Image for DOS/Linux-Restoring SSD Image to SATA Drive

Does anyone have any experience in Restoring an Image of a SSD drive to a SATA hard drive? Example: Your SSD drive breaks and you decide to use a SATA hard drive while you are waiting for the SSD replacement drive.

I have Restored a SSD drive Image to a SATA hard drive (Windows XP Pro 32 bit). Windows will boot to the Login Screen. When I Login everything seems normal until a few seconds after logging in. Everything is Super Slow after that. My NOD32 AV appears to get stuck in the Startup Scan. Windows appears to get stuck in the Shutdown and Restart. When I say "appears to" I mean that it takes hundreds of times longer than normal and I never let it go long enough to find out if a Shutdown/Restart will occur or if NOD32 will stop running the Startup Scan. I just get fed up and press the reset.

I ran a chkdsk /f and no problems were reported or fixed.

I decided to Restore a Pre-SSD hard drive Image (Image of a SATA hard drive) to a SATA hard drive and Windows boots and runs normally.

If I cannot sort out the problem, I will probably just Restore the newest Pre-SSD hard drive Image to the SATA300 hard drive, do the Windows and other updates.

Thanks in Advance.

 

I've done many restores from an SSD image to a normal drive and it's always worked fine.

What type of backup are you restoring? Is it just the XP partition or the entire drive? Are you restoring the signature? Did you check that the drive letter assignments were correct? Was the SSD disconnected when you booted the hard drive?

Is the hard drive also running in AHCI mode (I assume the SSD was)?

 

1. too many fragments?
2. HDD has bad sectors?
3. Is it an Advance Format Drive? (If yes, has it aligned?)

 

Windows System Partition (~64 GB) of a Crucial M4 128 GB SSD drive.

Just the XP Partition, not the entire drive.

Yes. Prior to Restoring to the SATA hard drive, I physically changed the arrangement of the SATA cables so that the SATA hard drive would be 1st (SATA1). I also disconnected the SSD drive SATA cable before restoring to the SATA hard drive.

Yes.

The motherboard does NOT support AHCI.

 

After I "forced" uninstalled NOD32 (NOD32 was stuck in Startup Scan.), I ran a Windows defrag. The Windows Defrag took only about 10 minutes to complete. Prior to doing the Windows defrag, the Windows defrag said that the drive did not need to be defragged.

The SATA hard drive that I restored to is only a couple of months old. At that time I did a Full Format to make sure that any bad sectors would be marked. I also ran a chkdsk /f on the SATA hard drive. No errors were found and nothing was fixed.

It is just a Seagate Enterprise Grade 1TB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive. The partition that was restored to this SATA drive was ~64 GB NTFS Primary Active.

Since I had made an Image of only a partition of the SSD drive I was unable to select the "Align to Target" option to change the cylinder alignment back to what is normal for an original install of Windows XP Pro to a SATA hard drive. So I guess that the 2KiB Align is still made. An EMail from Terabyte Support "implied" that it is not required to change from 2KiB Alignment to cylinder alignment.

I looked at the Restored Partition with BootIt Bare Metal and it appeared to me that the Restored Image was not 2KiB Aligned. However, I do not remember for sure.

 

Is this wrong impression after you have used SSD?


If you want to know your partition is aligned or not, you can use this tool to check
http://diskat.net/download-en.html

In XP, if AFD is not aligned, the performance will be decreased

 

When restoring the partition, which options did you use? Did you try with the following options enabled: Set Active, Update BOOT.INI, Update Boot Partition, Restore Disk Signature, and Restore First Track

When everything got slow did you check to see what mode the SATA drive was using? I assume IDE since no AHCI support, but it may have dropped to a "compatible" mode or "PIO" mode, which is very slow.

 

Set Active & Restore First Track.

I will check the modes when I get a chance later today.

However, I have already Restored a Pre-SSD Image which functions normally. Since then I have Restored a recent Image of the SSD to the SATA hard drive so that I can try to sort out the problem.

 

IDE Mode. I could not find any option in the BIOS for "compatible" mode or "PIO" mode.

 

You have to look in the Device Manager and the IDE controller. Usually shows Primary and Secondary for the channels. Look in properties and then the Advanced Settings tab. The current transfer mode will be shown.

