Help moving data and boot sector to diffferent hard drive

[Ross Meador]

Existing set up: Intel desktop running XP Pro SP1, with two hard
drives, primary drive with boot sector, operating system, etc., and
secondary drive for data storage, both formated as NTFS.

I want to remove the pimary drive (to install in a different
computer); turn my current secondary drive into the primary drive;
and install a new empty drive as a new secondary drive. The current
secondary drive contains data that I don't want to loose.

Using MaxBlast3 (the Maxtor program that came with a new drive), I
copied all the files from my current primary drive onto my current
secondary drive. Then I moved the secondary drive to the primary
position and tried to boot, but I get a "Cannot find boot sector"
message. The MaxBlast3 program will show the MBR partition table for
the drive, which in the "Bootable" column says "FALSE."

Apparently I failed to properly copy the boot information/sector onto
the original secondary drive. The MaxBlast3 software will allow me
to create a new sector on the drive, but I am afraid that I will
loose data if I do, so I haven't tried that yet. Even if I did to
that successfully, how would I get the boot information into the new
sector?

Any ideas out there? Thanks!!

 

[Nicholas D Richards]

Existing set up: Intel desktop running XP Pro SP1, with two hard
drives, primary drive with boot sector, operating system, etc., and
secondary drive for data storage, both formated as NTFS.

I want to remove the pimary drive (to install in a different
computer); turn my current secondary drive into the primary drive;
and install a new empty drive as a new secondary drive. The current
secondary drive contains data that I don't want to loose.

Using MaxBlast3 (the Maxtor program that came with a new drive), I
copied all the files from my current primary drive onto my current
secondary drive. Then I moved the secondary drive to the primary
position and tried to boot, but I get a "Cannot find boot sector"
message. The MaxBlast3 program will show the MBR partition table for
the drive, which in the "Bootable" column says "FALSE."

Apparently I failed to properly copy the boot information/sector onto
the original secondary drive. The MaxBlast3 software will allow me
to create a new sector on the drive, but I am afraid that I will
loose data if I do, so I haven't tried that yet. Even if I did to
that successfully, how would I get the boot information into the new
sector?

Any ideas out there? Thanks!!

This sounds like the new disk has not been recognised as the master disk
on the primary port.

Did you check and change the jumpers on the backs of the drives?

Are these EIDE drives or SCSI drives?

They are most likely to be EIDE.

Were both drives attached to the same ribbon? If they were, there are
two ways that they can 'know' that one is master and the other is slave.
The first (and commonest) is by the position of a jumper setting on the
back of the drive. The second is known as cable select, whereby the
master is the drive that is furthest from the motherboard on the ribbon
and the slave is closest to the motherboard.

Inspect the back of your drives. Make sure that the jumper settings on
the back of your new master are set to the same as the old master. If
you are lucky, somewhere on the drives you will find a description of
the master/slave or cable select settings. Connect your new master to
the end of the ribbon cable.

By the way with respect to EIDE drives, primary and secondary are
normally used to describe the EIDE ports on the mother board. You will
normally boot from the active partition on the master disk connected to
the primary EIDE port.

 

[Ross Meador]

Thanks for your quick reply. To answer your questions, the drives are
EIDE. All the jumpers are set to "cable select," and yes, both drives
are connected to a single cable, with the problem drive connected to
the farthest end plug on the ribbon cable. To be more precise than
in my previous post, the error message when I try to boot to the new
drive is "No active partition." In fact the drive was formated for a
single NTSF partition and worked fine as a secondary storage drive. I
can get into Setup, but it will not load Windows, even though I copied
all of the files (including Windows) from an older drive to this new
one. The error message suggests that I need to create an "active
partition" that will make the computer boot and load the operating
system. Is that right? If so, how do I do that??

