New HDD wont boot.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Jason
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Peter Jason

Windows7 SP1

A Windows warning appeared saying that my System
HHD was about to fail.

I attempted a Ghost backup & that failed.

Using Ghost15 I did a "Copy My Hard Drive" to a
new HHD and I did this, and it appears in "Disk
Management" & Windows Explorer as "H". The
content of the faulty HDD has appeared on the new
one.

However the new drive lacks a "System Reserved"
part in "Disk Management".

I disconnected the old faulty HDD and tried to
boot up with the new one (after telling the BIOS
this was the primary one) but I get an error ...
"bootmgr missing" and also "The Partition Table
does not have a valid System Partition".

How does one acquire this "System Reserved"
section, and how can I boot it up?

I tried the "Windows Repair" with no luck at all.

Peter
 
Peter said:
Windows7 SP1

A Windows warning appeared saying that my System
HHD was about to fail.

I attempted a Ghost backup & that failed.

Using Ghost15 I did a "Copy My Hard Drive" to a
new HHD and I did this, and it appears in "Disk
Management" & Windows Explorer as "H". The
content of the faulty HDD has appeared on the new
one.

However the new drive lacks a "System Reserved"
part in "Disk Management".

I disconnected the old faulty HDD and tried to
boot up with the new one (after telling the BIOS
this was the primary one) but I get an error ...
"bootmgr missing" and also "The Partition Table
does not have a valid System Partition".

How does one acquire this "System Reserved"
section, and how can I boot it up?

I tried the "Windows Repair" with no luck at all.

Peter
Click to expand...

SYSTEM RESERVED doesn't normally have a drive letter.
That could be the reason it didn't get copied. Or, it
was damaged enough that it could not be copied.

While booted into the bad disk, try going to Disk Management
and assigning a drive letter to SYSTEM RESERVED. You don't
want to leave it that way, but perhaps that way, your
Ghost will get it. Just a guess. You want to remove
the drive letter later (on the clone), so that no
volume shadow service operations, start filling up
the SYSTEM RESERVED partition (it's only 100MB or so,
and not sized for any temporary copies of anything).
For example, System Restore should not be running on
SYSTEM RESERVED, and I suspect the missing drive letter
is part of that (makes the partition invisible).

I'd probably use "dd" or "ddrescue" to copy the drive.
But that would be my approach. (listed near the bottom)
I would use my Ubuntu LiveCD, boot into it, and use
the Synaptic Package Manager, to get a recent ddrescue
to temporarily install in the live environment, then
do the disk to disk copy there. That will get everything,
because a "dd" approach, doesn't know or care about
file systems. It just copies.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

To copy that way, the destination disk should be same
size or larger, than the source.

There are a million ways to make the copy. And it's all
what you're used to, that affects the choice.

Paul
 
Ditto on ddrescue, although there are two versions. I use the ddrescue,
but there is also dd_rescue. Dd by itself might have issues with the bad
sectors.

Also, there are CDs you can use to boot the older non-UEFI systems. It
doesn't fix your MBR, but you can boot into the OS of your choice and do
work. The last time I used one was on wink2pro, so I'm out of the loop.
Perhaps this is useful:
 
SYSTEM RESERVED doesn't normally have a drive letter.
That could be the reason it didn't get copied. Or, it
was damaged enough that it could not be copied.

While booted into the bad disk, try going to Disk Management
and assigning a drive letter to SYSTEM RESERVED. You don't
want to leave it that way, but perhaps that way, your
Ghost will get it. Just a guess. You want to remove
the drive letter later (on the clone), so that no
volume shadow service operations, start filling up
the SYSTEM RESERVED partition (it's only 100MB or so,
and not sized for any temporary copies of anything).
For example, System Restore should not be running on
SYSTEM RESERVED, and I suspect the missing drive letter
is part of that (makes the partition invisible).

I'd probably use "dd" or "ddrescue" to copy the drive.
But that would be my approach. (listed near the bottom)
I would use my Ubuntu LiveCD, boot into it, and use
the Synaptic Package Manager, to get a recent ddrescue
to temporarily install in the live environment, then
do the disk to disk copy there. That will get everything,
because a "dd" approach, doesn't know or care about
file systems. It just copies.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

To copy that way, the destination disk should be same
size or larger, than the source.

There are a million ways to make the copy. And it's all
what you're used to, that affects the choice.

Paul
Click to expand...

Thanks, I managed to get a backup with Ghost15,
and with that I used the "Copy Recovery Point" to
transfer the backup of the damaged disk ("C:) to
create a new one ("I:").

I shut down, unplugged the damaged C: drive,
changed the boot priority to the new one and
attempted a startup. But still I get the
"BOOTMGR missing" error message.

Should I rename the "I:" disk to "C:"? Does this
make a difference?

