cloned disk will not load winxp

royal.hello there,my first post,and hoping someone here can help me,will appreciatte it.
i am running winxp,no problems with the os.
i have a maxtor 40gb,and i decided to transfer the 40gb image to a new 80gb maxtor.
i used trueimage 8,and used the clone icon to do it.
i did the whole 40gb image to the 80gb,i let it do it automatically.
it rebooted,then went through its thing okay.
before i cloned with the image,i had the 40gb on pimary master,the 80gb on primary slave.
when it had finished,i disconnected the 40gb,and left the 80gb to boot with.
went to boot,but came up with the error.cannot load windows.
so what i did was to put the 80gb on primary master(as i read in the posts to do)but still came up with the same error.
even tried going into the bios(as in some posts)not altering anything,just getting out again,but no good.
tried the boot cd,but no luck.
when i put the 2 drives together again in winxp,as they were before,i went into the 80gb drive,which i transfered the 40gb to,the files were there which i had cloned,but will not boot on its own.
i redid it several times,but no luck.noticed the 2 disks did hold the same amount of files.
could anyone help out here please?

 

Hello royal,

Try the following:

1. Power down and ensure the 40GB drive is connected as Primary master and the 80GB drive as Primary slave.
2. Boot into TI's rescue environment via the Acronis boot rescue CD and clone the master to the slave. Remove the rescue CD.
3. Power down again, remove the 40GB drive from the Primary IDE controller altogether and replace it with the now cloned 80GB drive (ensure its jumper is set to "master").
4. Reboot the computer. With a bit of luck and a fair wind it should now be o.k.

Regards

 

royal
well i asked the questions in my first post,hoping this was the right forum to ask about trueimage.
surely someone will be able to give some answers to my questions,as there has been a lot of people reading my post,so hopefully they will share their knowledge with me,and help me out.
thanks.

 

Menorcaman
thanks for your reply,i did that in my first post,except i did it in windows,not with the cd rescue disk,
so what you are saying is,it might work with doing it with the rescue disk?
i have put zeros on the 80gb disk now,do i have to format that now,or will it be alright just to clone it with the 40gb?
thanks.

 

Hello royal,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Cloning Software.

Please put your hard drivers in your PC, create Acronis Report and send it to support@acronis.com. This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure. We will help you with this problem.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Yes. Potentially, there is an issue with NTFS retaining drive letters if a HD is imaged or cloned to a new drive. Therefore the new drive needs to be hidden from Windows. Please checkout this article at <goodells.net> if you want a full explanation.

No need to format but it might be an idea to fdisk the drive first in order to delete any partition info. Again, it's probably not necessary but at least it'll ensure there is no remnant of a drive letter assignment.

Regards

 

Menorcaman
read the report you gave me,a bit confusing,but i get the drift about the drive letters.
not quite sure how to hide the drive letters.
once i put in the 2 hdds,wont win will give them a drive letter,which in my case is c:\ and f:\?
i wont format the 80gb drive,as it is totally wiped clean with the low level format i did.

 

Only necessary to hide the new drive from Windows during the actual cloning process. Hence reason for doing it from the Acronis rescue CD (it's Linux based).

Just make sure you leave the 40GB drive disconnected during the first reboot into Windows after the clone.

Formatting doesn't overwrite the partition info sectors so I still recommend that you fdisk it first (fdisk is different to formatting) just in case.

Regards

 

All good advice. As an aside, a low level format (zero filling the disk) will erase all information including MBR, partition table and I believe the disk signature too.

 

Menorcaman
thanks for the info you have given me,appreciatte that.
i am going to try the method you said,and hopefully it will work.
will let you know if it works.

 

Menorcaman
tried what you said for me to do.
booted from rescue cd.
clicked on clone icon.
it showed me the 2 hdds.
then i did it on automatic.then proceed.
the commit window came up,got half way,then froze.
tryed again,then had problems with usb addresses,but went ahead.
still froze one third of the way on the progress bar.
so i took out my usb connectors,went to about 1 minute to go on progress bar,then froze.
this is getting painful,so i gave up on it.
seems to me.trueimage isnt a good very good at copying winxp,its defeating the object if you cant clone a hdd in windows,but have to do it from the rescue disk.
i cant even do it from that.
i might be wrong,but i have tried over and over again.
there is nothing wrong with my original winxp.
any suggestions i can do?
thanks

 

Oh dear, not what I wanted to hear!! What TI version and build number did you use to create the boot rescue CD?

 

Menorcaman
thanks for your interest in helping me try to solve this,it is trueimage 8.
i have spent most of 2 days on this now,clearing the disk,cloning,repeatedly,not got anywhere,so im giving it the bullet,shall try some other software,if there is any that will accomplish transferring an image.
thanks once again.

 

Hi Royal,

A pity that you've had so much difficulty trying to clone to a new hard drive and now intend to move to different imaging/cloning software.

Your symptoms lead me to believe that the problem could well be hardware rather than Ti/software related, possibly faulty memory. If that's the case then moving to different software will not help. I recommend downloading a copy of <memtest86+> (the floppy version if you're not sure how to burn an ISO image to CD) and run it on your computer for a few hours (preferably overnight). There should be zero errors shown the end of the test. At least that way you'll find out whether the memory is good or bad.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Regards

 

I have the exact same problem with my WinXP computer. I just can't get the imaged drive to boot. There has to be a way to get this to work?

 

Have you tried making an image of the whole boot drive (all partitions) and restoring that image to the replacement drive installed as if it were already the boot drive?

One advantage of this two step approach is that you can use Check Image in TI to see if the image is good. If it is corrupt, you have something to work on. Memory testing, hard drive error checking, etc. may resolve the problem. At that point, cloning may also work since the problem has been fixed.