Need help understanding clone of startup files XP Home

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Paul Soderman

I've made a few inquiries on this group recently and have gotten alot
of helpful suggestions but I'm still unable to successfully clone my
old drive to a new drive so as to have the newer drive boot up a Dell.
I appreciate very much the help I've received and am hoping that
perhaps a bit of explanation might get me over the hump on this
project.

I used Norton Ghost to create a copy of the C drive onto the newer,
larger drive. The drive has not been able to boot the machine even
though I've made the new drive "active" when Ghost did the clone. I
think that perhaps I may have failed to properly duplicate or clone all
of the startup files, if my suspicions are correct. From what I gather,
Dell uses a separate partition on the old drive to store the startup
files and if this is correct, I would not only have to clone what I
thought was the entire "C" drive, but also this smaller partition, in
order to have the new drive contain everything that was on the old one
and have the computer boot up.

Does this make sense? If I am on the right track, I would think that I
would have to partition the new drive into 2 partitions; a rather small
one for the startup stuff and the rest for the remainder of the "C"
drive. Assuming that this is correct and Ghost can simply clone each of
these two partitions, what should I use in order to create the 2
partitions on the new drive? Is there a function in either XP or Ghost
(or another part of Norton Systemworks) that should be used to create
the partitions, or should I look to one of the CDs that came with the
various hard drives (the one I'm hoping to switch to is a Maxtor) in
order to partition?

Much thanks for all of the patience and help!!
Paul
 
GHOST creates the partitions as part of the cloning process but ONLY if
you selected the Disk to Disk option or the Disk from Image. I'm
unaware of the history of your post so excuse me if I'm covering old
ground.

Have you removed the old drive before trying to boot the new drive?
Have you checked the jumper settings of the drive and the position of
the drive on the cable? (old skool I know but there are some fussy
motherboards out there).
Have you made sure the new drive has been detected correctly in the
BIOS?
How large is this new drive and can your motherboard support it?

Mr C.

Paul Soderman wrote on 06/05/2006 :
 
I can answer "Yes" to all of the questions!
When I used Ghost to create the clone of the "C" drive, I was unable to
select both the Dell utility/startup file partition to be created at
the same time as the "C" drive clone. Since Ghost points out that it
will erase all data on the drive being copied to when it creates the
clone, I was uncomfortable in attempting to create the C drive clone
first and then try to clone the Dell startup files partition later (or
even vice versa in order).

Right now, I'm in the process of cloning the drive again, this time
after creating a small partition to accomodate the 40M or so startup
file partition. I have cloned that small startup file partition to the
new drive and used the rest of the almost 60GB for the partition that
will be used for Ghost to clone the C drive. After this is done, I'll
again attempt to put the new drive in and to have the system boot from
it.
 
Paul Soderman laid this down on his screen :
You are cloning Disk to Disk right? You're not trying to clone the
drive partition at a time? Remember, even though the drive contains a
number of partitions it is still one physical drive. GHOST will
accommodate for cloning both partitions at once. What you and I know
has C: means nothing to GHOST. GHOST will see Hard Drive1\Partition1
and Hard Drive1\Partition2 in much the same way as taking a piece of A4
paper and putting a fold down it. 1 piece of paper yet it is now
divided into 2, yet if you want a photocopy you'll copy the whole page,
not a division at a time.

Mr C.
 
Well...I suppose that right now I *am* trying to clone the drive by
doing one partition at a time. The other times that I'd tried to do
this I did use Ghost to simply clone the disk-to-disk, but when I
installed it in the Dell and tried to
start up, I got the following message:
"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk
configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional
information."

When I got nowhere after playing with alternate jumper settings or
trying to have the computer recognize the "activated" hard drive in the
BIOS startup etc., I thought that perhaps I'd stumbled onto a solution
by possibly making 2 partitions....
 
Paul Soderman said:
Well...I suppose that right now I *am* trying to clone the drive by
doing one partition at a time. The other times that I'd tried to do
this I did use Ghost to simply clone the disk-to-disk, but when I
installed it in the Dell and tried to
start up, I got the following message:
"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk
configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional
information."

When I got nowhere after playing with alternate jumper settings or
trying to have the computer recognize the "activated" hard drive in the
BIOS startup etc., I thought that perhaps I'd stumbled onto a solution
by possibly making 2 partitions....
Click to expand...

I would have to go along with Mr C's take on the problem. In light of your
last comment that "windows could not start because of a computer disk
hardware configuration problem", I might suspect drive jumpering. There
really is no playing around with jumpers. You either have cable select or
master/slave, it's either correct or it's not. With cable select it matters
where you install the drive on the cable, with master/slave it does not.
Different drive manufacturers have different jumper schemes, WD drives are
unique in that they require a different jumper configuration based on there
being another drive on the cable. If it's not jumpered correctly it may not
boot. Of course I would suspect a jumper problem to show in the bios
display.
I've never seen a machine need the restore partition to boot. Windows boots
from a single drive and should not need something from some other disk drive
or partition.
All that said, I use Ghost 2003 all the time and boot from floppy (or a
bootable cd). I do exactly what you first attempted (clone the disk by
choosing disk to disk in ghost) and I do it about every 2 weeks and always
run off the copy. I did just recently run into a problem with an emachine
trying to clone the disk. After I completed the clone it wouldn't boot, got
to the windows xp screen and sat there forever. I them did an image of the
c partition to external usb and then restored the image and booted fine.
Why the clone wouldn't work is beyond me because I use the procedure all the
time.
Let us know how your latest attempt went.
 
A bit of Google research led me onto something. Someone with the exact
same problem you're experiencing now found a solution...

He bought a new hard drive and tried to GHOST his original drive to it,
got the same error you're getting. He found a way around it by
installing his original recovery CDs to the drive first then GHOSTing
over the whole drive with his original drive. It worked for him. Looks
like Dell put something on the drive outside of the reach of GHOST.
Seems long winded but I wouldn't recognise Dell any other way.

Good luck,

Mr C.

Paul Soderman formulated on Sunday :
 
Much thanks for the help; sorry for the belated response. I've put in a
new inquiry to the group as a result of this, asking the below
question.

I understand that in cloning an old drive to a new drive, using Norton
Ghost, it may be necessary to install XP on the new drive before the
Ghost clone is performed, using the original recovery or installation
CD. I've tried this, but so far have been unable to get the XP
installer to recognize the new drive, which I have in an external tray
via USB connection. The installer apparently looks only to the current
drive in the C drive and notes, correctly, that because of the SP2 I
have on it, XP would be installing an older version over the new.

I'd like to try the XP install on the new drive, via the USB hookup,
before giving Ghost another try. Hopefully, that will enable the
cloned, new drive to be able to boot up the system when it replaces the
old drive. Is there a way to have the XP CD installer "see" the
external, new drive (shown in "My Computer" as being the E drive) so as
to install the operating system there? Or would it be necessary instead
to yank the old drive, install the new one, and then do the install via
the XP installer on the CD before putting the old drive back in the
Dell to make the clone to the USB drive containing the new drive?

Thanks for any help!
Paul
 
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