I tried the Windows rescue disk but this didn't
work.

Peter
 
Thanks, I managed to get a backup with Ghost15,
and with that I used the "Copy Recovery Point" to
transfer the backup of the damaged disk ("C:) to
create a new one ("I:").

I shut down, unplugged the damaged C: drive,
changed the boot priority to the new one and
attempted a startup. But still I get the
"BOOTMGR missing" error message.

Should I rename the "I:" disk to "C:"? Does this
make a difference?

I tried the Windows rescue disk but this didn't
work.

Peter
Click to expand...

PS. Here's a dump of the "Disk Management"
screen.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/267/cm1v.jpg/

Is there something wrong here?

The last (disk 5) is the new one with the two
letters "H" and "I". This one appears in
Windows Explorer as "Local Disk I".

The old system disk now reporting imminent failure
is "Disk 3", called "Local Disk c" in Windows
Explorer.
 
Peter said:
PS. Here's a dump of the "Disk Management"
screen.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/267/cm1v.jpg/

Is there something wrong here?

The last (disk 5) is the new one with the two
letters "H" and "I". This one appears in
Windows Explorer as "Local Disk I".

The old system disk now reporting imminent failure
is "Disk 3", called "Local Disk c" in Windows
Explorer.
Click to expand...

I think all you have to do, is move the boot flag over to
the SYSTEM RESERVED partition. And before something happens to
it, remove the drive letter from it. Removing the drive letter,
I'm hoping what that does, is prevent System Restore from
doing anything to SYSTEM RESERVED. That's not a priority
right now, though. You can do that later, when you're booted
into the new disk.

To move the boot flag, you can use "diskpart" and use
the "active" command, while "selecting" the SYSTEM RESERVED
partition. Typically, they use an asterisk in some of these
kinds of utilities, to indicate the active partition (boot flag).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Alternately, you can run PTEDIT32 (right click the .exe, and
Run As Administrator to gain hardware access).

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

In this example of PTEDIT32 dialog box, the second partition
has the boot flag active (equals 80). While it is physically
possible to type the value "80" into every one of the primary
partition table entries, the BIOS isn't going to find that
particularly useful. You enter "00" in all the partitions,
except the active one. The active one should be SYSTEM RESERVED,
because as far as I know, that's what does the booting (initially).

http://www.vistax64.com/attachments...n-partiton-recovery-dell-xps-420-dell-tbl.gif

If you use PTEDIT32 and examine Disk3 with it, you should see the
boot flag attached to the SYSTEM RESERVED partition. And you'll
want to match the pattern on the new disk.

Note that, occasionally, a partition management utility, will
put the partition entries in the wrong order. Normally, they're
in spatial order. You can check the "Sectors before" of each
partition, to see if they're in order or not. When doing things
later, if your partition table is not in spatial order, things
can get very confusing (because then, you have to be careful
how you're referring to the partition). When they're in spatial order,
all the references tend to be in order.

Any time you swap around partition entries in PTEDIT32, you
have to be sure no OS refers to itself via partition table
entry number. If that is the case (such as boot.ini in WinXP),
you have to correct the file entry describing the path, before
that OS can boot again. So for your first trip into PTEDIT32,
just put the "80" on the SYSTEM RESERVED, "00" for the
other boot flags, save and get out :-)

*******

Now, the other little detail.

When the new disks boots, keep the old disk which is identical to
it disconnected, for the first boot of the new disk. That's to
prevent confusion. Once you've booted the new disk at least once,
you can shut down, and reconnect the old disk again. Failure to
do so, could result in partition drive lettering problems, or
cause the pagefile to end up on the wrong partition.

Paul
 
The MBR should be repairable, but you need a guru, which you don't seem
to be finding here unfortunately.

Parted Magic has a program to install a MBR
http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=programs
Click to expand...

I'm resizing partitions at the moment on my notebook. Thus far I haven't
ruining anything. But I fully expect to have MBR issues. It comes with
the territory. You are probably better off going to the Parted Magic
forums.

The problem is the average person doesn't deal with boot managers, MBRs,
etc on a daily basis. Whatever skills you have get rusty. It is best to
get help from a forum that deals with such issues.

Needless to say I ghosted the notebook drive. Partitioning is playing
with fire.

I assume it is my lack of understand computer nitty gritty, but I never
understood why the MBR has to reside on a disk. It seems you could put a
bit of flash on the mobo for booting. That way it won't be an issue as
you move partitions around.
 
FWIW I just fixed the boot loader on my dual boot system. On the Parted
Magic CD under "extras", there is Super Grub 2. It can find an OS and
boot it. Just to be clear here, you don't boot into Parted Magic. Rather
"extras" is a choice on the Parted Magic CD boot menu.

