Cloning a hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lil' Abner
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Lil' Abner

I am trying to install a new bigger hard drive in an older Compaq
computer that I had upgraded from ME to XP about a year ago. The drive
has a "SYSTEM_SAV" partition of about 2.5 gigs. This partition shows up
in Windows Explorer as drive "D", unlike some restore partitions that are
invisible.
I cloned the drive with Acronis True Image which cloned both partitions.
The new drive yields the famous "NTDLR is missing" error.
Using the Windows XP CD in the Restore Console, I tried running FIXBOOT
and FIXMBR both. No change, the error remains. All three of the files
NTDLR, NDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI are present in the root directory. To be
sure they weren't corrupt, I replaced those.
BOOT.INI reads....

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

One article I read while Googling stated that boot.ini might be pointing
to partition(2) instead of partition(1) and to edit it to make sure it
was pointing to parition(1). Since it was already pointing to (1) I
tried editing it to 2 and even 0, none of which made any difference.

Both partitions are FAT32. The old drive is a Western Digital and the new
one is a Maxtor. I even tried clonging it to a spare Western Digital
drive I have here in the shop, and that one wouldn't boot either,

I have used the Acronis software on at least 100 drives already and up
till now it has never failed.

What am I missing here?

Thanks to anyone who can help.
 
Lil' Abner said:
I am trying to install a new bigger hard drive in an older Compaq
computer that I had upgraded from ME to XP about a year ago. The drive
has a "SYSTEM_SAV" partition of about 2.5 gigs. This partition shows up
in Windows Explorer as drive "D", unlike some restore partitions that are
invisible.
I cloned the drive with Acronis True Image which cloned both partitions.
The new drive yields the famous "NTDLR is missing" error.
Using the Windows XP CD in the Restore Console, I tried running FIXBOOT
and FIXMBR both. No change, the error remains. All three of the files
NTDLR, NDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI are present in the root directory. To be
sure they weren't corrupt, I replaced those.
BOOT.INI reads....

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

One article I read while Googling stated that boot.ini might be pointing
to partition(2) instead of partition(1) and to edit it to make sure it
was pointing to parition(1). Since it was already pointing to (1) I
tried editing it to 2 and even 0, none of which made any difference.

Both partitions are FAT32. The old drive is a Western Digital and the new
one is a Maxtor. I even tried clonging it to a spare Western Digital
drive I have here in the shop, and that one wouldn't boot either,

I have used the Acronis software on at least 100 drives already and up
till now it has never failed.

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...


Assuming that the boot files are in partition 1, is partition marked
"active"? The MBR passes control to the boot sector of the
"active" Primary partition where it expects to find ntldr.

*TimDaniels*
 
Lil' Abner said:
I am trying to install a new bigger hard drive in an older Compaq
computer that I had upgraded from ME to XP about a year ago. The
drive has a "SYSTEM_SAV" partition of about 2.5 gigs. This partition
shows up in Windows Explorer as drive "D", unlike some restore
partitions that are invisible.
I cloned the drive with Acronis True Image which cloned both
partitions. The new drive yields the famous "NTDLR is missing" error.
Using the Windows XP CD in the Restore Console, I tried running
FIXBOOT and FIXMBR both. No change, the error remains. All three of
the files NTDLR, NDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI are present in the root
directory. To be sure they weren't corrupt, I replaced those.
BOOT.INI reads....

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

One article I read while Googling stated that boot.ini might be
pointing to partition(2) instead of partition(1) and to edit it to
make sure it was pointing to parition(1). Since it was already
pointing to (1) I tried editing it to 2 and even 0, none of which
made any difference.

Both partitions are FAT32. The old drive is a Western Digital and the
new one is a Maxtor. I even tried clonging it to a spare Western
Digital drive I have here in the shop, and that one wouldn't boot
either,

I have used the Acronis software on at least 100 drives already and
up till now it has never failed.

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...


Assuming that the boot files are in partition 1, is partition
marked "active"? The MBR passes control to the boot sector of the
"active" Primary partition where it expects to find ntldr.
Click to expand...

Yes... it is the active partition.
 
I cloned the drive with Acronis True Image which cloned both partitions.
The new drive yields the famous "NTDLR is missing" error.
Click to expand...
Both partitions are FAT32.
What am I missing here?
Click to expand...

the NT flag inside MBR; start from XPsetUp CD & do the repair
installation; will fix that IMHO ...
 
the NT flag inside MBR; start from XPsetUp CD & do the repair
installation; will fix that IMHO ...
Click to expand...

Did the OP tell Acronis TI to delete the partition on the target? If
so, it would have cloned the new one from the source, in which case
all the flags should be the same.

As TI is going thru its paces, look on the log screen for step 2
(IIRC) and it should say something about copying the MBR.
 
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