Different HDD install

I'm going to call this a hardware problem but probably is combo Hard/Soft exercise.

I have 2 HDD's and I have managed to copy the contents of one disk to the other as shown in attachment.

I want to boot to the IDE1 disk so that I can format and partition IDE0.

I can boot to C:

When I try to boot to G:, (using boot sequence in the BIOS or with only the one drive plugged in), It gets to what is supposed to be the Welcome screen and stops with the WIN XP logo in the place of the welcome word.

The HDD light flickers about every 10 seconds and the mouse cursor and KB are working but can't get any farther.

I probably missed some stupid thing but my memory needs a jump start.

 

I tried that by moving the IDE cable down to the new drive. I use CS on both drives. I got the partial boot as described.

I assumed that with only the new drive plugged in, the drive letters would change to C:, etc. I wonder if that was what the flickering drive light was doing. I waited for 5 minutes and nothing else happened.

 

Christer raises the important points:

. You cannot just "copy" the contents of the drive. There is a great deal of hidden files and other information that a copy will not handle; for example, the boot.ini and boot files required.

. This is the confusion XP has now: It can find the original drive in the IDE chain no matter where you move it. However, once boot occurs the Mount Manager of XP re-enumerates the drives. The original drive is no longer "C" and the thousands of registry settings that depend on that assignment fail.

. If a ghost or other cloning utility was used, do not boot with both drives connected after the clone, no matter what physical cable arrangments you make. Because the Drive IDs will be identical, during boot NTDETECT will make entries through the PnP service for the Mount Managerl, and the identical Drive IDs are a cause of confusion you simply cannot afford to have. Now the question, if you cloned, and did boot with both drives, how do you work things out?

First, change the VolumeID on the old drive: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/VolumeId.mspx

Do not reboot yet.

Second, Open notepad and type some text. File, Save as, C:\newdrive.txt

Shutdown the machine.

Disconnect the original XP drive.

Third, now reboot to the XP CD and enter Recovery Console.
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q307/6/54.asp&NoWebContent=1

Type in Recovery Console:

attrib -s -h -r C:\boot.ini
bootcfg /Rebuild
(For bootcfg instructions: http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q291/9/80.asp&NoWebContent=1)

fixmbr C:
fixboot C:

exit

You shold now be able to clean boot into the new cloned drive.

. If you need cloning software, the web site of your hard drive manufacturer is a good place to start for a free utility to do this. Usually the cloning feature is part of their setup/diagnostic utility. Other excellent freeware choices:
http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm
http://www.xxclone.com/index.htm

. Finally, you can re-attach the original drive. Use Disk Management and under Tools, ask it to Scan for hardware changes. Then you can use Disk Management to remove the existing partitions and reformat the drive to use as a secondary drive. (This is where having changed the VolumeID is critical).

. Note that any "clone" software you use is going to work in non-normal Windows Mode, likely as a DOS boot diskette. Some of them are not particularly friendly.

There are paid exceptions to this. You should consider using either Acronis True Image, or Acronis Disk Director to handle this cloning problem. Both offer free, fully-feature-enabled 15 day trials:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

And quite frankly I would use True Image for your issue. This allows the process to run completely under XP. It also avoids the Recovery Console steps. Just remember the rule: When the clone is done you disconnect the old drive, change cables, and boot from the new drive. (CS has a Master and Secondary drive connector, remember). Also, remember to change the VolumeID of the old drive before removing it and restarting the system.

 

I did want to comment on the red highlighted text in Christer's post above.

Rather than delete the Mounted Drive registry area, modify it. (This is not for the faint of heart): http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...rt/kb/articles/Q223/1/88.ASP&NoWebContent=1#2

Note that you cannot just edit the drive letter. In order for the REG_BINARY drive identification information to be preserved you have to be a little clever. To swap Drives C: and D:

Give Drive C an unused drive Letter (Z
Give Drive D the now free drive letter C:
Now give Drive Z: the now free drive letter D:

No gaurantees, but if you make the registry change, do the clone, Shutdown, remove the original clone source drive, and recable, my guess is your can reboot without an issue. You can make the registry edit prior to the clone because it does not take effect until the next start of the drive. By making the change prior to the clone, the updated Mounted Devices table is written to the clone target.

I hope that adds to Christer's approach above.

 

Bmoore, if you don’t want to configure the parent and clone in a dual-boot using the ntloader as a bootmanager, (which I assume you don’t as you said you want to format the original partition) then your approach should work "“ you have not missed anything. As others have said, it will depend on how you copied the partition. Any cloning tool should do the job.

With the clone’s drive set as the first boot device on the machine "“ either by setting the bios to make IDE1 the first boot hard drive, or by physically moving the drive to Primary Master, or by using a third party DriveSwap capable bootmanager, it should boot up just fine and see itself as the C: drive.

