Cloning Vista Boot Issue

Hi:

I own Acronis True Image Home 10, with the latest updates. I have cloned XP systems before with no issues. My personal laptop is a Dell M1330 running Vista Ultimate, with a Hitachi 160GB SATA hard drive that has 4 partitions on it. I am trying to upgrade the hard drive to a Hitachi 200GB SATA hard drive. I leave the old hard drive in the computer and plug the new hard drive into the USB port and boot to the Acronis boot CD, one that I made, and start a cloning session. I choose the automated path and let is automatically resize the partitions. It takes a while to go through the process, and when it is done, it tells me it has completed successfully. When I put the new hard drive in the system, it looks like it is booting to the wrong partition, because the Dell Diagnostic Service starts which is on the first partition.

I am looking for any pointers on successfully completing this process.

Thank you,
Shawn.

 

Are both HDDs connected? And when, how (USB, internally,...)?

If both are connected please unplug the old hdd. What happens then?

 

Yes both HDDs are connected. The primary HDD is located inside the laptop and is a SATA device. The drive I am cloning to is a SATA drive and connected to the laptop via a SATA to USB cable.

I have this issue resolved, what I did was purchase an upgrade to ATIH to go from 10 to 11 and the system seems to be working fine now.

I am unsure what it was, but for some reason 10, with the latest patch would not work on the Vista machine with 4 partitions. Same set-up with 11 worked flawlessly.

I appreciate your post.

Shawn.

 

Thank you for posting this solution.

It may helps other users.

BTW:
I pursued annother solution. I would have suggested to connect the new hdd into the laptop and unplug the old one. If it works I would recommend to clear the old hdd and to partition it again.

 

shawnjanes.
If you have occasion to need to clone it again, review My guide to Manual Cloning using the TI Rescue CD. This is work in progress but it might help.

This guide suggest removing the old drive and putting the new drive in its place. Then mounting the original in another location such as an internal or external enclosure and clone from that position.