Drive to Drive copy won't boot up

Hi,
Hope you have an answer for me. I have been working on this problem for over 2 weeks. I bought a Maxtor 200 GB ata h/d on which I want to copy my current C drive. The drive is an IBM Deskstar 60 GB on a Dell Dimension 8250, P4, 2.4/512 ram. I used Disk Management to initialize the drive, then Partition Magic 8 to try to copy drive to drive. Each disk with only one primary partition. The cyclinder 1023 problem came up and said partition would not be bootable. Ok. Then I deleted the Maxtor partition and repartitioned into a smaller primary and left the remainder unallocated. I then copied drive to drive and all seemed well. I switched the drives (which are both set on cable select) but the Maxtor would not boot up. It stayed at the Dell screen. I could not even go into setup. This has happened several times. I even used Ghost 9 to copy drive to drive while using the disk management to partition and format the drive. Still would not boot up. The Maxtor drive had been set "active ". The original IBM h/d is also still set as active so I just put in the Maxtor on the master cable without the second drive and still will not boot up. Also changed jumpers to master and slave. No go. There is a 39 MB unallocated partition or space on the Dell's IBM h/d before the primary partition. Is that the problem? I cannot copy it to the new drive. I even tried partitioning the Maxtor with an extended partition which did put 7.8 MB in front of the primary. Still nothing. I have tried to be as detailed as possible. Thanks for any help.

 

Post the contents of the boot.ini file from your old system. We need to determine which partition it references for booting.

We also need to determine if your old drive will boot connected as master with this new drive present connected as a slave and be able to read the new drive.

Also, do you have access to a full XP install CD?

Report those items back and we'll go from there.

 

Hi Surferdude2, Here is the boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

I also copied the boot.ini file on the new drive (which is my F: drive) here are the contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect


Yes, my old drive is master and functioning, the new drive is visible and contains the exact copy of the (old) Dell C drive. I left the disks as they were after copying drive to drive and put the old drive back on as Master and the Maxtor as slave (jumpers set as cable select but I also tried the
Master and Slave jumpers previously to see if the jumpers made a difference when booting up, but they don't.

I have the installation disk from Dell, which is a full install. I'm still hoping to copy everything over to the new drive to avoid reinstalling. Thanks for your input.

 

Ok, the boot.ini is fine.

I suspect you will now need to use the Recovery Console to run the fixboot command on the new drive. That's why I asked if you had the install CD since you'll need to boot to that and get the "R" selection for the Recovery Console. The fixboot command can be directed to the proper drive partition so be sure to point it to the new one. Run fixboot /? is you need to see how it's done.

What I suspect is that the cloning operation didn't copy the boot sector code. If you use the imaging method, it gets everything including the boot sector code and MBR. Cloning, depending on the software, will only get the data on the disk.

 

MS explains the FixBoot command.

 

I am not familiar with Recovery Console but your info and the link you posted filled me in. I will try that tonight and post back.

Thanks.

 

Hi - Put in XP CD typed "R" and then I was asked for the Administrator password. When I typed in what I thought it was, it wasn't accepted. I then restarted the machine, went into User Profiles and the only Profile is "The Family" as Administrator, which is what I am logged into automatically. I changed the password, clicked ok and went back into Recovery Console and the password is still not accepted. Is there anywhere on the system that I can find out exactly what the password is? I do not recall putting in any other words than the ones I typed when asked. I am thrilled to hear that the hard drive problem may be resolved and now this new obstacle! Help! Thanks for your patience.

 

Generally the admin. PW is blank by default so try leaving it blank and just pressing enter when asked.

 

Blank password worked. Asked which windows to use 1. C:\windows or 2. D:\windows. First I chose c:\windows and when I typed fixboot f: got the message: Fixboot cannot find system drive, or the drive specified is not valid. and it went back to C:\windows. I ran recovery console again this time choosing the D:\windows - same thing. So I typed in a: got an a prompt, typed c:\, got the C prompt but when I got to F which is the new hard drive got the message: no floppy or cd in drive. Checked bios, drive is correctly listed as the second hard drive, restarted windows, went to Command Prompt and the drive and all data is there. Hope this gives you some idea of what could be wrong.

