Cloned hard drive difficulties

[Moxieman]

I bought a used Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop running XP home edition, SP3. I do
NOT have either installation CD or rescue CD for it. The hard drive has 3
partitions, a 16-meg (I assume it is boot), a C: drive, and a G: drive, which
has the Dell rescue files. The C: drive is marked Healthy (system).

The hard drive is dying, so I bought a new hard drive and used Norton Ghost
2003 to clone it onto a new one. I could not assign the equivalent partition
on the new hard disc the C: letter because the old, cloned partition's C:
drive had that letter. Also, I could make that equivalent partition “Healthyâ€
but not “system.†I understand that I cannot have two partitions with the
same letter, and cannot have two partitions marked “system†at the same time.

I swapped out the drives. When I tried to boot, of course, I got a message
of “error loading operating system.†I can boot into Dell Diagnostics and the
hardware checks out fine, but Dell Diagnostics doesn't allow me to change
partition letters or make a partition a “system†partition.

1. How do I assign the new partition the C: partition letter without a
rescue or install CD?

2. How do I mark the new partition as “system†and not just “healthy?â€

I have the old hard drive and can always put it in and run disk management,
but that still leaves me with the problems of assigning the drive letter and
making it “system.â€

Also, the new hard drive is 250 gigabytes, but the BIOS shows it as 137
gigabytes. Is that related to the problem?

Thanks,

Moxieman

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

I bought a used Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop running XP home edition, SP3. I
do
NOT have either installation CD or rescue CD for it. The hard drive has 3
partitions, a 16-meg (I assume it is boot), a C: drive, and a G: drive,
which
has the Dell rescue files. The C: drive is marked Healthy (system).

The hard drive is dying, so I bought a new hard drive and used Norton
Ghost
2003 to clone it onto a new one. I could not assign the equivalent
partition
on the new hard disc the C: letter because the old, cloned partition's C:
drive had that letter.

*** Drive letter assignments as seen during the cloning process are
*** irrelevant. It's the assignment on the final Windows installation
*** that counts.

Also, I could make that equivalent partition "Healthy"
but not "system."

*** You don't make it "healthty" or "system" but you must mark
*** it "active" if you want to boot from it.

I understand that I cannot have two partitions with the
same letter, and cannot have two partitions marked "system" at
the same time.

I swapped out the drives. When I tried to boot, of course, I got a message
of "error loading operating system." I can boot into Dell Diagnostics and
the
hardware checks out fine, but Dell Diagnostics doesn't allow me to change
partition letters or make a partition a "system" partition.

*** See above about the "system partition".

1. How do I assign the new partition the C: partition letter without a
rescue or install CD?

*** There may be no need to change anything.

2. How do I mark the new partition as "system" and not just "healthy?"

*** You mark it active. Here is one way to do it:
*** - Boot the machine with a Win98 boot diskette from
*** www.bootdisk.com.
*** - Run fdisk.exe.
*** - Mark the first partition as "active".

I have the old hard drive and can always put it in and run disk
management,
but that still leaves me with the problems of assigning the drive letter
and
making it "system."

*** If you can connect both disks at the same time then you can
*** mark the first partition on the new disk as "active" in the Disk
*** Manager.

Also, the new hard drive is 250 gigabytes, but the BIOS shows it as 137
gigabytes. Is that related to the problem?

*** No, it isn't, but I'm not sure whether Windows XP will be subject
*** to the same limitation.

 

[philo]

I bought a used Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop running XP home edition, SP3. I do
NOT have either installation CD or rescue CD for it. The hard drive has 3
partitions, a 16-meg (I assume it is boot), a C: drive, and a G: drive, which
has the Dell rescue files. The C: drive is marked Healthy (system).

The hard drive is dying, so I bought a new hard drive and used Norton Ghost
2003 to clone it onto a new one. I could not assign the equivalent partition
on the new hard disc the C: letter because the old, cloned partition's C:
drive had that letter. Also, I could make that equivalent partition "Healthy"
but not "system." I understand that I cannot have two partitions with the
same letter, and cannot have two partitions marked "system" at the same time.

I swapped out the drives. When I tried to boot, of course, I got a message
of "error loading operating system." I can boot into Dell Diagnostics and the
hardware checks out fine, but Dell Diagnostics doesn't allow me to change
partition letters or make a partition a "system" partition.

1. How do I assign the new partition the C: partition letter without a
rescue or install CD?

2. How do I mark the new partition as "system" and not just "healthy?"

I have the old hard drive and can always put it in and run disk management,
but that still leaves me with the problems of assigning the drive letter and
making it "system."

Also, the new hard drive is 250 gigabytes, but the BIOS shows it as 137
gigabytes. Is that related to the problem?

Thanks,

Moxieman

After you make the clone you MUST disconnect the cloned drive and put it in
place of your original.

If you bootup once the clone has been made, but leave the drive attached
it willbe reassigned to the wrong drive letter.

You will need to reclone the entire drive to get it to work

 

[Moxieman]

Thanks, but still no luck. I did swap out the drives and boot failed. I did
notice something unusual, however, and wonder if this is the problem

My first partition is, of course, the EISA format 16 meg partition that is
used (I assume) for booting. After doing some research on line, I noted that
while most EISA partitions do not have a drive letter and cannot be assigned
one, the EISA partition on my original Dell hard disk DOES have a drive
letter assigned to it. It is labelled as the "G:" drive.

On the cloned drive, the EISA format first partition does NOT have a drive
letter assigned to it.

Could that be the problem?

Thanks.

 

[R. McCarty]

If you have Norton Ghost, you're going to great lengths to preserve
the recovery structure. It might be better to save the original drive as
is and reconfigure the clone. Since you have "Imaging" capability you
could just remove the Boot/Redirect and recovery partitions. Then
use a Disk Management tool ( Acronis ) and make the C:\ active and
expand the volume to use 100% of the physical drive. Once done &
bootable - just Ghost to image the Factory state. From that point
forward a recovery would be done with the Ghost Image set.

 

[Moxieman]

Well, I've taken and implemented all of your suggestions (thank you for the
consideration and effort) to no avail. I'll get an old copy (legal) of XP,
install it on the new drive and shift things over.

Even using the dd command in linux didn't do the trick.

moxieman