Copied boot partition from PATA to SATA, now can't boot...

[Pete]

I've just copied a system partition from a PATA drive to a SATA drive, but
can't get it to boot. I've tried FIXMBR, FIXBOOT and BOOTCFG /REBUILD from
an XP rescue disk (these all seem to work), yet the screen just goes black
after the BIOS message.

The WinXP partition did NOT have the "F6-RAID-drivers" loaded from floppy at
install time. (If this is the problem, is there any way I can install them
now without re-installing XP?)

Thanks for any suggestions...
Pete


For more complete info, this is what I did:
1) Starting with XP on PATA...
2) Plug in brand new SATA drive
3) XP recognises it. Create a partition table & a blank partition. Shutdown.
4) From a Knoppix live CD, use 'dd' to copy the FAT32 system partition from
PATA drive to SATA drive.
5) Remove PATA drive
6) Boot from XP Pro CD to a rescue prompt
7) Issue FIXMBR, FIXBOOT and BOOTCFG /RESCAN commands
8) Boot from SATA drive
9) arrrrgh, doesn't work.

 

[Guest]

Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive floppy
disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.

 

[Pete]

Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive floppy
disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.

Thanks, I'll try this as soon as I can find a floppy drive. Will the repair
procedure overwrite my existing system files (ie stomp all over SP1 and my
device drivers?)

Thanks again.

 

[Pete]

Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive floppy
disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.

I've now tried that. It took the drivers from the floppy (and seemed to copy
them to the HD), but even after the repair install it wouldn't boot.

I've found a solution though: I copied the whole drive (not just a single
partition) to SATA, and it booted fine. So there is clearly something
essential that Windows puts on a drive that's not in the system partition,
and not on the MBR either.

 

[Len]

Or possibly XP is using the other partition(s) on your drive for system or
swap file(s). I have seen this happen on certain configurations.

Recently imaged a Boot partition on a RAID 0 array, installed a new SATA
drive, partitioned and "restored" my RAID image to the new HD. XP took off
without an issue. Normally there is no need for F6, Raid Drivers when a
single SATA disk is used, however YMMV in that respect.

I would check under disk management for the heck of it to see if your (now
SATA) drive shows on partion as boot and the other as system.

FWIW, Len

 

[Pete]

I would check under disk management for the heck of it to see if your (now
SATA) drive shows one partion as boot and the other as system.

I got to that point once, when I was messing with boot.ini. The partition on
the PATA drive was 'boot', and the partition on the SATA drive was
'system'. But I couldn't get the SATA drive to function as boot until I
copied the entire disk image. So I have a solution, but still don't know
exactly why.