Cloned NTFS drive does not boot 1

[pmonett]

I'm having a bit of a conundrum.
I have a spare drive that I used to test the drive cloning abilities of Partition Magic, Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost.
I have made several attempts to clone my original XP Pro NTFS partition, but none have created a copy I can boot from. I either get error messages saying there is no OS, or, in the best of cases, I get a message telling me there was an error booting the OS.
I have checked and found a few tools online, but all they can do is tell me that yes, my clone partition is active.
Under Windows, with the original drive loaded and the other drive online as well, the Device Manager tells me that my original drive XP partition is bootable, and not the clone partition on the backup disk.

So, basically, me question is : how do I get my backup system partition to be bootable ?

And, as a side question : why on Earth is it so hard to clone an NTFS partition reliably ?

I used to make backups of my FAT32 partitions all the time. Plonk the image to a new disk, use FDisk to mark it active, and Presto ! A new bootable drive.

With NTFS, nada. You get a backup copy of your data, but no boot.

Could someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong ? I cannot imagine that these professional tools used by thousands every day do not get the job done. I have to have made a mistake. What was it ?

I would have thought that open app, choose Clone Disk or similar, choose source disk, choose target disk, and let 'er rip would be good enough. Apparently, it isn't.

What gives ?

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[Freestone]

Can this possibly be hardware related? Have you tried another drive? Are you cloning to a USB enclosure? In other words, have you tried cloning using different hardware and/or hardware configurations?

 

[eyec]

prior to cloning your existing OS did you format the spare HDD as a BOOT DRIVE?

 

[seanform]

Ate you using an old version of ghost? Are you using ghost in win or booting from a cd?
I clone hundreds of ntfs drives....never had a problem. If you clone an entire drive there is no need to mess with partitions as partiton table will be cloned as well thus cloned drive will be bootable.

 

[pmonett]

The initial situation was as follows :

Source disk : IDE 120GB
Clone disk : SATA 320GB

There were no USB cables involved.

As for formatting, I stupidly thought that a clone would set everything the same. Obviously, I was wrong.

So, how can I format a disk as Boot drive without setting up a FAT32 partition first ? Can the Windows Format command do that for an NTSF partition ? Never tried.

I did use the various NTFS tools I found on the Web to ensure that the disk was Active, though. Not that that changed anything.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[Freestone]

I still think this is a hardware issue. Any chance of trying an IDE to IDE transfer? Seeing that you are going to a SATA target drive, perhaps the OS you are cloning FROM does not support the SATA controller your target drive is attached to, thus the boot issues.

Perhaps eyec can elaborate on his formatting issue. I've never heard of or ever had to do this prior to a clone.

 

[saikee]

I use free Linux Live CD to clone XP and Vista. Don't think it has ever failed me once yet.

All it takes is to have the target larger than the source.

This is the thread I wrote for the Windows users. It looks long but the command is just one line.

The Linux's method works for any operating system (Dos, Windows, Linux, BSD and Solaris), any number of OS in the hard disk, any hard disk type (internal, external, Sata, Pats) and any number of partitions in the hard disk ( I have it done on 63-partition disks).

I have xp cloned by Ghost before but I found the Linux's way faster and simpler. Two days ago I have cloned Vista 3 times between an internal Sata and eSata (to see if it boots from an eSata outside the PC that has no no internal hard disk) and the 100Gb took 1586, 1506 and 1412 seconds. The transfer rate was between 63,7 to 70.8 Mb/s.

If one of the disk is via an USB port then the transfer rate drops to between 1/3 to 1/4 of the above speed.

 

[eyec]

the Western Digital Tools disc i have allows for the option to make a HDD bootable or Data. Seagate has the same thing.

was not sure that was the problem with his Ghost image but offered it up.

 

[pmonett]

It seems that I had the right tools, then, but got the wrong result. Maybe it's a HDD question.

Oh well, I'll just format the thing and reinstall XP.

Thanks to all !

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[firewolfrl]

aaahg!
your whole problem is simple. its all related to active partitions and C:\ drive assignment as a drive letter or lack of the drive being assigned as C:\
I do this all the time and the prep work for the receiving drive is very important.
first the sata has to be zeroed so the master boot record is wiped. this step is important as a format will leave the residue drive letter assignment and the drive won't boot because it will see itself as a any drive other than C:

second you have to boot via CD and load Acronis True Image

clone to the empty sata drive

when done shut down and remove the IDE drive
boot and the SATA should boot this time
download and install Maxtweaks

http://www.tech52.com/MaxTweaks.exe

http://www.tech52.com

for info on it
after reboot go to device manager and enable show hidden devices
go to storage volumes and delete all the light gray generic volume
then go to disk drives and delete the light gray harddrive that was your old drive.
this helps make sure your IDE is not re-assigned as C: and create a MBR issue

after that step is done shut down and re-hook up the IDE
after the system boots it will find the IDE drive and assign a new generic volume to it. it should ask for a reboot when done detecting.


this is a post I did awhile back that is exactly the same issue and was solved

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1356184&page=1

 

[pmonett]

Thanks for the tip !


Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[pmonett]

Okay, I've finally found the root cause of the affair.

The drive I was cloning was from a PC bought in-store. The extended partition was physically at the beginning of the drive, and the primary partition was after that.

This is the second time I waste hours and hours on this brain-dead, nonsensical arrangement. I wonder who is the lunatic who first proposed this lateral-thinking stupidity.

What is the justification for such a thing ? Is it so that PC owners cannot fix things themselves and HAVE to call for support ? Is that the idea ?

Man that makes me mad.

Anyway, that was the end of it. Now, If ever I see Mr. Dell in person, I'll give him five clenched fingers worth of my piece of mind.

Cheers.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[firewolfrl]

primary Boot partitions are common and do cause issues. usually that is the partition containing the MBR for the second primary partition. this dates back all the way to the windows 3.1 days...lol
sometimes its easier to clone the entire drive so you can keep intake the boot record within that boot partition. Dell is not the only one to do that either.

so did you get it to boot?

 

[Freestone]

Pascal,

Thanks for reporting the cure. So in effect, the cloned drive's boot.ini must have been pointing at the wrong partition on the cloned drive, i.e. partition(2) instead of partition(1)?

Dell (and no, not Mr. Dell I don't need Pascal's ire )

 

[firewolfrl]

Freestone, some times it gets more complicated as the drive is "FIXED" as a registry entry to read as C:\ even though the partition record says it is not C:\ so in affect the drive works great and does everything it is supposed to do as long as that first partition is there either as a hidden or not hidden drive. remove the first partition renders the computer unbootable and also loses the boot record for the secondary partition....sneaky SOB's I say...LOL

 

[pmonett]

Yes it booted, after I had (manually) recopied all data to other discs, deleted the partition table, and recreated a CORRECT table with a Primary partition in first position.

Thanks to these shenanigans, I wasted no less than two nights on this stupidity, when the clone itself only took three hours.

In any case, now I know what to do before promising a backup of a friends' disk : check the partition table with Fdisk and make sure that the Primary is where it is supposed to be : FIRST !

Cheers,

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[Freestone]

I owe Pascal an apology for not understanding his issues completely. When I read the word clone, I read it to mean copying (cloning) an entire drive not a single partition, hence my posts regarding hardware issues.

Sorry, Pascal! I will try to understand posts better in the future!