Clone CF card... does not boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter g18c
  • Start date Start date
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g18c

Hi, i have a image on a compact flash card (it happens to be xp pro but
this imho isnt important to this post) which i would like to clone to
other drives.

Now i have my development machine, took the source compact flash card,
and 2 compact flash cards that i wanted to copy. I know the source card
boots and works fine.

I copied the source card to the two other compact flash cards, and one
works and the other does not. All 3 cards are the same manufacturer and
the same size (1GB), however none of the card geometories match... is
this the cause of my problem? Is the fact i am copying from my
development machine and not the target hardware the cause? I thought
all BIOSs would read the geometories from the disc as the disc defines
how big itself is, and surely that is fixed by the disc and all BIOSs
should report the same?

The clone part works, i can see it copied the data fine, it just doesnt
boot (well one of the two destination discs boots, the other one
doesn't)! This is very weird.

I am really stuck with this and have tried to learn about geometories
but i admit i am getting very confused. Any help much apperciated.

TIA

Chris
 
Hi, i have a image on a compact flash card (it happens to be xp pro but
this imho isnt important to this post) which i would like to clone to
other drives.

Now i have my development machine, took the source compact flash card,
and 2 compact flash cards that i wanted to copy. I know the source card
boots and works fine.

I copied the source card to the two other compact flash cards, and one
works and the other does not. All 3 cards are the same manufacturer and
the same size (1GB), however none of the card geometories match... is
this the cause of my problem? Is the fact i am copying from my
development machine and not the target hardware the cause? I thought
all BIOSs would read the geometories from the disc as the disc defines
how big itself is, and surely that is fixed by the disc and all BIOSs
should report the same?

The clone part works, i can see it copied the data fine, it just doesnt
boot (well one of the two destination discs boots, the other one
doesn't)! This is very weird.

I am really stuck with this and have tried to learn about geometories
but i admit i am getting very confused. Any help much apperciated.

TIA

Chris
Click to expand...
First Stupid Question That Must Be Asked: Are you sure the one that
doesn't boot is marked active?
Second stupid question: What's the actual message when it doesn't
Third stupid question: How are you actually doing the clone?
 
First Stupid Question That Must Be Asked: Are you sure the one that
doesn't boot is marked active?
Click to expand...

Yes, i used exactly the same method for both.
Second stupid question: What's the actual message when it doesn't
Click to expand...

After the BIOS POST i just get a flashing cursor, whereas the other
image boots after a second or so.
Third stupid question: How are you actually doing the clone?
Click to expand...

I am using an old version of norton ghost under DOS. Newer versions
dont let me clone an entire disk and only let me clone partitions...
maybe this is where i am going wrong? Should i prepare the disk or
format it somehow and simply copy the partition across? I am using
FAT16 partitions btw.

Thanks for the prompt reply :)
 
Further to my previous mail i have been able to clone the compact flash
using dd for windows.

Whereas the CHS were different on all 3 cards, they are now all the
same. I presume therefore the CHS settings are stored on a read/write
area of the card, they must be for me to overwritten them with the raw
block device write using dd.

I would really like to understand what is going on here, what is the
best (and multi card manufacturer) way of cloning disks? What happens
if i use a different card which has different geometories (but happens
to be the same size 1GB card as my image), would i end up breaking the
card as i would overwrite those geometories when writing the image with
dd?

Something must have got confused for the geometories to be displayed
and changed when i cloned with ghost. DD worked first time, much to my
relief.

Sorry for my lack of understanding!

Cheers,

Chris
 
I've never used either method of cloning, I've always either just
partitioned and copied the files, or used a cloning machine.
The cloning machine seems to *mostly* work OK so long as the disks are
of exactly the same type... but sometimes doesn't. It also seems to
occasionally completely destroy disks.
Mostly now we're using PXE boot and a script that re-partitions and
reformats the disk and then copies the files on from a network share. It
seems to work OK for any drive of roughly the same size we've tried it on.
 
Chris,

You may want to use G4U which I've had great success with cloning CF
cards with (both XP and CE). You can find it here:
http://fbim.fh-regensburg.de/~feyrer/g4u/

You will want to also download the rawr32.zip file they have there to
make the boot floppies.

I suspect that the problem is that you haven't run bootprep on the CF
cards. Prior to copying the files. See my other posts regarding
getting an Image onto a CF card:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...54d8a8607dd/7cf072c19ee37fe8#7cf072c19ee37fe8

Best of luck,

Dwayne
 
Hi, i have a image on a compact flash card (it happens to be xp pro but
this imho isnt important to this post) which i would like to clone to
other drives.

Now i have my development machine, took the source compact flash card,
and 2 compact flash cards that i wanted to copy. I know the source card
boots and works fine.

I copied the source card to the two other compact flash cards, and one
works and the other does not. All 3 cards are the same manufacturer and
the same size (1GB), however none of the card geometories match... is
this the cause of my problem? Is the fact i am copying from my
development machine and not the target hardware the cause? I thought
all BIOSs would read the geometories from the disc as the disc defines
how big itself is, and surely that is fixed by the disc and all BIOSs
should report the same?

The clone part works, i can see it copied the data fine, it just doesnt
boot (well one of the two destination discs boots, the other one
doesn't)! This is very weird.

I am really stuck with this and have tried to learn about geometories
but i admit i am getting very confused. Any help much apperciated.

TIA

Chris
Click to expand...

After trying all the other methods with hit or miss, and not wanting to do
the PXE deal, I ended up getting an old 486 machine, put Linuix on it, and
wrote a script that ran DD. By the way, DD under Linux is much faster than
DD under Windows.

256 meg CF are copy sector by sector in about 6 minutes or so. A Perfect
copy every time.

Good luck, and let us know if you find something better.

Richard
 
Hi,

I have a similar problem, but my problem is caused by cloning 1GB CF image onto a 2GB CF.

The new CF would boot to the section where it says: "PCI deving listing...", and stuck at the like where it shows ACPI controller with the cursor continue to blink.

Does anyone have experience with this issue?

Thanks,
Edward
 
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