Now in my case since I have a dual boot system, I just booted into
opensuse using supergrub2 on the CD and used the boot editor in yast2
(opensuse control panel for those that don't know suse). It has an
automatic mode that can at least fix linux booting. The remaining OS
need to be added to the boot menu manually.

But at the very least, the OP can use supergrub 2 to run windows until
the boot manager problem is fixed. Or just install grub2 using
supergrub2 on the CD.

While messing with boot managers is incredibly frustrating, I don't
believe you can harm the computer. Basically if you don't set up the
boot manager correctly, nothing happens, i.e. the PC doesn't boot.
 
miso said:
The MBR should be repairable, but you need a guru, which you don't seem
to be finding here unfortunately.
Click to expand...

I'm just going by the disk management screen, which tells me the
boot flag is in the wrong place at the moment. Does it account
for the symptoms ? Don't know. Do both volumes have a valid
VBR and boot files ? Don't know.

*******

There is a flowchart here if he wants it.

http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b15/fix-bootmgr-is-missing.php

There is an MBR here. This is for Vista, but the others (7,8) should
be similar. So the message must be coming from the volume boot stuff
(from whatever partition that is).

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/mbr.html

Invalid partition
Error loading operating system
Missing operating system

More sage advice here.

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/cloning.html

And plenty of examples of total meltdowns too.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Othe...5-and-Windows-7-Problems-OSLoader/td-p/769002

Maybe the problem is doing this with Ghost 15 in the first place ?

Paul
 
Peter said:
PS. Here's a dump of the "Disk Management"
screen.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/267/cm1v.jpg/

Is there something wrong here?

The last (disk 5) is the new one with the two
letters "H" and "I". This one appears in
Windows Explorer as "Local Disk I".

The old system disk now reporting imminent failure
is "Disk 3", called "Local Disk c" in Windows
Explorer.
Click to expand...

Why don't you reinstall windows on the new drive to make
sure it works. Then copy your files from the old drive to it.
 
Did you try Parted Magic supergrub?

I always copy with ghost for linux. I had some issue with clonezilla
years ago. Too long ago to remember, but ghost for linux always works.
It might have been a raid related issue.

Parted Magic added the "grub doctor", which is a bit less cryptic of a
grub repair than supergrub, but you do have to be using grub2 in the
first place.

I never tried this, but I bet the live DVD of opensuse would allow you
to use the bootloader editor used by yast. A lot of people use live
linux distributions to repair drive issues since most have the basic
drive tools on them. Certainly gparted.
 
I'm just going by the disk management screen, which tells me the
boot flag is in the wrong place at the moment. Does it account
for the symptoms ? Don't know. Do both volumes have a valid
VBR and boot files ? Don't know.

*******

There is a flowchart here if he wants it.

http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/b15/fix-bootmgr-is-missing.php

There is an MBR here. This is for Vista, but the others (7,8) should
be similar. So the message must be coming from the volume boot stuff
(from whatever partition that is).

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/mbr.html

Invalid partition
Error loading operating system
Missing operating system

More sage advice here.

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/cloning.html

And plenty of examples of total meltdowns too.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Othe...5-and-Windows-7-Problems-OSLoader/td-p/769002

Maybe the problem is doing this with Ghost 15 in the first place ?

Paul
Click to expand...

Confusion reigns. I am doing a system disk image
from Win7 on to some spare space on another HDD in
the computer. Since Windows warns of an imminent
disk failure and has a system backup program, does
it have the cloning ability to simply transfer the
whole failing disk, including boot details, from
the backup image to a new replacement HDD? I
cannot find this anywhere.
 
Peter said:
Confusion reigns. I am doing a system disk image
from Win7 on to some spare space on another HDD in
the computer. Since Windows warns of an imminent
disk failure and has a system backup program, does
it have the cloning ability to simply transfer the
whole failing disk, including boot details, from
the backup image to a new replacement HDD? I
cannot find this anywhere.
Click to expand...

Windows is equipped with a backup and restore capability.

Bad_disk -----> VHD backup -----> Backup drive
|
New_disk <----- VHD restore ---------+

But based on what the one link was claiming, that the
BCD disk signatures being the same is a problem, I doubt
such a system will tolerate both the Bad_disk and New_disk
being plugged into the computer at the same time.

Backup is different than cloning.

Bad_disk -----> Clone -----> New_disk

For that to work, the signature in the BCD should be different,
if the software was doing a good job. There are so many different
"signatures", I can't keep track of all of them.

So even a dd or dd_rescue recipe, would need to do a
bit of repair console work, to fix up the signature.

