Laptop Hard Drive Crashed

[Guest]

My Thinkpad hard drive crashed - so I bought a new drive. I don't have any
CDs that came with the laptop but I do have a full backup that I had taken
using the XP backup utility. I put the new hard drive into a USB enclosure
and plugged it into another Windows XP Pro desktop that I have, and
partitioned and formatted it and then I did a restore from my backup to the
new laptop drive. Now, when I put the new drive back into the Thinkpad, I
get 'No Operating System Found'.

Am I wrong in thinking I should be able to use my backup to restore to the
new drive and get back up and running? Is there something I need to do to
the format/partition process to make this work the right way? The difference
in the two drives is that the old was a 20GB Hitachi and the new is a 60GB
Western Digital - faster rpm on the new one - but other than that it's
exactly the same machine. Appreciate any advice on how to get back up and
running .... for all the advice I've found about taking good backups, I can't
find any good advice online for dealing with a crashed laptop hard drive
except for .... 'put in your Windows CD and re-install ...' but I don't have
that option, and I would think that there are a lot of people in this same
situation over the years! Thanks

 

[peter]

The problem is that you did a "backup" of the files/folders on the old
drive.
This does not create/copy/backup the Master Boot record....which is what
your system is looking for.
What you actually needed to do was clone the old HD to the new HD this would
have made an exact duplicate and be bootable.
peter

 

[Guest]

I presumed that taking a full backup would allow me to recover from a crash -
too bad that's not the default. I had no idea ...

Anything I can do at this point, or do I need to buy Windows again? Can I
create the Master Boot record?

 

[Ron Martell]

My Thinkpad hard drive crashed - so I bought a new drive. I don't have any
CDs that came with the laptop but I do have a full backup that I had taken
using the XP backup utility. I put the new hard drive into a USB enclosure
and plugged it into another Windows XP Pro desktop that I have, and
partitioned and formatted it and then I did a restore from my backup to the
new laptop drive. Now, when I put the new drive back into the Thinkpad, I
get 'No Operating System Found'.

Am I wrong in thinking I should be able to use my backup to restore to the
new drive and get back up and running? Is there something I need to do to
the format/partition process to make this work the right way? The difference
in the two drives is that the old was a 20GB Hitachi and the new is a 60GB
Western Digital - faster rpm on the new one - but other than that it's
exactly the same machine. Appreciate any advice on how to get back up and
running .... for all the advice I've found about taking good backups, I can't
find any good advice online for dealing with a crashed laptop hard drive
except for .... 'put in your Windows CD and re-install ...' but I don't have
that option, and I would think that there are a lot of people in this same
situation over the years! Thanks

Do you still have the old hard drive? Is it readable at all?

You can use Acronis True Image (www.acronis.com) to create a backup
image of the old hard drive onto your desktop machine's hard drive,
provided it has enough free space of course. Then you can restore
that image to the new hard drive.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I presumed that taking a full backup would allow me to recover from a crash -
too bad that's not the default. I had no idea ...

Anything I can do at this point, or do I need to buy Windows again? Can I
create the Master Boot record?

What I did in a similar situation was to install Windows to the new
drive and then copy all files over from the old data. I don't know
what XP's backup does to know if this would work for you. I had a
complete mirror image to work from but for some idiotic reason
Partition Magic would eat the data when it tried to copy it.

 

[Guest]

Ron - I do have the old hard drive. It was corrupt and would no longer boot,
so I had taken it to a local PC repair place and they told me it was a bad
drive (I know for a fact that a chkdsk would not repair it) but they were
able to pull off data files using some software utility that they had. The
error messages I was getting at boot time on that drive were that a couple of
the key boot files were corrupted. I wonder if the acronis image would just
carry over the corruption, and the image would not be bootable on the new
drive either, even though there is not a hardware problem. FWIW, the
problems on the old drive started after a blue screen, from which I never
fully recovered. Booting with the 6 floppies Windows startup disks to get to
a command prompt confirmed that the directory structures were messed up, as I
could not list directories via the dir command. That's when I took it to the
local repair shop and got a DVD of my key data files that had changed since
my last full backup.

I'd be interested in your thoughts based on the above - the acronis image
suggestion is a good one ... I'm willing to try!! Thanks, Scott

 

[peter]

Unfortunately if the Boot Files were screwed on the original drive they
would also be screwed on the Imaged Drive.
The Image is usually made when all things are working properly....it will
copy mistakes over.It basically takes a picture..flaws and all.
If you still have the XP activation/Serial number which usually is on a
sticker on the machine Toshiba might for a nominal fee send you a "recovery
CD'" that would put the OS and programs that came with the system back on.We
are assuming it came preinstalled from the factory which would make it an
OEM version of XP.
The 2nd thing you can try is to use a friends OEM version of XP and install
it using the activation number on your machine.
And last to actually go out and buy an OEM version of XP....costs less
nowadays..since you will be installing it onto a new and empty HD.
peter

 

[Guest]

Thanks Peter and Ron ... I'll look into the recovery CD - you are right that
it was an OEM version that came installed on the hard drive. It came with a
recovery partition, but of course that's of no use when the drive itself goes
belly up. Thanks again for your help. Scott