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Disck cloning doest work, nightmare

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Hi, I am trying to clone a disk on a larger disk, with no success.

There are two 80G disks in the computer at present. I want to replace the second disk with a 160G drive. The disk to be cloned has an extended partition with two logical drives. The first logical drive is bootable (Win XP Pro SP3). I wish to extend both logical drives sizes and leave the remaining space unpartitioned. I use True Image Home 2010.

My first attempt was to clone the 80G drive to the 160G, using the clone function under utilities. When I tried to boot, it fails on the screen where we usually see Windows is starting up, except that Windows is starting up does not show. At this point, booting come to a halt, the system is frozen.

In a second attempt, instead of cloning the disk I made an image, sector-to-sector not selected, that I restored.  Booting halted at the same step. In a third attempt, this time the image was done with sector-by-sector selected, and the image restored. Same result.

Can someone help, I just can't guess what's wrong or what else to try. I don't know if it's a clue, but each time I restore the partition, boot.ini gets changed with the wrong parameters. It gets changed to: "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)...", except that is should be "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)".

Thanks to all

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Gilles:
You didn't mention a few things I'd like to know.
1. When you created the image, was the image created on an external drive?
2. When you restored that image, was the target drive installed in your computer where the "second drive" had been?
3. When doing the restore, did you do it from a TI bootable rescue CD?

I can't say much about cloning because I don't do it. If I did clone, I'd put the source drive in the external enclosure and the new 160 GB drive in the computer where the "second Disk" had been. I would run the clone from the rescue CD.

Fungus

Fungus,

1. When I created the image, the 160G was connected as in internal drive
2. When I restored the image, the 160G was connected where it would be uses
3. Everything was done booting the included CD (linux)

Hi Gilles,
How the hell are you? (Comment l'enfer vous allez-tu?)
Are you using IDE HD.If so ,did you set the jumpers properly?
Please refer to Grover's guide ,under items 7a and 7b ,regarding the steps to be accomplished in the cloning process.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426

Hi Babac,

(je me sens en enfer puisque ça ne marche pas!) I am pretty good but will feel better when this problem is resolved.

Yes, I am using IDE drives, and the jumpers were set properly. No, I didn't follow Grovers's guide, but went across it yesterday. Next time I try, I will first read the guide. I will the come back to the forum to tell how it went.

Thanks Babac

A couple comments:
Generally speaking:
1. When creating a backup image, the source should be in its normal boot position.
2. When restoring or cloning, the target disk should be in its intended boot position and procedure should be performed when booted from the Rescue CD.
3. On first bootup after the restore or cloning but prior to first boot;, disconnect the 80G data cable from the motherboard so only the new 160G data cable is attached.
4. During first boot, look into the BIOS and make sure the proper disk is selected. It should be the only internal disk showing.
5. If you are using the restore procedure and the wrong data is in the ini file, it sounds like you may be restoring the partitions either in the wrong order or during the user selection process, you may need to change what TrueImage is selecting so that the active partition selected is the correct one. The correct information about the partition sequence and which is the active partition can be found by viewing the original source disk in its original boot position via the Windows Disk Management feature in graphical view.

Once, you have the system booting correctly, then you can re-attach the old drive and use it how you wish. Windows will assign new drive letters to the old disk when used as a second disk.

If you are using IDE drives, their jumpers must reflect their correct location at time of bootup.

Hi Grover, thanks for coming in.

Regarding your comments:

4. <...> It should be the only internal disk showing. There will be two disks showing:

  • Primary IDE channel/Primary drive, with C: bootable (Win XP Home), D: and E: (data only for D: and E:)
  • Pirmary IDE channel/Slave drive, with J: bootable (Win XP Pro) and K: (data only)

F: and G: are the CD and DVD drives, H: and I: are on the old external drive, the 160 G disk. It is the Primary channel/Slave drive I want to replace with the 160 G, and it is the J: partition that doesn't reboot.

A few other things. The ATI Home 2010 CD is build 5055. The installation was updated to build 6053, but since I used the original CD to boot, that may explain difficulties. I think I will recreate a CD from build 6053.

Stay tuned !

Grover,

A million thanks, it worked !!!! I followed your guide, and the disk booted right first time. You have done a marvellous work.

In the past, I have done disk cloning a lot of time with Partition Magic and Drive Image, and I didn't have to take that many steps and precautions. But that was in the time of Windows 2000. Looks like with Windows XP, things have to be done in a very specific way.

I was wondering if there is such an extensive "library" of information regarding Disk Direcory ?

Thanks again

Congratulations.
I'm glad it finally worked for you. As is the old proverb "The devil is in the details." Yes, some things simply will not work unless performed in a specific sequence.