Need Help Cloning Disk

Re: Update and a question

When booted to the TI CD, don't worry about what drive letters TI shows, they're meaningless. It's one of the reasons you need to label the partitions so you can go by the labels and not the drive letters. I haven't cloned that much so I'm not sure, but it may not show this when cloning.

 

Update

Update.

I just got home from work. The restore completed successfully.

I removed the TI CD from the drive and tried to boot. No luck

The system goes through post correctly. Then I get the boot screen, where I see the two boot options - only the first (default) one is active. The other points to the second boot partion, which is no longer used.

I select the first boot partition and the Windows splash screen appears (the one with the moving bar at the bottom). The Windows screen stays on for ~ 1 or two seconds, and then the system reboots itself.

I am going to download the demo version of JustBoot and see what it says.

Other suggestions??

Paul

 

Update 2

I just downloaded the demo version of JustBoot - the demo is free, and it is a nice graphical way of seeing what your disk info is.

Best as I can tell, I don't have a drive letter problem - here is the info that I pulled from JustBoot:

Disk0 Partition1 - Boot and System Partition - System root \Windows
Disk0 Partition0 - System Partition - System root \NA

N=0 Primary Active=N NTFS E: 29.9G
N=1 Primary Active=Y NTFS C: 40.1G
N=2 Extended None 4.5G
N=3 Logical Active=N F: 1.2G
N=4 Logical G: 3.3G
N=5 Primary Active=N None 65.2G

And the two relevant lines from my boot.ini

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows XP Home"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows Old"

Does anyone see something wrong with this?

My next thought would be to reformat the new drive, re-install a clean copy of Windows from scratch onto a single partition, and then reinstall the c: image onto the newly created windows partition.

Any other suggestions before I go that route?

Thanks,

Paul

 

Paul,

Sometimes clones just don't work. This is what I'd do.
Have the 74 GB as your primary HD and the 150 GB as secondary HD.
Delete all partitions from the second HD.
Run chkdsk /f on both HDs.
Create two partitions on the second HD, about equal.
Then delete the first partition so that the first "75 GB" becomes unallocated space.
Using TI from Windows, image only the C: drive and write the image to the only partition on the second HD.

Remove the 74 GB HD from your computer and install the 150 GB HD in the primary SATA position.
Using TI from the CD, restore the image to the unallocated space on the HD.
Don't tick Restore MBR and Track 0.

Please don't make changes to these instructions. There are reasons for each step.

I'm betting it boots normally.

 

Brian K -

Ok - thanks - I'll try it. Will let you know how it goes

Paul

 

I made a few edits. It should work. Good luck.

 

Thanks - one question - when I create the two partitions on the new disk, what kind should I create - active, primary or logical?

I'm using Partion Manager.

Paul

 

your first (or system partition) needs to be primary active. the other partitons can be logical.

 

I'd make the first primary and the second an extended partition containing a logical volume. But it doesn't matter if you create two primary partitions.

Active doesn't apply as you are going to delete the first partition anyway.

PS when you are restoring the image to the unallocated space you will be asked for the restored partition type. From memory the choices are Active, Primary, Logical. Choose Active.

 

Oops - I already wiped out the existing partition structure on the new disk. What's the best way to run chkdsk on the two drives?

Thx,

Paul

 

I must be tired. Forget the chkdsk on the 150 GB HD.

I'm wakening. Run chkdsk /f on the 150 GB HD after you create the two partitions.

 

Ok - thanks - that I can do.

Just created the two partitions - will run chkdsk now.

 

Ok - this is really strange -

I created the two partitions on the second disk by booting Partition Manager from the CD. The partitions created fine. Partition Manager sees them and the BIOS sees them.

But, when I boot to Windows on disk one, the boot stalls just before the user login screen, and I get an error message about windows trying to write to the two newly created partitions.

When I do get to login to Windows, I don't see either of the two new partitions. When I go to the device manager, I don't see the second disk listed.

I tried rebooting 3 or 4 times, with and without the 2nd disk - things are fine with it out, but windows does not see it when it is plugged in.

I am at a loss - any suggestions about what to do next ?

Paul

 

This is a simple fix, windows doesn't see them because they are not labeled. Your partition manager needs to label them by assigning a drive letter to each partition.

 

Or you can use Windows Disk Management to assign a drive letter to each partition. If that doesn't work, you could try deleting the partitions with Partition Manager so the disk is empty again (all unallocated) and then boot into Windows and use Disk Management to create the partitions. This is assuming that the drive shows up. It should be displayed in the Device Manager if it's detected correctly.

