Help with trying to clone my hdd with Norton Ghost

[Mike_Amiga]

Intel Pentium D 3.4GHZ, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7300GT.
Source Disk: Maxtor 40GB HDD (PATA)
Destination: Seagate 500GB HDD (SATA)
Running XP SP2

I seem to have cloned my drive ok but for the fact it doesn't boot, but making the drive bootable was one of the many options I selected before starting the clone process.

Anyone with any ideas why it isn't booting past the "Welcome" screen?

[LoadWB]

What version of Ghost?  I used 2003 frequently without setting any options, no problems with bootable drives.

Try booting from the XP CD, go into the Recovery Console, do FIXMBR and FIXBOOT.  That fixes a lot of boot problems.  Otherwise you may need to do a Repair Installation.

[EDIT]:  I just realized a big problem: you changed drive controllers.  You will most likely need to do a Repair Installation to get Windows to recognize the boot device on a different controller (PATA to SATA move.)

Remember when doing this that you will blow out all updates past the SP level of the CD.  You will probably also break Windows Update, but that's easy to fix (do a Google search for "windows xp repair installation break windows update" -- probably too many words, but it will find it) with a regsvr32 command.

[HenryCase]

Not 100% sure why it won't boot, but will the fact that one drive is PATA and the other is SATA make a difference?

Try using this CD:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

First try to fix the MBR (Master Boot Record).
If that doesn't work, there are some free cloning programs on the disk, try using them instead of Norton Ghost, see if that fixes this booting issue.

EDIT: Just read LoadWB's post. I don't really know much about HD cloning so I'd recommend following LoadWB's advice.

[InTheSand]

Also, you might want to ensure that Ghost takes care of writing the correct drive geometry back into the NTFS boot sector.

If this isn't done properly, XP won't boot.

See http://fugitivethought.com/blog.php?action=view&blog_id=77 for more information.

Quite why information about the physical drive is written into the boot sector when it can be queried at any time from the drive itself escapes me, but I guess it made sense to someone at M$!

 - Ali

[LoadWB]

Here's the KBA about the Windows Update problem after a Repair

"Updates are not installed successfully from Windows Update, from Microsoft Update, or by using Automatic Updates after you repair a Windows XP installation"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943144/en-us

[Mike_Amiga]

Using Version 12 of ghost. I'll look into that other stuff though.

Thanks all.

*edit* BTW I really don't want to reinstall, the whole point of getting ghost was to make a complete copy of all my existing stuff so i don't have it reinstall and configure everything all over again.

[jasper]

Perhaps you should check to see if the partition is set to "active" using a utility like Partition Magic

Never used Ghost myself because i'm happy using Powerquest Drive Image

[jj]

At a guess its becuause you copied a version of xp running on pata, so it does not have the needed sata drivers.  I do not think there is anyway around this.

[LoadWB]

Mike_Amiga wrote:

*edit* BTW I really don't want to reinstall, the whole point of getting ghost was to make a complete copy of all my existing stuff so i don't have it reinstall and configure everything all over again.

A Repair Installation isn't really a full reinstall.  It copies all of the critical Windows files to the installation, but leaves drivers and installed programs intact.  It's a little time consuming, especially since there's another 295MB or so of updates to download again after the installation, but it works.

I'll be doing that when I replace my Soyo motherboard with one that doesn't have swollen caps.

[orange]

If you can see "Welcome" screen then MBR should be ok.
I had the same problem with two IDE drives, never found the solution.

[Mike_Amiga]

by jasper on 2007/11/24 0:39:11

Perhaps you should check to see if the partition is set to "active" using a utility like Partition Magic

Never used Ghost myself because i'm happy using Powerquest Drive Image.

:-D Ok i'm just watering the daisies but, extract from review :-D "Drive Image 7 comes with an inadequate printed manual and has some maddening foibles, notably the inability to work reliably on dual-boot systems or to allow browsing of multiple image files on removable media. These are things that PowerQuest ought to address, and quickly, but knowing the company's past reluctance to introduce intermediary fixes and point-revisions, we're not holding our breath." :-D