Cloning HD: Attempt #2. Need Advice

Hi, and thanks for reading. I've cloned successfully before using Ghost, but it was always a hassle and took 30 hours without USB 2.0 drivers. My friend helped me clone successfully with Acronis 10 last year, but he's not here now.

Yesterday I popped in the Acronis 11 (I still have 10 too) boot CD and successfully cloned my 100 GB Toshiba to the new 250 GB Western Digital Scorpio (both non-SATA). I was ecstatic that I got no errors! So, I removed the 250 GB which I had hooked up by USB 2.0 and booted from the 100 GB Toshiba. It was the same as before the cloning operation. Then, I put the 250 inside the laptop and the Windows XP logo and the little scrollbar looking thing came up, but, after that, it just kept re-booting. I tried boot off of the new drive using USB 2.0 with the slot in the machine empty and got the same thing (the old hard drive will boot off USB or internally).

I put the 250g in and tried repairing XP but no luck. Safe mode no luck. I put in the Acronis CD and saw that the new drive is listed as Active, Primary, and with the drive letter C, so that's not the problem. I mean, it ALMOST boots! So today I reinstalled Windows on the 250g and it's still the same.

So, today, I am going to re-clone. It only took about 1.5 hours (less if I delete some X-files episodes) for my 60 gb or so, so, I don't mind redoing after a reformat.

BUT, what should I do differently. I know the first advice will be to pull the old Toshiba drive after cloning and put it back it, but that really won't make any difference seeing that the machine is off (but I'll do it anyway, as well as pull the battery). Also, I might try to use Acronis 10 again this time. Maybe it will work. But, I really don't think either of these will work. Any advice?

If the advice works I'll stop back and tell you if it works or not. I really appreciate it!

 

tjdean01,

What brand is the laptop? Some don't clone easily using a USB enclosure.

Do you mean it doesn't boot?

 

There are 2 things that you need to check when restoring windows xp.
1. partition ID on the restore drive. There are 2 drive letters that must match in order for the restored drive to boot. One is the "mounted devices" and the other is the "partition ID". If these 2 drive letters don't match you get the exact symptoms you describe. If the source windows xp, saw and ID'ed the drive it will be restored on, it will cause this problem.
example:
source hard drive = mounted device c: partition ID c: / USB drive mounted device f: partition ID f:
restored drive = mounted device c: partition ID f:
As you can see the restored drive kept the original partition ID because the windows registry knows that drive as f:.

2. Since you are restoring a laptop, this has been known to cause problems with the hard drive CHS geometry. This requires you to do a "reverse clone" to be succesful.

The problem you describe sounds too much like a "partition ID" descrepency.

 

Thanks for the reply. It's a Gateway released in Jan 2006. Yeah, I meant that it starts to boot and gets the WinXP logo and scrollbar thing, but then shuts off and tries to reboot again.

Thanks for the long reply. Well, I plugged the new 250 drive in and Windows recognized it. Then, I turned off windows, stuck in the Acronis CD and cloned it. I would think the cloning operation would remove the drive letter Windows knows the drive as, correct? After cloning I did not hook the drives up at the same time.

The other thing I was thinking to do is to create a backup, and restore to the new drive with the backup, but then, where would I put the backup file? the 100 GB is too small, and I can't restore it to the 250 if it's already on the 250, can I? Even if it's a different partition it wouldn't work, would it?

How do I check the letters of the 250 just in case? It says C (as well as the other 2 partitions it cloned) when I read it in Acronis). Thanks for the help. Hope we can get it working soon!

 

Just to make sure we are on the same wavelength, this is what happens to the clone as well as a fresh WinXP install. If it's happening to a fresh WinXP install that is concerning. I'd check the new HD with the WD Diagnostic tools.

If it only happens with the clone, try a reverse clone with the new HD in the laptop and the old HD in the USB enclosure. Boot to the Acronis TI CD for this procedure. Take no notice of the drive letters presented from the Acronis TI CD. They may be different from Windows drive letters.

HDs in Gateway laptops should be easy to clone.

 

To check the drive letters is very complicated, I wrote the directions on this other thread. The only thing is that you need to make a bartpe with the savepart plugin. There is a standalone savepart utility but it gives inaccurate readings. If you have the bartpe CD made, use that to boot your computer and follow the directions on my previous thread linked below. There is also another way to check using the demo "paragon justboot corrector" it's obsolete but still available but it won't boot the latest computers, but since your computer is from 2006 it might work on it. The demo will bootup your computer and show you the "partition ID" quickly.

