Yeah, someone else with cloning problems

Currently in my system:

C drive 30G PATA harddrive with Windows XP including 2G partition
G drive 160G PATA harddrive for storage

The 30G is starting to make some noises, and was getting small anyway.

New 160G SATA harddrive to replace the 30G.

I use the ATI trial to clone the C drive to the new drive, the system reboots into the program for cloning the drive, everything goes fine, takes it's time to get to the press a key to shutdown.

System shuts down, I remove the cords from the original C drive, set the jumper on the other PATA drive to master, plug the proper end of the IDE cable into the G drive, then start the system.

I go into my bios, and set the harddrive priority to SATA first, PATA second, save and exit, wait thru the screens, and it tells me "Missing operating system"

Could someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? And if They reference the article about XP designating drive letters, maybe someone could explain that one in english, too full of tech talk for me to make heads or tails of it.

 

Sartugha,

It's probably a BIOS problem so initially try to boot with only the SATA HD attached. If that doesn't work, did you install SATA drivers to the C: drive before you cloned?

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=294

 

I checked the properties on the sata drive, and it says they're there...

 

OK. Before the HD dies I suggest creating a backup image of your noisy HD, writing the image to the G: drive. Then you can relax (somewhat). Now try restoring that disk image to the SATA HD. Cloning can be problematic at times and I prefer restoring an image.

Does the trial version have any limitations on cloning or restoring?

 

Only thing I cant seem to do is cloning after using the boot disk, so I'll try the image thing. Turns out it's not so dire as I thought, the sound I was hearing was the northbridge fan on my Asus A8N5X Mobo. (yeah, I already looked that up and found the phone number to call.) I'll get back to ya on the imaging thing.

 

This is frustrating....

I made a disk image, shut down, unplugged the old C drive, switched the jumper to master on the G drive.

Turned on, used the bootable media disk to start up ATI. Chose restore, and the program detected my old G drive as the C drive, and the new drive as D. That brought up a yellow flag, but I went ahead and restored the data to the new drive. It finished, I rebooted, Missing operating system. Rebooted again, remembered to switch drive priorities this time, Missing operating system.

Shut down, replaced all wires, reconfigured bios to read from the old C drive again, started up.

Thought I'd try redoing the disk image again, but figgured the computer needed to see my new drive as the C drive, so I shut down, unplugged both PATA drives, leaving only the SATA drive, and booted up using the bootable media. Drive detected as C. Shut down, plugged in G drive, started up, checked drive priority, loaded using bootable media, selected restore, and the G drive was the C drive, and the new drive was D drive.......

Does my computer maybe require the IDE drives to be the boot drives?
Would it be easier to just migrate my data downwards? The G drive data to the new drive, then the C drive to the old G drive?
I don't think its a OS driver issue, there are no yellow exclamation marks next to the drive, though the new drive is sitting in the "Safely remove hardware" icon in my taskbar....

 

What I'm wondering is whether you need to format the new drive to make it bootable before trying to restore the image.

 

Not necessary, you can use the "Prepare New Drive" feature from the Acronis boot CD or software.

 

Sartugha:

Are there any different settings in the BIOS for the SATA controller? IDE mode, Compatible, etc. You might try these if they're there.

If you have the time and an XP cd, you could try this. Disconnect all the drives except the new SATA drive. Boot from the XP install cd and go through the install. Let XP format and use the entire drive. Does it work? Will it boot correctly into Windows?

If it does, then there are no problems with the BIOS boot order or settings. You may just need to do a "repair" on the restored image.

 

Sartugha,

When booted into WinXP (PATA) can you see all of the WinXP files on the SATA HD?
When you restored the image, did you have a choice for drive letter? What did you choose?
When you restored the image, did you have a choice for primary or active partition? What did you choose?
Have you tried removing all HDs except for the SATA HD for the first boot after restoring the image?

Either the OS partition on the SATA HD is not set active or you have a BIOS issue. Do you have Acronis DDS or Partition Magic to look at the SATA drive immediately before the first boot to see if the OS partition is active?

 

Yes, all the files from winXP are on the SATA HD.
I did not have a choice of drive letter when I restored.
I chose the partition that the help tip said "use this if this will be a boot drive"
I have not tried only booting with the SATA HD.

There are no different settings in the BIOS for the SATA.

Wouldn't installing XP on the new drive make it so I would have to reinstall all my programs? Thats what I'm trying to avoid....
Ill look into those programs you mentioned and give them a try.

 

I was only suggesting it as a test to see if XP could see the drive, format it, install and boot correctly. If it could then the problem would be with how TI is restoring the drive and not that XP is having problems with your SATA drive, drivers, etc.

If you got XP installed and booting correctly, you could restore your backup image over it and see what happens.

 

XP wouldn't boot after installing.

After reading a bit more, seems I may need SATA drivers after all, but I have no Idea where to look for them, tried looking on the ASUS site, but none of the drivers had a good description to tell me what I was looking at.

My mobo is an ASUS A8N5X, if someone could help locate, please?

Hopefully I won't need to put them on a floppy disk, my floppy drive has never worked right...

 

What error message did you see? Where did it fail?

In my Post #2 you don't need a floppy drive but to install WinXP from scratch you may need a floppy drive. The latest Dell WinXP SP2 CDs have SATA drivers on the installation CD.

 

I got error loading operating system

 

I feel both errors are BIOS related. Do you have the latest BIOS?

The following link is for PATA drives but seems relevant.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326676

 

Hello Sartugha,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please see this article for instructions on transferring your operating system from IDE to SATA hard drives. Please also take a look at this article regarding necessary cautions during the cloning (or restoring system image to a second drive) process.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov