Having trouble cloning a bootable laptop hard disk

B

Bob Weissman

What is the secret to cloning a laptop hard drive for Windows XP?

My HP Pavilion notebook's drive is starting to die, but still mostly
runs. I would like to clone it exactly onto an identical drive and
replace it.

I have tried DriveImage 7.0.3, which almost works - it appears to make
an exact copy, but the new drive will not boot. It just sits there
like a lump at boot time. I have tried all the various DriveImage
parameters, and none of them get me a bootable disk. I've looked
through the MS knowledge base, to no avail.

Is there some magic thing I need to do outside of DriveImage to make
my new hard drive bootable?

Some better software I should use instead of DriveImage? Ghost,
perhaps?

I need to copy via a USB or FireWire connection; I cannot have both
ATA drives physically inserted in my laptop at the same time.

Thanks for any advice,
- Bob
 
A

Alceryes

Isn't there a setting in drive image to make the partition on the new drive
'active'?
 
P

Pegasus \(MVP\)

Bob Weissman said:
What is the secret to cloning a laptop hard drive for Windows XP?

My HP Pavilion notebook's drive is starting to die, but still mostly
runs. I would like to clone it exactly onto an identical drive and
replace it.

I have tried DriveImage 7.0.3, which almost works - it appears to make
an exact copy, but the new drive will not boot. It just sits there
like a lump at boot time. I have tried all the various DriveImage
parameters, and none of them get me a bootable disk. I've looked
through the MS knowledge base, to no avail.

Is there some magic thing I need to do outside of DriveImage to make
my new hard drive bootable?

Some better software I should use instead of DriveImage? Ghost,
perhaps?

I need to copy via a USB or FireWire connection; I cannot have both
ATA drives physically inserted in my laptop at the same time.

Thanks for any advice,
- Bob

As others said, the new drive is probably not active. Do this:

- Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com.
- Run fdisk.exe
- Set the disk to "active"

This fdisk command will work regardless of the partition type you have.
 
J

Jim Phelps

What is the secret to cloning a laptop hard drive for Windows XP?

My HP Pavilion notebook's drive is starting to die, but still mostly
runs. I would like to clone it exactly onto an identical drive and
replace it.

I have tried DriveImage 7.0.3, which almost works - it appears to make
an exact copy, but the new drive will not boot. It just sits there
like a lump at boot time. I have tried all the various DriveImage
parameters, and none of them get me a bootable disk. I've looked
through the MS knowledge base, to no avail.

Is there some magic thing I need to do outside of DriveImage to make
my new hard drive bootable?

Some better software I should use instead of DriveImage? Ghost,
perhaps?

Hi Bob, If a failure to boot is the only problem, then boot to DOS and
type "Sys C:" from The A: drive. The necessary boot files will be
added to the C: drive and it should then boot OK. Jim
 
F

Frank

Bob Weissman said:
What is the secret to cloning a laptop hard drive for Windows XP?

My HP Pavilion notebook's drive is starting to die, but still mostly
runs. I would like to clone it exactly onto an identical drive and
replace it.

I have tried DriveImage 7.0.3, which almost works - it appears to
make
an exact copy, but the new drive will not boot. It just sits there
like a lump at boot time. I have tried all the various DriveImage
parameters, and none of them get me a bootable disk. I've looked
through the MS knowledge base, to no avail.

Is there some magic thing I need to do outside of DriveImage to make
my new hard drive bootable?

Some better software I should use instead of DriveImage? Ghost,
perhaps?

I need to copy via a USB or FireWire connection; I cannot have both
ATA drives physically inserted in my laptop at the same time.

Thanks for any advice,
- Bob

With Drive image there is a drive copy. This has to be configured
before the burn process. There are radio buttons to choose make
drive bootable, copy mbr etc, etc. The old drive must be removed
the new drive must be jumpered correctly and installed.
 
B

Bob Weissman

With Drive image there is a drive copy. This has to be configured
before the burn process. There are radio buttons to choose make
drive bootable, copy mbr etc, etc. The old drive must be removed
the new drive must be jumpered correctly and installed.

Yes, I tried all of that. DriveImage simply failed to do the job. So did
another program called DriveClone (because it can't handle USB or
FireWire drives).

Finally, I tried Ghost, which worked perfectly. I'm back in business.
Thanks for the reply.

- Bob
 

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