boot problems after using MaxBlast to clone 40G -> 30G drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rod Speed
  • Start date Start date
R

Rod Speed

You dont say what OS is involved. If its XP it can get seriously
confused if it can see the original and the clone during the first
boot after the copy. The trick is to physically disconnect the
40GB drive for the first boot after the clone.

I dont use MaxBlast for cloning myself so it
may be something else if you arent using XP.

Ghost will certainly do what you want and its very cheap as
part of SystemWorks Pro 2003. Needs to be Pro to get Ghost.

You still need to make sure that XP doesnt see
the original drive on the first boot after the clone.
 
Background: A 40G drive starting to give me errors but it still
functional, and I'm attempting (for better or worse) to replace it
with a 30G drive using Maxtor's Maxblast cloning software...which
works fine until I try to reboot to the cloned drive...at which point
it just hangs with a black screen after the BIOS windows. The drive
tests fine with floppy based diagnosistics.

Self flagellation: Yeah, the 30G drive was a mistake. :-)

Details:
I have a Compaq 7598 desktop whose original 40G Maxtor drive started
giving some errors and the feeling of impending doom. I (okay,
mistakenly!) purchased a 30G drive to replace it...but the 40G drive
was nowhere near full, so I was hopeful. :-) As with most Compaq's
the original drive had just 2 FAT32 partitions--a big one, and a
smaller system_sav partiion.

Using the MaxBlast software that came with the retail Maxtor 30G drive
I bought, I followed the procedures to replace the boot disk, and
copied all the files over. When both drives are in the machine, I can
browse the entire contents of each and it looks like everything came
over the to the 30G drive just fine with loads of space to spare.
File wise, and space used wise, they appear identical from Windows
save for volume labels.

Now, when I recable/jumper the drives to set the new 30G cloned drive
as primary master, and remove the old 40G drive from the
machine...booting stops after the BIOS screen. No errors, just blank
with the cursor sitting there blinking in the upper left corner.

The BIOS has detected the drive fine, and if I run PowerMax
diagnostics from a floppy, everything tests perfectly. But for
whatever reason, it just doesn't want to boot to win98.

Any ideas? The only notion I've got in my head that's intriguing is
that the 30Gb drive is less than 32G and the 40G is obviously more
than 32G...and that's a threshold at which some bios's need to do some
tricks with hard disks and boot records and such, but I'm not versed
enough in the specifics to reason any further. :-)

Any experience to impart? I'm beating my head on this. If I can't
make this 30G drive work, I'll have to repeat the exercise with a 40G
drive. :-)

Best Regards,
 
Rod Speed said:
You dont say what OS is involved. If its XP it can get seriously
confused if it can see the original and the clone during the first
boot after the copy. The trick is to physically disconnect the
40GB drive for the first boot after the clone.

I dont use MaxBlast for cloning myself so it
may be something else if you arent using XP.

Ghost will certainly do what you want and its very cheap as
part of SystemWorks Pro 2003. Needs to be Pro to get Ghost.

You still need to make sure that XP doesnt see
the original drive on the first boot after the clone.
Click to expand...

Doh! sorry bout that. Thanks for your response...it's Windows 98 SE.

The boots I'm having problems with are:
new drive as the only drive and jumpered primary master
new drive as only drive, cable select, on master connector
new drive as master, old drive as slave (jumpered)
new drive as master, old drive as slave (cableselect)

I have no reason to think the data didn't come over right...just can't
seem to figure out why the bootloader isn't finding the goodies. :-)

 
Todd H. said:
Background: A 40G drive starting to give me errors but it still
functional, and I'm attempting (for better or worse) to replace it
with a 30G drive using Maxtor's Maxblast cloning software...which
works fine until I try to reboot to the cloned drive...at which point
it just hangs with a black screen after the BIOS windows. The drive
tests fine with floppy based diagnosistics.

Self flagellation: Yeah, the 30G drive was a mistake. :-)

Details:
I have a Compaq 7598 desktop whose original 40G Maxtor drive started
giving some errors and the feeling of impending doom. I (okay,
mistakenly!) purchased a 30G drive to replace it...but the 40G drive
was nowhere near full, so I was hopeful. :-) As with most Compaq's
the original drive had just 2 FAT32 partitions--a big one, and a
smaller system_sav partiion.

