pls help, cannot image Compaq drive

really frustrated now, I have a Compaq Presario 6475 Desktop and for the life of me, I cannot successfully image and restore to a new drive.

I use ATI all the time and never have a problem with it, but this one is kicking my butt.

This drive has a weird MBR and recovery partition. When I attempt to image and then restore to a new drive, using ATI 10.0, it just doesnt boot.

I have a feeling this is a very specific monster that Compaq has created. Any attempt to change to a different drive, any alteration to the partitions will result in a non-boot situation.

The original drive is a Samsung 8004H 80GB. The bare new hdd is Seagate Baracuda 80GB (also have a 160GB). ATI image the original drive, then ATI restore to the bare drive, just as usual, but restored image doesnt boot.

I did start off using an older copy of ATI 7.0 and that did not "see" the weird MBR. Then I purchased the ATI 10, and that one "sees" the Compaq MBR. So I hoped that would work, but it doesnt.

Anyone that has any help to offer, I would be super appreciative.

 

just an update for what it's worth...

I ran a program called bootmaster to analyze the MBR and partition. It told me this...

"MBR appears corrupt, parameter mismatch.

BIOS HDD Detecion may not be correctly translating the CHS parameters.

Heads + Sectors reported by BIOS are different from BPB of the boot sectors on disk. Indicates the translation has changed since the disk's partitions were originally formatted."

From what this told me, the Compaq BIOS seems to be the problem here. Also the strange HDD, Samsung 8004H. They must have set it up to be tightly coupled between the configuration on the disk and what the BIOS detects/reports.

ATI cannot successfully image and restore to a bare drive in this case. It will not work at all. Even if you take a bare drive of the same capacity. Perhaps if you could get another Samsung 8004h, it might work, but I don't think so.

my advice is stay away from Compaqs ( HP now...but never had a problem with HP) and any other machine that does weird stuff to the BIOS and disk. How would you know ?

 

oh, I forgot to add another interesting piece, this drive had GoBack on it.
However I uninstalled it, since you cant image with GoBack on a drive.

I don't know if that screwed up the hdd at all.

btw a terrible piece of s/w.

 

metafizx,

Getting rid of GoBack is a good move. Your current HD boots so the MBR must be OK. What error do you see when you try to boot the new HD?

By the way, where are you writing your images and how are you doing the restore?

Compaqs do have unique CHS geometry. You have to accept this.

 

I just bought a Compaq SR2030NX. When I boot with the Acronis emergency boot disk it doesn't find a hard drive.

I just updated my Acronis to 10.0 and it says I have build #4871. Will the updated version find the hard drive, or am I just out of luck?

I backed up the disk from the desktop of the Compaq, but I'm worried I won't be able to restore with the emergency disk.

John in Oregon

 

Metafizx, try making the bootable Rescue cd and do the Backup and Recover procedures with it.

OregonJohn, there is a later update to ver 10. I think it is 4940.

 

thanks brian for your reply.

when I restore the complete image with ATI 10.0, the boot just hangs when it gets to the hdd. So there is no error, it just does nothing. This is with 2 different new hdds.

I normally save my images on a USB drive, which I have done successfully many times in the past. in this case I also used a local drive as well to save images. Worth mentioning, I always plug in the source drive to a secondary IDE and then replace that with the target drive when I do the restore. This is the PC that I have the licensed ATI installed, so it's not the target machine.
I done it this way many times with no problems.

I didnt try a ATI rescue disk style restore, but I never found that to have different results. but maybe there is a difference.

I noticed that the partition sizes were not exactly the same size comparing the source to the destination, using the same size drive. I assume this is because of a different drive geometry and drive bios ?? ATI resized the partition based on the new drive, even though they were the same size drive.

And my guess is the Compaq BIOS does something weird when the drive boots and if the partitions are not exactly the same as the original, then it doesnt work. That something "weird" is what I don't understand.

 

thanks ralphie. I didnt try the rescue method on this machine. how is this different from restoring the image on a different PC then putting the drive into the target machine ? I would assume the image is the same regardless.

 

Ah ... you're restoring an image to a different PC? That's a horse of a different colour, as they say. You have to use True Image with the Universal Restore feature. Still I would make the Rescue CD (it will also have the UR feature) and do my Recovery from it - especially as you say that that Compaq might have something weird about it's drive structure.

 

metafizx, thanks for that explanation. If I understand correctly you are performing the image and restore process in a second computer and then installing the restored HD back to your Compaq. That's why you are getting the geometry problem. With Compaq's and a few other brands you must have the target HD in the laptop for the restore and you must have the source HD in the laptop when creating the image.

This long thread details your situation. Let me know what you think.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1128609708;start=

 

OMG, thanks Brian. That is *exactly* it.
I understand now.

 

thanks Ralphie, that seems to be true, and I understand now. i appreciate all the responses...brian's and your's have been really helpful.

 

just to follow up on this thread, I got the junky Compaq back on the bench and installed ATI 10, imaged, and restored to the new drive with the boot disk and it worked.

I did try ATI 7 and that didnt work. ATI 7 has worked for me on lots of disks, but guess this one has somethin weird. Certainly the BIOS is an oddball.

gladd to get this thing sewn up.

thanks for all that contributed.

 

metafizx,

Thanks for the update. I saw your other thread too.