Cloned drive won't boot

Hello: using Acronis True Image installed on my Dell Dimension 3000, I attempted to clone my 40Gig system drive to a 120 Gig hard drive, so that I could replace the 40Gig drive with the 120 Gig drive for more storage capacity.

Both drives are Western Digital drives. The 120Gig drive was previously being used to store audio files.

I connected the 120 Gig drive to my computer via a firewire 400 hard drive enclosure, and ran the Acronis True Image cloning procedure, cloning from the 40Gig to the 120Gig. After it had finished, I opened up the computer, replaced the 40 Gig system drive with the 120 Gig drive, then turned on the computer, and after the Dell welcome screen, I got this message:

Loading PBR for descriptor 2 .... done.
Bad PBR

And that's it. It won't get past this point. Any suggestions?

 

My next step would be to
1. Put the 120G drive in final intended position using same MB connectors and data ribbon cables and jumper settings as original 40G.
2. Attach the 40 G in some other position or external usb enclosure.
3. Bootup using TI Rescue CD and clone using the CD
3. Clone from 40 to 120.
4. Before first bootup after cloning, remove one of the drives. You do NOT want two identical drives attached on first bootup.

(Suggest using new ribbon cable if one came with the drive.)

 

Thanks for that response Grover. I don't have a TI Rescue CD, as I downloaded the TI software from the Internet. Is there an option for creating such a CD within TI?

 

Use the Acronis Media Builder Program. It should be in your Acronis->True Image folder under the Start button and also available in TI under the Tools menu, Create Bootable Rescue Media (or something like that).

 

David L,

I searched the Dell Forum for this error message and it's said to be due to HD failure. Strange since that HD had been previously working OK as a data HD. It's worth running the Dell and the HD manufacturer's diagnostics.

 

guys: many thanks for the replies ... I tried running a Dell Diagnostics CD and it worked! the cloned drive is now operating as my system drive. Thanks.

 

David, great news. What did you do with the Dell CD that fixed the problem?

 

Nice job Brian. You took the time to check the error message. I breezed right on by it without noticing.

 

Grover, my research indicated the HD was faulty but David got it working. I'm interested to know what helped.

 

Brian: I booted to the Diagnostics disc, and it gave me several options, one of which was to run diagnostics. So I did that, which led to more options: view installation tutorial, set up a hard drive, drive to drive data copy, and hard drive information. I checked out the tutorial but didn't think that was very helpful, clicked set up hard drive then realized that wasn't really appropriate and I didn't want to erase the drive, clicked hard drive information which basically showed the drive connected to the system, and that's it.

I figured that the diagnostics hadn't worked, but when I quit the diagnosics disc and the system rebooted, the Windows screen came up!

One detail I left out ... before this, I realized that my CD-ROM drive was not working! I kept trying to run the diagnostics disc and it kept spinning around, doing nothing, so I decided to replace the drive with another CD drive and that got the diagnostics disc running. So perhaps having a dead CD-ROM drive may have affected the system drive, though it wasn't a slave to it.

 

Do As the other member mentioned ,Dont use the drive hooked up to firewire,Run it off an other cable or usb.

 

David, thanks for the details. Weird!