Using the MaxBlast software that came with the retail Maxtor 30G drive
I bought, I followed the procedures to replace the boot disk, and
copied all the files over. When both drives are in the machine, I can
browse the entire contents of each and it looks like everything came
over the to the 30G drive just fine with loads of space to spare.
File wise, and space used wise, they appear identical from Windows
save for volume labels.

Now, when I recable/jumper the drives to set the new 30G cloned drive
as primary master, and remove the old 40G drive from the
machine...booting stops after the BIOS screen. No errors, just blank
with the cursor sitting there blinking in the upper left corner.

The BIOS has detected the drive fine, and if I run PowerMax
diagnostics from a floppy, everything tests perfectly. But for
whatever reason, it just doesn't want to boot to win98.

Any ideas? The only notion I've got in my head that's intriguing is
that the 30Gb drive is less than 32G and the 40G is obviously more
than 32G...and that's a threshold at which some bios's need to do some
tricks with hard disks and boot records and such, but I'm not versed
enough in the specifics to reason any further. :-)

Any experience to impart? I'm beating my head on this. If I can't
make this 30G drive work, I'll have to repeat the exercise with a 40G
drive. :-)

Best Regards,
Click to expand...

Triple check the master jumper setup for the Maxtor 30g.
That got me once
 
Doh! sorry bout that. Thanks for your response...it's Windows 98 SE.
Click to expand...

No problem, its easy to overlook a detail like that in the original post.
The boots I'm having problems with are:
new drive as the only drive and jumpered primary master
new drive as only drive, cable select, on master connector
new drive as master, old drive as slave (jumpered)
new drive as master, old drive as slave (cableselect)
Click to expand...
I have no reason to think the data didn't come over right...just can't
seem to figure out why the bootloader isn't finding the goodies. :-)
Click to expand...

It may just be that MaxBlast stuffed up the copying of the MBR or
something, usually because it got confused about what it should do.
It does attempt to decide when its appropriate to use a bios overlay for
support for drives over 32GB and may have got confused or something.

I'd just cut to the chase and clone it using ghost myself. But thats
easy for me to say given that I have it and Drive Image handy.

 
Rod Speed said:
It may just be that MaxBlast stuffed up the copying of the MBR or
something, usually because it got confused about what it should do.
It does attempt to decide when its appropriate to use a bios overlay for
support for drives over 32GB and may have got confused or something.
Click to expand...

I'm intrigued...and this does sound like the right sort of problem I'm
seeing.

Is there any way to fix the MBR? From my Linux dabblings, fdisk /mbr
or some such has a way of fixing things somehow, but I'm not sure if
there's something I can do on a dos floppy to do the same?

I may just give it another college try after grabbing a copy of Ghost
somewhere. Maybe it's more clueful about the cluess who try to go
down in hard drive size. :-)
 
)-()-( said:
Triple check the master jumper setup for the Maxtor 30g.
That got me once
Click to expand...

Will do. I've tried so many permutations including cable select on
both connectors and it still hates me. The drive does talk to the
floppy based disk utility PowerMax, so the machine evidently can talk
to it.

My leading theory now is that the MBR must be goofed.

I don't do much 16-bit windows stuff these days--what is the canonical
way of having Win98 rewrite its MBR? Do you boot to the install CD
or something?
 
Todd H. said:
Will do. I've tried so many permutations including cable select on
both connectors and it still hates me. The drive does talk to the
floppy based disk utility PowerMax, so the machine evidently can talk
to it.

My leading theory now is that the MBR must be goofed.

I don't do much 16-bit windows stuff these days--what is the canonical
way of having Win98 rewrite its MBR? Do you boot to the install CD
or something?
Click to expand...

I would try to re-boot with Maxblast in A:\ and
the 30g in master. I think Maxblast3 has a way to update the MBR.
It's been awhile.
 
I'm intrigued...and this does sound like
the right sort of problem I'm seeing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the symtoms fit.
Is there any way to fix the MBR?
Click to expand...