If you do find a "partition ID" problem, the only utility that can change "partition ID" drive letters is a "boot corrector" (latest updated version). You can also see if a "sector by sector" clone will fix it. I always use a "boot corrector" to fix the problem, takes less than 5 minutes. It's a simple problem to fix with the right utilitys.

Cloning should remove the drive letters, but when windows boot's up, the registry sometimes remembers the hard drives ID's and the drive letters they where previously assigned. The c: drive letter you see is the "mounted devices" that is correct, but the underlying "partition ID" is something else, this mismatch causes windows to hang/reboot due to windows can not find the next startup files it requires to complete the boot cycle. When you did a repair install of windows xp, it will not change the "partition ID" that is why it won't boot either, but a clean install of windows will change everything and it will definitely boot.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=211207

 

Okay, guys, while I was reading your replies a spent a few hours reading the forums and discovered that the safest and recommended way to clone is to to just do a backup and restore that to the new HD. I can live with that! My old HD is 100 GB and about 75 GB are used, so I thought I couldn't, but, the C drive with WinXP on it is only 15 GB, so, I was able to back it up right to the same disk!

So, as recommended by a frequent poster, after doing this with no errors, I took the old HD out and put the new HD in. I wiped it clean with Acronis disk eraser. Maybe I shouldn't have done this? I wanted a fresh "clone" (restore). After that, I shut it off, plugged in the old HD by USB, and tried to do the restore while the new HD was in the laptop. As soon as I started it said it can't read the sector or something like that. I figured it was because I erased the disk, so I clicked ignore. So, next I though I'd look for the file on the old HD connected by USB, but it didn't find it. I opened some of the other functions of True Image and it found it. This has to be something small. What's wrong here?

Thanks in advance. At least I know the safest way to do it now and I won't be trying to clone anymore if this works!

 

tjdean01,

Thanks for the updates but you didn't answer my question.

Now you are seeing sector errors. You should check both HDs, especially the new one.

 

Sorry. It only happened to the newly cloned HD. And, I tired to repair, but I didn't know the admin password, so I tried to reinstall thinking it would fix the boot problems, but it was Professional instead of Home and I didn't think it would work anyway but I was just like what the heck, I'll try it because I'm going to wipe it before trying again anyway. The new is now wiped.

Ok, I'll go to WD site's to try to get those tools, but the HD is brand new, and having cloning problems is not rare at all (I never expected it to work), so, I really don't htink there's anything wrong with the brand new disk.

The reason I want a back up is so that I can have 2 in separate places in case something happens to one of them.

 

That's OK. I misunderstood. I wouldn't bother with the WD diagnostics.

I prefer using images in this situation but a reverse clone is easier as it's a one step procedure. It's worth trying.

You don't have a drive letter problem. That's a red herring.

 

Hey, I got it to work! I'm using the new WD drive now! Thank you all for your help! After all my trials and errors, this is what I did. Mods or daily participants, feel free to link newbies to this post anytime. I posted it on my blog to help others (doubt Google will find it but oh well):

I had the Toshiba 100 GB old HD and Win XP was on one partition with my documents (photos, etc) on the other). I didn't have enough room to make a backup image of the whole disk, so I just made a backup image of that XP partition, which was about 15 GB. (I would have saved the whole disk image to the new HD, but you can't do it that way.)

Luckily, as I'll tell you later, I chose that that backup be split into segments allowing me to burn it to DVD for future use.

Next took the old Toshiba HD out and hooked it up USB 2.0, and put the new 250 GB drive in the laptop. I tried to restore but True Image didn't recognize the new HD in the slot. Next I hooked up the NEW HD USB and left the old one in the computer. It recognized both, but I was scared to go forward as I didn't want to make any mistakes.

Next, I burned the resulting 3 images to DVDs, and put the new HD in the PC. I left the old trusty Toshiba unattached to anything because at the time that was the only copy I had. I put in the TI CD and started it up and started to restore to the new HD WITH validation (it will make you put it the last disk first to check validation). Validation failed on disk two!

Next, I validated the disks WITHOUT restore, just to check them, and they were okay. So, next I went to restore WITHOUT validation. I put in the DVD that it called for (I think they go in order when you restore, and backwards order when you validate. Doesn't matter, it'll tell you which to insert). After it was done with one disk, it would ask for the other. It took about 15-20 min per disk. I choose HIGH compression creating the images because I didn't want to have to use extra DVDs. (I normally choose NORMAL for backup/file compression, and would recommend that to anyone unless if you don't have extra DVDs on hand.)