 

Do you mean Disk Management? If Windows doesn't see the HD in Disk Management then you are in trouble. Even if the HD had no partitions it should still show in Disk Management. You mentioned that the HD is seen in the BIOS and obviously Partition Manager sees the HD.

Let me think.

 

Ok - back on track. Windows didn't see the HD, even though the bios did. I went and deleted both partitions from the PM CD, and the booted with the unpartitioned disk back into windows. This time, windows saw it.

I am deleting 1st partition now.

 

Update

I was able to create the two partitions fine, and then delete the first one.

However, when I rebooted windows after deleting 1 partition, the machine started acting very flakey (hanging, etc.). I have not yet gotten to the point where I can run the new image.

It is very late here - I am going to get some sleep and pick this up again in the morning.

I am starting to think that I really should do a clean install on the new drive. I really don't want to do that (I have some programs that are a real pain to configure), but I am starting to get the feeling that I have something seriously wrong with my current Windows install that is causing all of these problems.

I'm not sure yet - will think about it some more after I have gotten some rest.

Any opinions or advice would be welcome.

Thx,

Paul

 

Paul,

Does your computer only play up when the 150 GB HD is installed? Or with the old HD on its own? Did you get a chance to chkdsk the new HD? Or other HD diagnostics? It may be faulty.

http://support.wdc.com/download/

 

Yes, the computer boots up fine when the old HD is on its own. It also boots fine if I installl a fresh copy of XP on the new HD. It only starts acting weird when I try to put the two of them together.

I did get chkdsk to work last night on both drives and it ran fine. I also ran the WD harddisk diagnostic program a couple of days ago. No problem there either.

I am going to try your procedure one more time from scratch. If that doesn't work, then I think that it is time to install a fresh copy of XP on the new HD, and be done with it.

I'll let you know what happens.

Paul

 

Paul, if you get the same trouble, try creating the image of your C: drive using the TI CD instead of from Windows. You should be able to do everything outside of Windows if necessary.

The aim is to get WinXP working on the 150 GB HD. We can sort out the partitions later.

If you can't partition the 150 GB HD from Windows, do it from Partition Manager and don't boot to Windows again from the 75 GB HD. Do everything outside of Windows.

Good luck. It's nearly bed time for me now.

 

Thanks - I think that I understand the problem better now -

I can create both Partitions fine in Windows. I cannot delete the first partition in Windows (either with the windows disk manager or Acronis). I get an error message in either case.

If I delete the partition outside of windows (from the CD) and then boot to windows, the system becomes unstable.

I will try to do the whole procedure outside of Windows - we'll see what happens.

Thanks again for your help.

Paul

 

It's important that Windows has already seen the unallocated space on the 150 GB HD. That's good. If there was a partition instead of unallocated space, Windows would remember the drive letter and assign it to the new OS. We don't want that.

PS. If anyone does restore to a partition instead of unallocated space then the OS won't boot. It freezes or reboots at around the Welcome Screen stage. Sometimes you can enter username and password before it reboots. Running Acronis fxdisk fixes the problem. This zeroes the DiskID and forces Windows to recalculate partition signatures. WinXP is then assigned C: drive. As MudCrab mentioned, some WinXP aren't C: drive so this technique won't work for those OS.

 

Update -

Well, no joy ...

Brian K - I ran through the procedure that you outlined (doing it ourside of Windows).

It came time to boot - I crossed my fingers ... Got the big Windows splash screen, but when the screen cleared and went blank (like it does briefly in a normal boot sequence), it never came back. The disk churned for quite some time, and then I got the blue screen of death. Got the error:

Kernel_Data_InPage_Error
Stop: 0x00000007A

I tried to do a repair install of XP (the full repair install, after you press F8 to accept the license agreement), but the repair install failed to boot as well :-(

So, I'm down to grasping at a few last straws. I just reformatted the entire new HD, and I am doing a complete new install of XP SP2 on the brand new partition structure. Once the install is complete, then I am going to try to restore the old image of C: (without the MBR) to the new windows partition.

Beyond that ... I'm out of ideas.

Will let you know if I have any success.

Paul

 

Paul,

That's really disappointing. I'm suspicious that you have a hardware problem but can't be specific. Your computer acts strangely when you have two HDs installed, and at one stage didn't see the second HD at all from Windows. I guess we could blame TI for the failed restores but blaming TI doesn't explain the HD problems.

I'm interested.