Just keep in mind, that some web sites refer to the
first diagram as "cloning", when it's really backup
and restore. The second diagram, the software should be
"aware" it is cloning, and take care of any disk ID or
signature issues.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-and-reliable-cloning-tools/1507

Have you done a bad block scan of the original disk ?
Are there bad areas ? You can use HDTune, as it has
a scanner, and uses colored blocks to indicate areas
with a problem. There will be many other ways to do that.
If the disk doesn't show any bad blocks, then I wouldn't
have a concern about the cloning tool used. Where things
get tricky, is if the cloning tool also has to support
data recovery (or, stepping over bad sectors). They mention
Clonezilla is sector based, but I don't know if that
is true or not. In any case, Ghost is not in that list.

Paul
 
Windows is equipped with a backup and restore capability.

Bad_disk -----> VHD backup -----> Backup drive
|
New_disk <----- VHD restore ---------+

But based on what the one link was claiming, that the
BCD disk signatures being the same is a problem, I doubt
such a system will tolerate both the Bad_disk and New_disk
being plugged into the computer at the same time.

Backup is different than cloning.

Bad_disk -----> Clone -----> New_disk

For that to work, the signature in the BCD should be different,
if the software was doing a good job. There are so many different
"signatures", I can't keep track of all of them.

So even a dd or dd_rescue recipe, would need to do a
bit of repair console work, to fix up the signature.

Just keep in mind, that some web sites refer to the
first diagram as "cloning", when it's really backup
and restore. The second diagram, the software should be
"aware" it is cloning, and take care of any disk ID or
signature issues.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-and-reliable-cloning-tools/1507

Have you done a bad block scan of the original disk ?
Are there bad areas ? You can use HDTune, as it has
a scanner, and uses colored blocks to indicate areas
with a problem. There will be many other ways to do that.
If the disk doesn't show any bad blocks, then I wouldn't
have a concern about the cloning tool used. Where things
get tricky, is if the cloning tool also has to support
data recovery (or, stepping over bad sectors). They mention
Clonezilla is sector based, but I don't know if that
is true or not. In any case, Ghost is not in that list.

Paul
Click to expand...

Many thanks for the help. I succeeded by
downloading Acronis "TrueImage2013" and starting
all over. The Acronis worked well and handled
all the BIOS and even renamed the new HDD C:/. It
took about 1hr to do the job.

The 2-year old failing disk has been disconnected
and awaits destruction. Would an investment in a
new SSD save me all this angst in future?

Peter
 
Peter said:
Many thanks for the help. I succeeded by
downloading Acronis "TrueImage2013" and starting
all over. The Acronis worked well and handled
all the BIOS and even renamed the new HDD C:/. It
took about 1hr to do the job.

The 2-year old failing disk has been disconnected
and awaits destruction. Would an investment in a
new SSD save me all this angst in future?

Peter
Click to expand...

All storage devices are fallible.

And backups are your friend.

You buy an SSD if you need speed.
You buy a hard drive (4TB) if you need capacity.

Paul
 
I'm of the opinion that these disk "repair" programs need to be done via
'live" media, be it usb thumb drive, CD, or DVD. Using a drive that is
questionable to heal itself doesn't sound like plan.

What is nice about the various ddrescue programs is they are blind to
the OS, as it should be. You are just copying sectors on a drive.
 
I'm of the opinion that these disk "repair" programs need to be done via
'live" media, be it usb thumb drive, CD, or DVD. Using a drive that is
questionable to heal itself doesn't sound like plan.

What is nice about the various ddrescue programs is they are blind to
the OS, as it should be. You are just copying sectors on a drive.
Click to expand...

I don't have the wits to delve too deeply into all
the theory. Since I do this sort of thing very
rarely (the previous in 2008) all I need is
something to clone to a new disk but also handle
the "System Reserved" and the BIOS.
 
I don't have the wits to delve too deeply into all
the theory. Since I do this sort of thing very
rarely (the previous in 2008) all I need is
something to clone to a new disk but also handle
the "System Reserved" and the BIOS.
Click to expand...

For future reference, several different HDD manufacturers offer free
programs to do an automatic clone of an old/failing/undersized drive to a
new one. The only limitation is that one of the drives involved need be
from that particular manufacturer. All of those I've looked at and recall
seem to be a stripped-down version of Acronis. Every one that I've tried
has worked perfectly with little to no attention or input and made a
byte-perfect sector copy of the entire drive and didn't need any knowledge
of special partitions or operating system.
 
For future reference, several different HDD manufacturers offer free
programs to do an automatic clone of an old/failing/undersized drive to a
new one. The only limitation is that one of the drives involved need be
from that particular manufacturer. All of those I've looked at and recall
seem to be a stripped-down version of Acronis. Every one that I've tried
has worked perfectly with little to no attention or input and made a
byte-perfect sector copy of the entire drive and didn't need any knowledge
of special partitions or operating system.
Click to expand...

My Seagate did have that program, but it refused
to work and hung up when I told it the
"destination disk". So did the Acronis on the
first try but it worked on its "manual" setting.
The rest is mystery.
 
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