My Windows 7 HDD Ruined When Attempting Cloning It to a new WD HDD
I hope some one in the Acronis community can help me to resolve this issue.
I have purchased this second hand HP computer which was Windows 7 OEM and then upraded to Windows 7 with a lot of software goodies. It's unstable and frequently freezes which I thought implies thre was a problem with the HDD containing Windows 7 (which as I found out later that it was not the case, I simply had a loose peripheral board on the mother board which caused problems). So I decide to try to clone the existing HDD before I lose it all.
I purchased a brand new Western Digital HD so I can clone the old HDD containing Windows 7 onto it. I could not do it on the original HP machine as it was unstable. So I attach both HDDs to a Window XP machine, downloaded and installed the Acronis True Image software from Western Digital web site, the un-paid version that requires presence of a Western Digital HDD. I run the program and select cloning a HDD, selected the source and destination HDD and double checked to make sure I selected both the source and destination correctly. Then I click the Clone button.
The computer immediately shut down and reboot up again, with the option to reboot into safe mode or regular mode. I choose reboot normally. Afterwards I find my original Windows 7 HDD was ruined, it was no longer recognized by the system.
I brought the HDD to a computer repair guy who could hook it up and see that all the files are still there intact. However the HDD is not recognized if I put it in any computer and try to boot it up. In the BOIS setting screen I can see there is a device of some sort connected to the SATA port. The corresponding port shows blank instead of [none] if nothing is physically present. So that means the system recognize there is something there but the information is totally blank.
It could be that the MBR is damaged. I assume that Acronis probably tried to write something to cover up the MBR and prevent any other software/OS to access the HD except for the Acronis itself, until the cloning is safely finished, and then Acronis will recover the MBR. But since the computer crashed, it was unable to finish the things when it was half done manipulating the MBR.
What do I do now? How do I recover the Windows 7 MBR as I have no Windows 7 installation disc whatsoever, and the HDD is totally in-accessible?
The original HDD was OK before I attempted to clone it. I suspected it to begin to fail. But that was NOT the case. The instability of the computer that I observed was actually due to faulty peripheral board contacts, not due to HDD problem. I know that too late. I also learned that backup is more preferable too late.
So the story is I have this original Windows 7 HDD which would not be recognized by the BIOS. But its in good physical condition, and the computer repair guy could see all the files intact. So I assume what happens is that Acronis TI probably tempered with the MBR to make it un-recognized by the BIOS. If I some how repair the MBR or the boot sector to its original state, everything will be fine.
But how do I do it without an install CD and without another Win 7 machine? What tool should I use to be able to see the MBR and be able to repair it? Remember my BIOS would not recognize the HDD, it only recognize that there is some device on teh SATA port but it does not know that it is a HDD.
It comes out that when I boot up from a CD containing Acronis TI, it reports that the damaged HDD contains an incorrect MBR. I am attaching the zip file containing the Acronis Report generated (the *.Z01 file). Can some one fromt he Acronis team look at this file and tell me exactly what happened and how I can restore the damaged MBR? Thanks a lot.
Attached file: acronissystemreport_jul_28__2013_2_28_33_pm.zip