Couple of tips on cloned HD boot problems

[blador]

I have been postponing the transference of my system from an old IDE
to a new SATA for months and using the new HD just for storage because
I couldn't get a clone to work. It's been a little hard to put
together the information I used to solve my problem, so I'm writing
this for future reference for anyone trying to solve similar problems.

When I cloned my C: partition to the first 15gb partition on my new
HD, I would get a system disk failure at boot. Most tips on how to
solve this kind of problem wouldn't work (fix mbr, check boot
sequence, boot.ini), even doing a repair installation of XP (which I
was trying to avoid anyway). At some point I realized the problem was
that the new disk had been set as Dynamic (don't remember why or how)!
Converting it back to Basic with Paragon Partition Manager and
recloning got me much further in the boot process.

Still, I couldn't get past a blue welcome screen with the XP logo
(just before login screen). After some research, I found this page:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
I then used regedt32 in my old disk to edit the clone's registry and
deleted all entries at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices].

Booted normally after that.

I just wrote this as a future reference for anyone having similar
problems. I got quite frustrated when I couldn't find straightforward
solutions to the issues I was having, specially the first one. When
searching for boot problems I think I didn't find a single mention
about checking if the disk was set up as basic.

 

[smlunatick]

I have been postponing the transference of my system from an old IDE
to a new SATA for months and using the new HD just for storage because
I couldn't get a clone to work. It's been a little hard to put
together the information I used to solve my problem, so I'm writing
this for future reference for anyone trying to solve similar problems.

When I cloned my C: partition to the first 15gb partition on my new
HD, I would get a system disk failure at boot. Most tips on how to
solve this kind of problem wouldn't work (fix mbr, check boot
sequence, boot.ini), even doing a repair installation of XP (which I
was trying to avoid anyway). At some point I realized the problem was
that the new disk had been set as Dynamic (don't remember why or how)!
Converting it back to Basic with Paragon Partition Manager and
recloning got me much further in the boot process.

Still, I couldn't get past a blue welcome screen with the XP logo
(just before login screen). After some research, I found this page:http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
I then used regedt32 in my old disk to edit the clone's registry and
deleted all entries at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices].

Booted normally after that.

I just wrote this as a future reference for anyone having similar
problems. I got quite frustrated when I couldn't find straightforward
solutions to the issues I was having, specially the first one. When
searching for boot problems I think I didn't find a single mention
about checking if the disk was set up as basic.

Most IDE drives would with the XP included IDE/ATA drivers. However,
it seems that mostly any Intel SATA controller will also be detected
correct with XP included drivers. In order to clone to a SATA drive,
several steps are usually needed to get this to work:

1) Install the SATA drivers into XP that is installed on the IDE
drive.

2) Have the SATA drivers on a removable drive (Flash or floppy.) You
may need to doi a repair re-install after the clone.

or

2b) Create a newer XP install CD that would have the SATA drivers
"slipstreamed" into it. You then can do a repair re-install with only
the XP CD. (Search the Internet for a method of adding drivers to the
XP install CD.)

 

[RRTRACKS via WindowsKB.com]

Blador, thank you for the information regarding cloning drives. A couple of
months ago your comments and the link you provided, would have saved me a
great deal of both time and frustration. At that time I started a thread on
this board describing a similar problem and the eventual solution. Since the
information you have provided gives a better understanding and more
flexibility in dealing with this problem I am going to be providing a link to
this thread on the above mentioned thread. Please do not waste your time
reading what is presented there as the following comments sum it up.

Using the software that came with both Seagate and Western Digital drives
(This was with two different drives) I was able to add a new partition
containing a portion of the new drive, format it and clone the operating
system to it. The above software took care of the registry entries for that
partition as I was able to boot from the two drives this was done with. The
problems I had came when I used cloning to switch the storage partition
location of the programs between my old system and new system drives.

The solution I came up with was just to clone the programs I had on to the
new drives in the same order of partitions the old system had, remove the old
drives and reboot. The order not the size of the partitions was the factor in
the problem I was dealing with.

At this point it should not be a newsflash I am a computer novice. Even with
hind sight it would be generous to describe the errors I made as silly. If
you see anything presented here as being incorrect or misleading please do
not hesitate to point it out. My feelings would be hurt if you did not.

Rich