As long as the parent does indeed see itself as the C: drive and you are cloning to the same partition number on the other drive, then you don’t need to do anything other than an exact clone of the partition. On First boot of the clone the Mount Manager should adapt drive letters to the new partition/drive layout. With XP you don’t have to remove the parent drive before first boot of the clone.

I suspect you have a bad clone, but it’s just possible that the Mount Manager is having a problem sorting out your many mounted drives. Disconnect your removable drive and disable any mapped network drives before you make your clone. If that still does not work then remove all entries in the reg key HKEY_Local_Machine\System\MountedDevices and this will let Mount Manager start with a clean sheet. Do this just before you make the clone and before you have rebooted the parent.

Important Note: Clearing the MountedDevices key can only be done if the XP install sees itself as the C: drive. If Windows is any other letter or your using 2K then don’t try this.

 

Good Morning folks. Thank you all for your replies. I love it when you talk down and dirty.

I left some vital info out. To Wit: I first moved all the data from the IDE1 to IDE0. I then used my Western Digital Utility disk to write 0's to the IDE1 drive. Then I used the same utility to clone IDE0 to IDE1. WD took care of all the partitioning and cloning. At the end of the exercise, it said to reboot which I did with both drives in. (Therein lies the rub, I think.)

I wonder if I could redo the whole thing and use Acronis 7?

I will be absorbing all this info for awhile and I'll be back this afternoon to report.

Thank you very much for your interest.....

 

Hi Christer
On reflection, my statement that it is not necessary to remove the parent hard drive before the first boot of the clone, is perhaps a little rash. I can of course only speak from experience and say that I have never had to do this with XP. One of my little interests you may remember is multibooting Windows clones, so I have done extensive testing in this area. It is however impossible to encounter all possible variables, so perhaps there are some situations where I could be wrong. With Bmoore’s setup I would be pretty confident that removing the parent drive would not be necessary.

It can be a different matter with 2K, or when cloning an entire hard drive (and so the MBR and the NT Disk Signature as well), but there are tweaks even here to prevent having to removing the parent drive.



EDIT: Sorry Bmoore, just saw your latest post.

So you did clone the entire drive. You can try the whole thing again with Acronis if you want, but there are other things you can try first.

Connect the cloned drive in the Primary Master position as the sole hard drive and run fdisk/mbr from a Win9x startup floppy. This will replace the MBR and remove the NT Drive Signature number. On reboot this will force mountmgr to reassign drive letters. Give it plenty of time if there is still disk activity, as I have seen XP sort itself out eventually.

Failing that you could try a repair install if you have a full XP CD.

If that does not work then time I think to redo the clone, but no need to do the entire disk, just the XP partition. If you have Acronis then use that, if not then the free DriveImage XML is very capable. The best way for you to use this program would be from bootable CD and UBCDforWindows comes with DriveImage XML included. If you have broadband and a Full XP CD then it should not take much more than 30- 40 mins for you to download and make the CD. If you would prefer to buy a good cloning tool I’d recommend Partition Manager.

 

I redid the whole thing with Acronis 7 and had the exact result as with Western Digital Utilities.

So-I did the McTavish thing with my trusty Win ME boot disk (the only thing ME was ever good for). fdisk /mbr barely grunted and the three fingered salute booted me right into my clone. Windows found something to install and asked for a reboot and now, as PeteC would say, Bob's your Uncle!!

Now I assume I only have to put my old drive back in as a slave and reformat and partition to be in business.

Thank you folks for your kind attention. I hope to return the favor someday.

 

I have never visited Radified, it seems like a decent place. Thanks.

One aspect of overwriting the DriveID is that you can face Activation issues that are not posed by simply swapping the DriveIDs between the original and the clone device.

This is one reason I prefer to not zero fill or 'Zawecki' a drive to sort boot issues. (The other is a concern for all these invalid entries left in the WMI repository).

It is easy enough to swap Drive IDs. The cloning takes care of the target for you; so the only ID that needs to be switched is the original drive.

At that point you can safely do a cable swap if needed, and the clone should boot. If not, it is easy enough to repair the boot information using Recovery Console as discussed above.

Besides worrying about having the source and clone target drive both present at boot, the other claim is that changes to the Mounted Devices section of the registry require that the boot volume be C:. I disagree with this, as XP will search all BIOS identified drives in the IDE chain to locate a suitable boot volume. The question really is where is the System Volume (which XP treats as a seperate entity from the Boot Volume) when you make the registry change. The System Volume does not have to be C:, and in many cases (unfortunately) the PnP enumeration of XP will ensure that this is the case: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q825668