed as C and D but there were no drive letters for the old HD partitions. In Disk Management, the C drive on the new HD (Disk 0) was the System drive. WinXP on the old HD (Disk 1) was shown as Active.

I shutdown and removed the old HD. WinXP still booted normally.

The old HD was connected again, WinXP booted normally and there were still no drive letters for the old HD. I assigned drive letters to the two partitions, restarted and WinXP booted normally and all partitions had drive letters.

Again, this is breaking Rule #2.

Rule #1 is "do not let old-XP see the new partition before cloning". Acronis TI can break this rule too.

If you try to break either of these rules with Ghost 9 or 10 the clone won't boot. It can be easily fixed by zeroing the DiskID with fdisk /mbr or "Clear Sig".

 

I should have said that I used the bootable CD of ver 9 build 3677 with the BartPE plugin, and the OS is WinXP Pro. I just have a Vista skin incorporated so I get the Vista look, but not the Vista bloat. At the end of the clone process I get a message to click OK to restart, not a shutdown option. While the system is restarting and during the POST screen I quickly eject the CD to let the system boot from the clone.

 

The problem you have is that when you close TI after cloning is complete, TI immediately initiates an unwanted reboot.

You can press your F key and reboot from the CD in your optical drive as you indicated but that can't happen without your quick intervention - pressing your F key. Then, after you boot to the Acronis Recovery CD, you can launch TI and shut down your computer.

This is a very silly way to have to accomplish a safe shutdown when all Acronis' geniuses had to do was provide us with that choice at the completion of cloning the same way they do at the completion of all the other TI tasks.