 

When you boot to the Repair Console, your old drive is the C: (harddisk0)and the new drive is the D: (harddisk1) while the cd-rom is the E: Let's use those designations until proven different.

So now let's go through a numbered procedure that will try to repair the boot sector of the new drive (D: ). Let's not do anything to the old drive (C: ) since it boots OK. Use the item number when reporting at what stage an error occurred and what it said exactly.

1. In the Recovery Console, type D: (enter) Confirm that the D:\ prompt is shown.

2. Then type fixmbr\device\harddisk1 (enter) (notice that there are NO spaces in the command string) Ignore the warning and confirm the repair action if asked. If you get some other error, report what it says.

3. If it completes without error, then type fixboot D: (enter) Report any error if occurrs.

4. If those commands complete properly try booting again to confirm that the drive are both recognized in Windows.

The old will still be the C: and the new will be whatever Windows assigns it based on what you have asked earlier for the cd-rom designation. That means the new drive may be either the D: or the E: so not to worry.

5. If that seems Ok, then shut down and unplug both drives. Replug the new drive onto the master (black) plug and leave the old drive unconnected.

6. Boot for effect. If it wont boot, run the Recovery Console again and do the mbr\device\harddrive0 command and the fixboot C: commands from the C:\ prompt. (as before, NO spaces in the command string)

If it still won't boot, we can figure that the clone operation was flawed somehow and the drive will need to be installed from scratch again. This time I would recommend that you dual partition the drive and use Ghost to place an bit-image copy on the second partition. Then run Ghost and deploy the image to the first partition. That will remove any doubt about the boot sector failing to copy in the clone method. After deploying that image, do not reboot, instead shut down the computer and disconnect the old drive. Connect the new one as Master (black connector) and boot it. If all goes well it should boot successfully. If so, then connect the old drive to the slave connector (grey) and boot the system. If all goes well, you should be home free. If it doesn't, you will likely have an incompatibility between the drives that may need to be resolved by contacting the manufacturer.

I have seen situations like this where the drives would not work together on the same IDE channel but would do fine on different channels.

Good luck, report back your progress or error messages.

 

surferdude2 - a bit of information for you when looking over a boot.ini file and especially the ARC Path Naming information.

HarddiskX = rdisk(x) so if you have harddisk0 and harddisk1 and want to point at an OS load in partition1 on each of them you would see (assuming you are dealing with IDE style drives)

Harddisk0 = multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)
Harddisk1 = multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)

About the only good reason I've ever seen for creating an ERD (emergency repair disk) is the setup.log that will contain your specific information. Example

[Paths]
TargetDirectory = "\Windows "
TargetDevice = "\Device\Harddisk1\partition2 "
SystemPartitionDirectory = "\ "
SystemPartition = "\Device\Harddisk0\partition1 "

This would tell you that
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS= "Microsoft... "
is needed in the boot.ini file to point at that path in order for the system to boot.

In this particular case, I'm not quite able to figure out what effect the copy/move/drive-add actions did so can't say with any assurance how his new boot.ini file should have looked. The fact that 'fixboot' failed on both drives indicates your solution is the way to go.

 

That is correct Newt.

When both drives are present (and working/booting properly), the new slave one will become drive1 in the Recovery Console and rdisk(1) in the boot.ini file.

Connected alone, it's drive0 and rdisk(0) and if Recovery Console can't "console" it, we have some obscure problem. It just may have to do with where on the disk the cloned data was placed. That's why I suggested the image restore method since it has a better sense of placement in matters like that. You can be pretty well assured if it booted on the source drive, it'll boot on the target drive. I say that with some reservation since I have been through grief there also. However, not often enough to make it an issue.

 

Hi Surferdude2 and Newt, So sorry I haven't responded. I broke my foot Friday and have not been able to go to my computer. I will print your responses and when I am able in the next few days to try your suggestions, I will post back. Thanks for helping and again, sorry for not getting back to the board sooner.

 

Ouch, I know about the pain from a broken foot. Excruciating to say the least. I got mine by laying my Harley down and skidding under a parked car. It's been many years but the pain I remember. I hope you were having fun when you did yours too.

Not to worry, the computing can wait. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.