And, that's it! It worked! I'm on the new 250 drive now. AVG Virus scan does not work, so I will reinstall. Firefox 2.0, MSN Messenger, ACDsee, Nero, SpywareBlaster, Winamp, Word 2007 all worked. I won't check all programs but if that many are good I'd say the restore (clone) is successful!

I bought the 250 GB Western Digital 5400 RPM Drive to replace my 100 GB Toshiba 5400 RPM. The Toshiba has a 16 MB cache and the WD only 8 MB, but, I don't think it really matters. I don't want a 7200 RPM drive as they have a higher chance to run hot. With the WD being almost double the size, it will have to spin less so it will definitely be faster anyway. But, my reason to restore was for backup and safety purposes, not speed. The biggest non-SATA 2.5" notebook HD drive is the 250 GB WD, so that was my only choice anyway.

Thanks to the guys who took the time to help me in this thread. I wrote this up hoping to help others who may be in the same exact situation. Since this works, I may never try to clone again!

 

Great that you have sorted it out. Don't be too hard on clones. A reverse clone would have worked. Standard clones to a USB HD often fail.

 

Clones to USB drive fail? That's what I'm experiencing. I'm using Echo Workstation. I select Clone to USB drive, tell it to duplicate the partitions. It tells me it's going to erase all the data, and shows m a preview of the new drive with the same three partitions (that I don't particularly want) on it.

When I tell it to go, it reboots with DOS screen, says it will clone one partition, finishes, then clones the C Drive - 250 GB or so- onto the USB (Same size drive 320 GB). It take a couple hours, often falling asleep in the process. I wake by hitting the power button. Eventually it seems to finish.. I hit the power button again, and then it restarts.

When it restarts, all that can be seen is the little partition. The big C Drive partition, along with the third partition show in Administrative Tools as Unallocated.

Anybody know what to do?

Peter

 

I guess I should outline what I want to do.

I want to create a bootable backup of my drive, with everything on it. I make lots of presentations, and I want to be prepared if I were to get a failure prior to starting a show.

I also want to be able to update this copy of the HD with new material. I would like to set up a periodic sync from the internal to the USB drive that would copy all new files over.

It's not necessary that the second copy be the same size as the original (as a matter of fact, it would be helpful if I could do this with a larger drive, so that I could put some other files on the drive.)

When I try to make a backup without cloning, It wants me to put everything inside a folder, rather than in the root directory of the drive (I assume this would keep the drive from being bootable).

Again, any help appreciated.
Peter

 

Peter,

Many of us have found our best success when booting from a TI Rescue CD when performing either cloning or image restoration. Also, better results are most often attained if the target is placed in its intended boot position before imaging or cloning.

Check line 3 of my signature for imaging and check the link below for cloning--both are for versions prior to TI2009 although the procedures are basically the same.
My guide to Manual Cloning using the TI Rescue CD


The link below relates to 2009 restoring an archive.
Using TI 2009 to restore an image.

 

Grover,
Are you saying that ATI is generally unsuitable for what I need - the ability to create a bootable copy on a USB drive that includes all files on the source drive?

I know how to accomplish this on Mac, but not on PC.

Boot to CD and run restore is not what I'm looking for in a backup application.

Thanks for your help.

Peter Krogh

 

If you need to restore your system drive or system partition, it is best done when booted from the CD. If done from Windows, Windows will reboot and use the same Linux drivers as the CD. If your system is not bootable, then the CD is the answer to a workable restore.

Some people have reported success when cloning to the external but most postings have been reported failures. It depends a lot on your individual hardware combinations. It might work better to an eSata as compared to a USB. Unfortunately, most cloning programs does modifications so none are truly exact clones. Maybe some of the other Acronis programs can assist such as Migrate Easy but I have not tried. They do have trial versions. Also, I believe the Echo versions or business versions offer better cloning options.

 

Grover,
Thanks. I am using Echo Workstation.

Seems like a significant issue if a straight clone is unreliable (I was able to do this earlier with a trial version of TI 10 (low-end version), I think - whatever was before 11). I did it on the same machine with both XP and Vista.

I do have a way to attach the drive as SATA, but that's significantly less convenient. I'm hoping to suggest a way to do this for the next version of my book. I though I could safely recommend ATI for this.

http://thedambook.com

Peter

 

Peter, are you trying to make a usb drive from which you can boot into Windows - in case of internal drive failure? This is not easy at all to do - unlike in a Mac. In fact there are very very few reports of users being able to do this.