I have screwed up and need help

This is the first time I have posted to this forum, please don't beat me up after reading this.

A couple of weeks ago I added a second hard drive for the sole purpose of backing up, my original hd was/is 120 gig, the one I added is a 160 gig Seagate. I used the software to clone an my original hard drive to the new hard drive. I left the original as master, the Seagate as slave, I verified that everything was cloned, then set the 130 gig as slave, the 160 gig as master. Everything was just fine.

Then (this is the bad part) I was "given" copies of Acronis True Image 8.0 and Disk Director 9.0, I installed them, and ran the program as the wizard instructed and did a full backup to the 120 gig (letter H) from 160 gig (letter C). Everything seemed fine, no problems, I made a secure zone on drive H of 37 gigs, knowing I could increase the size later with Disk Director. My C drive has a partition named D which is FAT32, it is for recovery purposes, set by the computer mfg.

Everything was okay until I powered down and unplugged my pc the other night due to storms in the area.

When I powered up the next morning I got this message:

Starting Acronis Loader
Press ESC for MENU

This message kept scrolling upwards on a black screen, pressing ESC did nothing. I rebooted pressing ESC and a white box appeared asking which drive I wanted to boot from, that is not the exact phrase, but I am sure you know what I mean. I selected the 160 gig drive and got the same message mentioned above. Powered down, pressed ESC and selected the 120 gig drive, windows came up everything was there.

However, the drive letters had changed, the 160 gig hard drive was now letter H and the 120 gig hard drive is letter C. I can not access Acronis TI8 as it is on the drive that is not working, it is there in part. The part I am missing is the uninstall, it is just an icon!

I was advised by my friend who "gave" me this mess to install Acronis on my 120 gig functional hard drive, select add new hard drive, format and partition the 160 gig and clone the 120 to the 160. Make sure the 160 boots and do a cable select to assign drive letters. I am way leery of this.

My ultimate question is, since I have a "shady at best" copy of True Image and Disk Director and I can not uninstall it without going into the registry, can I buy a copy of Acronis 9.0 and Disk Director 10. and install over it? My H drive is not usable at this point. I have always bought my software and was quite leery of using my friends copy, I have learned a hard lesson.

I want my 160 gig to be C drive (boot) and the 120 gig to be H or whatever drive. I wish I could send a picture of my computer management screen, I do not know how to do a screen shot.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hanging my head in shame,
Sidnee

 

Sidnee,

Talk about confusing. What happens if you remove the 160 GB HD from your computer and make the 120 GB HD the master? Does it boot?

 

Replay to Brian's question and if you want to take a snapshot of your desktop simply press the "Stamp" key (usually near "F12") and then paste in a program like MS Paint, so you can save the image to a file.

 

Brian the 120 gig is fine, it is the original "c" drive, it is the 160 gig drive that was bootable until I powered down and unplugged that is now called H drive and will not boot.

Here is what I have done. I disconnected the 120gig (the original maxtor) this was set as slave when I added the new 160 gig seagate hard drive (which was up until a few moments ago master). I tried booting from just H drive (which should be C/160 gig) the message I get is "Starting Acronis Loader Press ESC for Menu" this message scrolls up a black screen and pressing ESC does nothing, I have to power down by pushing the off/on button.
I reversed what I had done above, made the 120 gig the master, disconnected the 160 gig and here I am.

What I do not understand is that I had a cloned copy of my 120 gig on the 160 gig, 120 gig was set at master, then when the cloning was done, I switched the 160 to master and the 120 to slave. I cloned to the 160 from the 120 using Seagates software, Diskwizard for Windows. It was a mirror copy, functional in all ways.

I don't see how reassigning a letter is going to make any difference, I can not boot from the 160 now.

Should I rerun the Diskwizard for windows on the 120 that is set as master and let it clone to the 160 set as slave, then switch the 160 to master and the 120 as slave again? This of course will reformat the 160, it is not bootable anyway.

Then should I use a purchased version of Acronis so I can back up my 160 gig to the 120?

As far as posting a picture of my Computer Mgmt. screen before and after shots, I can not figure out how to do it, they are in my Kodak Easyshare software, but sharing is not working.

Thanks,
Sid

 

Sidnee,

No offence intended but you made a series of cloning mistakes. This Reply #10 describes the first. Ignore the different software but the principle is the same.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1148252120;start=0#10

Why don't you try fdisk /mbr on your 160 GB HD as the only HD attached. Method #3

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method3

Any help?

 

Wow, thanks Brian, it is late and I really need to study this. I do not have a copy of a Win 98 Boot Floppy, I will research this a bit more tomorrow.

Thanks Brian,
Sid

 

Sid, you can download a win98 boot disc. Then double click on the exe

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis Backup Software

If you have Windows XP Operating System than boot the computer from a Windows XP Installation CD, start Recovery Console and run fixmbr command.

You can also boot your computer with the help of a bootable CD of an Acronis Disk Director 10 Suite and see if you have an active partition on a 160 Gb. HDD to boot from.
Using this bootable CD you may also change a letters of the partitions manually. We recommend you to change a letters of the partitions first.

Please note that you can purchase an upgrade for Acronis True Image 8.0 to Acronis True Image 9.0 Home and install it over the existing copy.

You can also visit Acronis online store to purchase a product you are interested in.

Thank you
--
Alexander Gladkov