 

[Nicholas D Richards]

Thanks for your quick reply. To answer your questions, the drives are
EIDE. All the jumpers are set to "cable select," and yes, both drives
are connected to a single cable, with the problem drive connected to
the farthest end plug on the ribbon cable. To be more precise than
in my previous post, the error message when I try to boot to the new
drive is "No active partition." In fact the drive was formated for a
single NTSF partition and worked fine as a secondary storage drive. I
can get into Setup, but it will not load Windows, even though I copied
all of the files (including Windows) from an older drive to this new
one. The error message suggests that I need to create an "active
partition" that will make the computer boot and load the operating
system. Is that right? If so, how do I do that??

A number of points. I am not sure that your method will get you to
where you want to be.

You do need an active partition, whether you can get that depends upon
how the old slave drive was partitioned. If you had used Maxblast to
clone your old master onto your old slave, it should have created an
active primary partition on your slave drive. However you would have
lost your data on your old slave drive, so I am pretty certain that is
not the way you used Maxblast. A DOS routine, on a bootable floppy,
called FDISK will allow you to make active a primary partition. If your
drive was partitioned as an extended DOS partition only then you cannot
make the partition active.

Copying all the system files is not sufficient, the address of NTLDR has
to be found in the Master Boot Record. If you use Maxblast to clone the
old drive you will achieve this, however you will loose your data on the
slave. In DOS based operating systems (Windows 9x) a DOS routine called
SYS does this, however I am not aware of an equivalent for NT based
systems.

As I see it there are two ways for you to go. Before you can go
anywhere you need to back up your data files. You can back them up onto
your old master drive (if you have the space) or onto some other media,
you will need to re-partition your old slave drive, which is a
destructive process (for data).

I am assuming that your old slave drive is being correctly identified by
your BIOS in its new master position.

1) If you have the original software disks (or manufacturers
restore disks) for your operating system the preferred method would be
to re-instal your operating system and software. Windows XP install
allows you to partition and create a new file system and manufacturers
restore disks do the same.

2) If your slave drive is larger than or the same size as your
original master drive then you can use Maxblast to clone your the master
to the slave. This will also re-partition your drive and make it
bootable. By the way you can download the latest version of Maxblast
from the Maxtor web site. It is free and you can use it providing one
of the drives is a Maxtor drive.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Absolutely clueless. Everything you said is wrong.

He could boot to recovery console and use fixboot, but there are probably other
problems. Start over.

 

[Ross Meador]

Thanks for your input, Eric, but I am not clear on what you are
suggesting or which parts of the previous post you believe are wrong.
Can you clarify?

 

[Nicholas D Richards]

Thanks for your input, Eric, but I am not clear on what you are
suggesting or which parts of the previous post you believe are wrong.
Can you clarify?

Its up to Eric to explain how everything is wrong, it is a rather broad
statement.

He is suggesting that you use the Recovery Console. This may solve your
problem although I doubt it, on the other hand it may make your
partitions inaccessible. So you must back up your data before you
attempt this.

With your new disk as the Master on the primary IDE port.

You can get into the Recovery Console by inserting the Windows XP setup
disc (not a recovery disk) and booting from the disc. The first option
you should be given is either to setup windows or repair an installation
of windows by pressing 'R'. Press R.

You will then enter a DOS like presentation. You may be presented with
a list of Windows installations and asked which installation you wish to
repair (this will be good sign). If you are enter the number against
the Windows you wish to repair (it is probably a list of length 1). You
will then be asked to enter the administrator password. If there is no
administrator password, just press enter.

Before you do anything else, it may be worth keying MAP to see if your
drive is visible.

You should then be faced with a DOS like command line. Key 'FIXBOOT c:'
(assuming that c is you boot disk), obviously no quotes. Press enter.

Key 'EXIT' and press ENTER to reboot and remove you Windows setup disk.
If this works then you will be able to boot from your new disk.

If this does not work then you will need to re-install the operating
system, all your software and the data that you have backed up. This is
still my preferred option, unless Eric has any other advice (FIXMBR?).

Good luck.

 

[Irwin]

Ross,

Please explain when you say copy the data. Did you do the 'boot drive
install' as explained on page 20 of the manual?

Irwin