 

Ultra DMA Mode 2

 

Kid, Ultra DMA Mode 2 (I think 66mhz) seems awful slow for a SATA drive... they should be much faster (Ultra DMA Mode 5 is usually 133mBs for the older PATA drives... SATA I is 150mBs, II is 300mBs and III is 600mBs).

Hmmmm... in thinking about this a bit more, if you're using a SATA drive it won't be specified in any IDE controller spec even if the BiOS has it set in IDE mode... those will only be used for the older PATA type drives. Possibly your CD-ROM will be plugged in there if it's an older one. To my knowledge, there isn't a speed spec associated with SATA connected drives as far as the SATA hardware controllers are concerned. If the SATA drive is connected to a PATA (old style IDE connection) port via one of those l'il interface converters, then the IDE speed spec will definitely make a difference.

 

I do have one IDE DVD Burner on the Primary IDE Channel. I saw several entries for SATA Controllers also, but I did not see an Advanced Tab for those.

 

I gave up.

I Restored a Pre-SSD Image from about 9 months ago and am almost finished updating it. Once everything is up-to-date, I will make a Full Image.

 

I updated Windows and all Software, followed by making a Full Image.

I then decided to change drive letter assignments with Windows XP Pro's Disk Management. I currently have four (4) internal SATA hard drives in the PC.

1. Seagate 1 TB (Partitioned 64 GB, C: (Active), Remaining Space not Partitioned)
2. Western Digital 1 TB (One (1) Partition, H: )
3. Samsung 1 TB (One (1) Partition, I: )
4. Samsung 2 TB (Three (3) Partitions, D:, E:, K:, D: is Active, but Empty)

I decided to change drive letter assignments (in the following order):

1. K: -> L:
2. E: -> K:
3. D: -> E:

The first two moves were successful. However, when I tried to change D: -> E: the PC seemed to stop responding. I noticed that the Autoplay window was open showing a scan of L:. I tried to cancel the Autoplay scan, but the cancel would not complete. After about ten (10) minutes I decided to press the Reset. Now after the initial Windows logo screen, things seem to stop (blank screen). Normally after a few seconds I get the Windows login screen.

I restored the Full Image that I had made and the same problem still exists. I got concerned that maybe either Image for Windows 2.79 and/or Image for Linux 2.79 were either not Creating or not Restoring the Image properly. So I used Image for Linux 2.77 CUI to Restore an Image from March 2012 (The same Pre-SSD Image that I successfully Restored using Image for Linux CUI 2.79 yesterday.). The same problem exists even after several Restarts (Resets).

However, Live Linux Distro's boot and load normally.

What do you make of this? If it were not for the Linux Distro's booting loading normally, I would say Hardware Failure. Should I assume hardware failure?

Thanks in Advance.

 

I would check SMART status, check for bad sectors, and check the Windows Event Log to see if any drive related errors are being reported.

Does everything seem normal if one of the drives is disconnected? A drive not communicating correctly can cause problems like you describe.

 

Thank you.

I started looking at the problem and it looks like you are correct. I will finish tonight.

I ran a Short Self-Test hard drive test on each of the hard drives using GSmartControl 0.8.6 (Parted Magic Live CD). The 2 TB Samsung hard drive had Read Failure the two consecutive times that I ran the Short Self-Test. That would explain why Windows froze when I tried to change the drive letter assignment from D: to E:. I will disconnect the Samsung hard drive tonight and see Windows loads.

I remember that the other day when the SSD was suspected to be failing, I checked the S.M.A.R.T. of each of the drives and they showed OK. However, S.M.A.R.T. usually doesn't show anything until the failing drive is really messed up.

Maybe my SSD drive is not defective, and it was just the 2 TB Samsung hard drive all along. I will try the SSD drive again when I get a chance.

 

Check the cables too. Sometimes it's a bad cable or a bad connection.

 

Have you tried disconnecting the SATA and Data cables to the three non OS drives? Only have the Seagate drive connected. Does WinXP run OK?

 

I will check the SATA Cable connections tonight. I will also disconnect the 2 TB Samsung hard drive.

 

Tonight, I will disconnect the 2 TB Samsung and see if Windows loads properly and operates normally. If the problem still exists, I will disconnect the other two non OS hard drives.

 

I disconnected the 2 TB Samsung hard drive and Windows XP Pro is working normally now.

For now, I will assume that it is a hard drive failure rather than the SATA data cable failure. I plan to buy a different hard drive to replace the Samsung hard drive. When I place the new hard drive into service, I should know if the SATA data cable is a problem.