My experiences: SATA, XP, "Partition configuration has changed"

Since I spent considerable time getting what should have been a simple disc cloning to work (and spending much time reading this forum), I thought I'd write down my experiences both to help Acronis write more robust software and perhaps help other users do what I did.

Setup: an XP machine with one 160G SATA drive, containing C, D, E and F partitions. Acronis True Image 9.0 was v2332 (I think), straight from the box. I had already used the software to successfully (I trust!) make an backup of my HD to an external USB drive.

I then added another 200G SATA drive, which was detected as appropriate by XP and Acronis. Then started to go through the manual disc clone mode, as I wanted to adjust the relative partition sizes a little. All went as expected, and was asked to reboot, and the Acronis software started up in its pre-Windows mode and started running its script. However, it seemed to spend a lot of time in the "75%" complete" stage of verifying the partitions, followed by the extremely unhelpful "Partition configuration has changed" error message.

What had changed? And why? I had after all followed all the prompts and correct sequence etc.

I then tried with my antivirus disabled, in case it was interfering. No change.

I then tried with the updated driver .exe, as suggested on the forum. No change. BTW, I have no USB devices at all plugged in.

At this point I also realized I should run a registry script prior to the cloning attempt so that XP will not associated its drive latters with the old HD ID when it boots up again, but starts off from scratch again:

----
REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices]
-----

Upgraded to Acronis True Image 2337m with high hopes. Still no change - argh!!! I have spent about 6 hours on this problem so far, what a waste of time after expecting the software I paid good money for to do this for me as easily as "click click click"...

Last resort - try the same operation using the Acronis software as booted from the CD. Guess what - it worked! So the latest and greatest software running under XP does not work, but the "old" boot CD itself work just fine.

After completing the operation I let the PC power down and (for now) I removed the SATA cable to the old HD, and powered up again. All went well and XP detected new HW (although after everything had already booted up - strange!). Drive letters OK, lots more space on the partitions and that is what I am using right now.

Once I'm happy with the new drive I'll plug the old one back in again and using the CD version of Acronis I will reformat it and create some new partitions on it for extra data storage (I assume I will be able to do that with the "Add drive" menu item). Phew...

Bootup

 

Okay, score for cloning from bootable CD. One more here. However, I was able to clone my hard drive (IDE to IDE) succesfully under Windows just for test. So my guest that it is a conflict with some software or hardware when in Windows.

Kento.