Clone and Restored Drive will not boot

I am having a cloning issue that seems to be common across a number of threads in this forum but, I have yet to get a solution.

I have an older IBM 380E ThinkPad with Windows2000 that I am upgrading the HDD from the original 2.1Gb to a 5.1Gb drive. Due to there being no USB or other external capabilities to attach another disk or CD-writer, I removed the drive and used the latest Acronis True Image 9.0 and an IDE to USB converter to attach to another newer ThinkPad. I created the Restore backup CDs and restored to the new drive using the same attachment method.

BUT the newly restored disk will not boot. It shows the IBM splash screen and then the screen goes blank and shows a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

The disk is visible from any other computer as well as the Bios and Win2000 recovery console from a CD boot on the actual ThinkPad. I can not restore directly to the Thinkpad with the new HDD installed and the restore CDs for the Acronis Rescue CD will not boot with the Advance option. It just cycles back to the main menu. The Basic boot option does not let me see the CD Rom so I can restore from the backups created.

I then removed the HDD again and used the Clone option with both the original and new HDDs attached at the same time via IDE to USB adapters. Despite taking hours of time (with no progress indications in the program screen) everything during the cloning process went fine. I removed the disk and installed in the ThinkPad again but, this disk will not boot. It shows the IBM splash screen and then the screen goes blank and shows a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

I've done FDISK /MBR from a Win98 boot-disk and also FIXMBR & FIXBOOT from a Windows 2000 recovery console. BOOTCFG from the Windows 2000 recovery console shows the proper startup location as well.

I also attempted a full repair to the clone drive from the Win2000 CD. The repair completed fine but still no ability to boot. I quickly confirmed again that the drive is operational by formatting and installing a fresh load of Win2000 from the CD on the new clone drive. All works fine and the unit boots fine. I continued to reinstall the old drive at different times to confirm that nothing was corrupt with the original image.

This is a cloning issue and I have read multiple entries in this forum about the same symptoms after cloning drives. There must be a common thread to the resolution or workaround for this issue.

Any solution or direction would be appreciated.

 

The lack of progress bars showing during a Clone process is a known issue since the previous build.

Try creating an Image (not a Clone) of the original drive instead and Restore the image to the "new" drive.

 

Not sure what you mean by "take an image"? I did a "Backup" of the drive, creating an image and then attempted to restore to the new drive with that image set. As I mentioned in my original entry, the results were the same. I may not have been clear on the steps with the words used.

 

Only two quicks ideas/questions:

1. Did you leave the last 7-10MB of your hard drive empty? For some reason Windows 2000 leaves a little empty space at the end of the harddrive. I saw once that the resizing of an existing partition brought up the error you have.

2. Only a strange thought: is there an active partition definied in your system? No Fixboot/FixMBR or something sets the partition active flag.

 

Hello Poky,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please create Acronis Report 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 having the issue from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy.

Please create an account, then log in and submit a request for technical support. Attach the collected file 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 investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

In your case, it's highly likely that the IDE to USB converter does not see the drive geometry in the same way that the internal IDE of the laptop sees the drive. Your objective should be to find a way to restore the image to the drive while the drive is installed in the laptop. Try swiching the way the bios is set to handle USB support (legacy or not), then try your CD. Otherwise if that does not work, try a BartPE CD.