Clone to USB Hard Disk and Boot from USB

[evgeniosc]

I cloned my hdd with windows 2000 professional to a usb hard disk.

Then I disabled the internal hard disk so that the usb hdd will be the first hard disk (so boot.ini will work ok).

The system boots up from the USB but after a little time (before the GUI will show up) it crashes with the message INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE.

Is there a way to make such driver and registry changes in the original windows 2000 (before cloning) so that the USB hdd will boot?

Some things i found but are not working is to delete from registry the MountedDevices folder and change the IDE controller drivers to standard (no need to change)

Thanks in advance

 

[xwb]

It probably has something hardcoded as C:... in the registry. If it doesn't assign the USB disk as C:, this won't work.

 

[wolluf]

Could try running recovery console - with just the usb drive connected. If its picked up as C:, try running fixboot and fixmbr then try again.

btw - after you cloned drive, did you boot the machine from the internal 2k installation with the USB drive attached? If so, it will definitely have been assigned as not C:. If this is the case, try cloning again, and then when complete, start with just usb drive.

also - what did you use to clone? (and does it correctly set partition as active on the clone?)

 

[wahnula]

I don't understand why you would want to boot from the USB disk. Its throughput is a fraction of even the IDE bus. If you want to boot from the cloned drive, put it in the PC case as the only drive, and see if the problems persist. You can then put the old Win 2K drive in the USB case and use it as an external drive.

I've never seen a circumstance where having a boot drive in an external USB enclosure was an advantage, but I learn something new every day.

Tony

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