Replace Boot Drive - How To?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave H
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D

Dave H

Background - Dell PC came with OEM XP installed on Maxtor 40GB.
It's a 1.7 P4 so the machine is several years old. Routine winupdates
to current SP2 config. Second 80G Maxtor installed as data disk,
drive D on same primary ide. Two DVD.CD drives on secondary ide.

Problem - Started getting these 'Dell' warnings at boot that the
primary drive was 'going out-of-tolerance' or words to that effect.
I read this as 'time to replace the drive'.

My failed solution - Temporarily installed new 80G WD replacing
existing drive D with the intent of "Norton Ghost"ing the drive C
image(=clone, not backup) to the new drive, swapping it with current
boot drive C, and re-installing the original drive D. This I did and
problem is simple - no boot. Nothing, PC just hangs with black
screen and unmovable/unresponsive carot, ">".

Help please - This should be a simple, routine issue yet I find
nothing in a myriad of web searches. The process I used has been
successful on multiple Win98/ME drive replacements on other machines.
Can anyone link me up with a procedure proven for XP?


Errata - Should I dump the Ghost approach and use Maxtor or WD or
other posted drive utility?
Could I have nothing more than an authentication issie and if so, what
next?
Drive letter issue? - Ghost insists on reboot to windows after clone,
boot ok on same 'failing hard drive but cloned drive showes up as an
unformatted drive N.. Boot sequence in setup utility is limited to
Drve C, floppy or CD; no choice for D, N or other.
Any other SW recommendatiuons? I've got three other XP machines
running and sooner or later, same problem will occur. I'm more than
willing to spend a few bucks on a 'working' solution.

Any help is apreciated. Aplologies if there is a more appropriate NG
for this question and if so, what?
 
I have Dell 4400 XP Home so probably similar to what you have. Will "DEL"
immediately after power on put you in the setup? If it does check everything
out and you may see where the problem is.

The program I have used for years to tighten the tolerance is Gibson
Research SpinWrite. If you are not familiar with this, it's at
http://www.grc.com/default.htm. It's the only program I now of that does
this.

Frank
 
Dave H said:
Background - Dell PC came with OEM XP installed on Maxtor 40GB.
It's a 1.7 P4 so the machine is several years old. Routine winupdates
to current SP2 config. Second 80G Maxtor installed as data disk,
drive D on same primary ide. Two DVD.CD drives on secondary ide.

Problem - Started getting these 'Dell' warnings at boot that the
primary drive was 'going out-of-tolerance' or words to that effect.
I read this as 'time to replace the drive'.

My failed solution - Temporarily installed new 80G WD replacing
existing drive D with the intent of "Norton Ghost"ing the drive C
image(=clone, not backup) to the new drive, swapping it with current
boot drive C, and re-installing the original drive D. This I did and
problem is simple - no boot. Nothing, PC just hangs with black
screen and unmovable/unresponsive carot, ">".

Help please - This should be a simple, routine issue yet I find
nothing in a myriad of web searches. The process I used has been
successful on multiple Win98/ME drive replacements on other machines.
Can anyone link me up with a procedure proven for XP?


Errata - Should I dump the Ghost approach and use Maxtor or WD or
other posted drive utility?
Could I have nothing more than an authentication issie and if so, what
next?
Drive letter issue? - Ghost insists on reboot to windows after clone,
boot ok on same 'failing hard drive but cloned drive showes up as an
unformatted drive N.. Boot sequence in setup utility is limited to
Drve C, floppy or CD; no choice for D, N or other.
Any other SW recommendatiuons? I've got three other XP machines
running and sooner or later, same problem will occur. I'm more than
willing to spend a few bucks on a 'working' solution.

Any help is apreciated. Aplologies if there is a more appropriate NG
for this question and if so, what?
Click to expand...


Dave:
Your (apparently) failing original boot drive is still functional, yes? It
boots to a Desktop with no problems, yes? No error messages of any kind
other than the Dell one about the drive "going out of tolerance" or some
such, right? And you're certain that message refers to the HD, right?

So you don't think that there's any system files corruption on your source
disk, yes? You're pretty sure you didn't "clone garbage" to your 80 GB
drive, yes?

We'll assume you correctly performed the cloning process with Ghost. And
after that destination disk failed to boot, you did try another clone to
that drive, right? Just to make sure the original clone didn't originally
"take". But with the same results, yes?

This is important. Again assuming that both drives are non-defective in the
sense that the contents of the source disk are non-defective and contains a
bootable XP OS, and the destination drive is non-defective -- and that you
correctly performed the cloning process...