Yes, fdisk /mbr from an SE startup floppy will fix that if thats the problem.
From my Linux dabblings, fdisk /mbr or some such has a
way of fixing things somehow, but I'm not sure if there's
something I can do on a dos floppy to do the same?
yep.

I may just give it another college try after
grabbing a copy of Ghost somewhere.
Click to expand...

Yeah, its everywhere basically.
Maybe it's more clueful about the cluess
who try to go down in hard drive size. :-)
Click to expand...

Ghost will handle that fine as long as the original doesnt
have more data on it than will fit on the new one.

That may have just made a bug in MaxBlast visible or
something just because thats not done all that often.
 
Todd H. said:
Will do. I've tried so many permutations including cable select on
both connectors and it still hates me. The drive does talk to the
floppy based disk utility PowerMax, so the machine evidently can talk
to it.

My leading theory now is that the MBR must be goofed.
Click to expand...
I don't do much 16-bit windows stuff these days--what
is the canonical way of having Win98 rewrite its MBR?
Click to expand...

Just do it from a startup floppy.
Do you boot to the install CD or something?
Click to expand...

You can do it that way too. Just CD \win9x for fdisk itself.
 
Background: A 40G drive starting to give me errors but it still
functional, and I'm attempting (for better or worse) to replace it
with a 30G drive using Maxtor's Maxblast cloning software...which
works fine until I try to reboot to the cloned drive...at which point
it just hangs with a black screen after the BIOS windows. The drive
tests fine with floppy based diagnosistics.

Self flagellation: Yeah, the 30G drive was a mistake. :-)

Details:
I have a Compaq 7598 desktop whose original 40G Maxtor drive started
giving some errors and the feeling of impending doom. I (okay,
mistakenly!) purchased a 30G drive to replace it...but the 40G drive
was nowhere near full, so I was hopeful. :-) As with most Compaq's
the original drive had just 2 FAT32 partitions--a big one, and a
smaller system_sav partiion.

Using the MaxBlast software that came with the retail Maxtor 30G drive
I bought, I followed the procedures to replace the boot disk, and
copied all the files over. When both drives are in the machine, I can
browse the entire contents of each and it looks like everything came
over the to the 30G drive just fine with loads of space to spare.
File wise, and space used wise, they appear identical from Windows
save for volume labels.

Now, when I recable/jumper the drives to set the new 30G cloned drive
as primary master, and remove the old 40G drive from the
machine...booting stops after the BIOS screen. No errors, just blank
with the cursor sitting there blinking in the upper left corner.

The BIOS has detected the drive fine, and if I run PowerMax
diagnostics from a floppy, everything tests perfectly. But for
whatever reason, it just doesn't want to boot to win98.

Any ideas? The only notion I've got in my head that's intriguing is
that the 30Gb drive is less than 32G and the 40G is obviously more
than 32G...and that's a threshold at which some bios's need to do some
tricks with hard disks and boot records and such, but I'm not versed
enough in the specifics to reason any further. :-)

Any experience to impart? I'm beating my head on this. If I can't
make this 30G drive work, I'll have to repeat the exercise with a 40G
drive. :-)
Click to expand...

The simplest method to clone your Win98 is to use XXCOPY (free for personal use
from www.xxcopy.com). You need first to create a primary partition on the
target drive, make the partition active, and format it. Do it from floppy, with
the target driver connected as the only drive in the system (disconnect the 40
GB drive in the setup).

Reconnect the old drive when done with FDISK and FORMAT of the new drive, boot
Windows normally from the old one, shell to the DOS prompt and run XXCOPY C:\
D:\ /CLONE.

When done, change the clone drive position and jumper(s) to be first and Windows
should start normally.

Regards, Zvi
 
Rod Speed said:
Just do it from a startup floppy.
Click to expand...

Hrmm. Don't know if I have one...nor know if I know how to make one
in Win 9x. I've been an NT/2000 biggot for too long.
You can do it that way too. Just CD \win9x for fdisk itself.
Click to expand...

Ah ha! Groovy. I'll give that a whirl--many thanks, Rod.

Best Regards,
 
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