Restoring a bootable image to a removable disk

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I'm trying to use the trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2012 to move a complete bootable Windows XP installation from a smaller disk to a larger one. Normally that would be a trivial task, but there's a major complication that I can't seem to figure out how to get around: these are compact flash drives. The device that uses them doesn't have a hard drive or a CD-ROM, so I took out the flash drive and am using a card reader on my own laptop to work with it. Backing up the original (2GB) drive was no problem. And restoring it to the new (4GB) CF card in "disk" mode goes fine too. But when I put the card back in the device, after it finishes going through the BIOS screen, nothing happens. It doesn't give an error; it doesn't say "invalid disk"; it just sits there with a blinking cursor.

I've used Acronis True Image 6.0 to restore disk images to various hard drives hundreds of times, so I know how this process is supposed to work. I even looked at the first sector of the drive in a disk editor to see if the MBR was getting restored, and it is. But it seems like something about the fact that these are "removable" disks may be causing a problem with it. Or maybe it's the fact that there's no partitions on a removable drive but the disk isn't the same size? Any ideas?

Mon, 10/10/2011 - 19:43
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Do you know if the device uses any special drive geometry? This can cause problem when you restore the drive using another computer that uses standard geometry.

Does it boot up okay if you restore the Entire Disk Image without resizing? If so, you might be able to use a partitioning program to resize the partition afterwards.

Also, check that the correct partition is set Active. This is usually the Windows partition for XP.

Tue, 10/11/2011 - 15:59
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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I did try restoring the entire disk, and yes, the partition was active. I think it was something with the card, though, because I got it to work this morning. I had to format the card as NTFS, disable LBA for the disk in the device's BIOS, and then I was able to copy the rest of the operating system in place with just a regular file copy and it booted just fine. Maybe the 4GB card doesn't support LBA?

Either way, it's working now, and thanks for your suggestions!

Wed, 10/12/2011 - 14:56