George W. Barrowcliff said:
My 80gb Vista laptop is out of space, so I bought a 250gb drive and
installed it in a USB 2.0 enclosure.
I have tried both the True Image clone procedure and also partitioning the
250gb with 2 partitions then backing up the original drive to one of the
partitions, replacing the 80 with 250 and tried to recover into the blank
partition but no success.
I get the cannot boot message and must use the install cd to enable the
new clone but I still am unable to boot into the cloned version. I have
had great luck with Acronis but just cannot make this work.
I am using True Image Home V10 Build 4.942) with Windows Vista Home Basic
with SVC Pk1.
I would appreciate any insight into this procedure or a different product.
Are there any of the drive manufacturers that have a utility that will get
around this boot problem with Vista? I am ready to buy another drive just
to get this done.
Thanks, GWB
George:
If I correctly understand your situation, you're attempting to boot a cloned
copy (created by the ATI program) of the Vista OS from a USB external HDD.
Do I have this right?
If so...
We have never been successful in booting to a USB-connected external HDD in
an XP environment (at least in any reliable way). And we've worked with a
large variety of systems that ostensibly had USB boot capability. However, a
number of various newsgroup contributors and other commentators users have
reported that they have indeed been successful in booting to a USBEHD
containing a potentially-bootable XP OS. Usually their claims are couched in
phrases like "as long as the motherboard's BIOS supports this capability",
or some such. But as I've indicated we have never been able to duplicate
this capability.
However, my experience with the Vista OS re this issue is quite limited so
I'm unsure whether Vista would be more "forgiving" in this regard. Also, I
haven't worked with the latest ATI 2009 version to any extent so I don't
know if that would be a consideration re this issue (although I note you're
working with v10). You've indicated
"I have had great luck with Acronis but just cannot make this work." Are you
indicating that you've been able to previously boot reliably from a cloned
copy of the Vista OS contained on a USBEHD, but now you can't?
Having said all that, if you want to pursue the matter (re booting from a
USBEHD) further...
Take a look at this Fred Langa article where Fred purports to have come up
with a process to achieve this "bootability". See
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticleSrc.jhtml?articleID=177102101
Also, a poster to one of the MS XP newsgroups claimed that he too has come
up with a methodology to do this as well. See
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176
And here's another one...
http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb/
(I haven't checked the above links in some time to determine if they're
still active.)
No doubt a Google search will reveal a good deal of information on this
issue.
Assuming a user is working with a PC that has SATA capability, what we
recommend to achieve boot capability via an external HDD is to use a SATA
external HDD that provides SATA-to-SATA connectivity (between the external
enclosure-SATA HDD and the PC). Naturally the system must have SATA
capability to begin with and a connection must be made to one of the
motherboard's SATA connectors or through a SATA or eSATA port on the PC, or
through a SATA adapter on the desktop PC's case. (It's a different type of
system where a laptop/notebook is involved).
Anna