harddisk changed, nt4 does not boot

[michael reppisch]

Hi Ng,

because my drive only produced clicks i replaced it with a newer one.

After restoring the image, the system won't boot.

- i used 'dd' from my favorite linux distro
- System is a Nt4 sp6 with Ntfs
- the new drive is (of course) not the same type and reports a different
geometry :-(

1st Try
Bytewise copy with dd.

PQ complains about error 108 which says partition boundaries are wrong.

2nd Try
- reload mbr (dd),
- recreate partition table (sfdisk) on the target machine
- reload the partition images (dd)

Nt does not boot.

Is it essential for the NT-Boot process tho have those partitions
aligned to cylinder boundaries? (i.e. to have the right CHS adresses)
Or ist it sufficient to have the right LBA adresses in the table.

If the second case, is there a tool to convert chs values between geometrys?


3. try

Dos-based disk imaging SW: System boots up, but partition sizes are
slightly different which is not acceptable to some programs.


Any Ideas?


Regards,
Michael

 

[Eric Gisin]

The easiest fix is to use a boot floppy created on any NT/2K/XP system.

If the H or S values change the NTFS boot sector must be edited if you want
it to boot directly.