Did you disconnect the source disk after the cloning process and BEFORE
making the INITIAL boot of the destination disk WITHOUT the source disk
connected? If both drives were connected following the cloning process when
you make that INITIAL boot with the cloned drive (REGARDLESS of whether you
could boot to that latter drive by changing the boot order in the BIOS),
then repeat the cloning process along the lines I'm recommending.
Anna
 
thanx for the reply.
Neither DEL, ESC, F1-F12 or CNTL anything seemd to get me back into
BIOS or anywhere else. I get none of the little DOS-like messages to
hold down this key or that key or anything. Just right to a blank
screen as I described. Maybe its that silly EZBios that installed
with my original Maxtor data drive D insertion, maybe not.
re: Spinrite. I haven't used it for a long time. I recall it was a
hard disk 'calibrator' and/or data recovery tool. I should have added
a curious errata, after pulling drives in and out a few times, the PC
boots without that 'going out of toilerance' warnig. Go figure:). My
base problem is that sooner or later (sooner on the particular PC in
question), I will need a working procedure for replacing the HD upon
which WinXP resides.
thanx again
 
Dave:
Your (apparently) failing original boot drive is still functional, yes? It
boots to a Desktop with no problems, yes? No error messages of any kind
other than the Dell one about the drive "going out of tolerance" or some
such, right? And you're certain that message refers to the HD, right?

So you don't think that there's any system files corruption on your source
disk, yes? You're pretty sure you didn't "clone garbage" to your 80 GB
drive, yes?

We'll assume you correctly performed the cloning process with Ghost. And
after that destination disk failed to boot, you did try another clone to
that drive, right? Just to make sure the original clone didn't originally
"take". But with the same results, yes?

This is important. Again assuming that both drives are non-defective in the
sense that the contents of the source disk are non-defective and contains a
bootable XP OS, and the destination drive is non-defective -- and that you
correctly performed the cloning process...

Did you disconnect the source disk after the cloning process and BEFORE
making the INITIAL boot of the destination disk WITHOUT the source disk
connected? If both drives were connected following the cloning process when
you make that INITIAL boot with the cloned drive (REGARDLESS of whether you
could boot to that latter drive by changing the boot order in the BIOS),
then repeat the cloning process along the lines I'm recommending.
Anna
Click to expand...
thanx for all the info. To your questions:
1 - My original boot drive is still functional (without the silly Dell
warnings now btw - which I attribute (right or wrong) to pulling the
drive in and out a few times. It boots fine to desktop. The former
messages always referred to a "drive 0" which seems to correspond with
the boot drive defintion in the WinXP disk management console.
2 - I dont see any evidence of corruption as every proggie I tried
seems to work ok. Examining the clone-to drive, it certainly seems
like garbage. Unformatted garbage at that. I did clone twice with
the same no-result (no boot upon physical swap on IDE bus). Assuming
that I correctly performed the clone is somewhat of a leap of faith
but I have been successful with Ghost's cookbook b4, but this is my
first try on XP and on this PC. The WD clone-to drive was brand new
and I had pre-formatted it prior running Ghost to insure that Ghost
would reciognize that there was a drive available. No error messages
on the format.
3 - No, I could not do a physical swap (eliminating the original boot
drive from the PC) b4 reboot. Ghost has no option (that I can find)
to just finish the clone and shut down the pc, or die in DOS or
anthing else besides automatically rebooting to Windows after
completion. Also, I cant change the HD boot order. My bios limits me
to drive C, floppy, or CD-ROM. No choice as to HD selection. There is
no drive D option even in my current and original config.

Another errata that I found on Maxtor's site, of relevence perhaps?
The initial drive C actual shows two partitions, one tiny one with no
drive letter assigned and the bulk labeled drive C. According to
Maxtor, Dell sticks the boot.ini file in there and they indicate that
a copy of the that file must be manually moved to its original
location following restoration via (what I assume is their) Retrospect
restoration procedure prior to boot with clone. Then again, they are
not cloning to a new HD, just restoring to the current HD.
Whatever, if I cloned only drive C then I didn't get that little
partition in my clone. I still see no way to apply this procedure
with Ghost because of the boot-to-windows-at-completion. Hence, my
inquiry for non-Ghost options.

thanx again, I'm still begging for more help.
 
Dave:
See my inline comments to your last post...


Dave H said:
thanx for all the info. To your questions:
1 - My original boot drive is still functional (without the silly Dell
warnings now btw - which I attribute (right or wrong) to pulling the
drive in and out a few times. It boots fine to desktop. The former
messages always referred to a "drive 0" which seems to correspond with
the boot drive defintion in the WinXP disk management console.
Click to expand...
OK. We'll assume your bootable source disk functional and non-defective.
2 - I dont see any evidence of corruption as every proggie I tried
seems to work ok. Examining the clone-to drive, it certainly seems
like garbage. Unformatted garbage at that. I did clone twice with
the same no-result (no boot upon physical swap on IDE bus). Assuming
that I correctly performed the clone is somewhat of a leap of faith
but I have been successful with Ghost's cookbook b4, but this is my
first try on XP and on this PC. The WD clone-to drive was brand new
and I had pre-formatted it prior running Ghost to insure that Ghost
would reciognize that there was a drive available. No error messages
on the format.
Click to expand...
What is this "WD clone-to drive" you're speaking of? Is this some sort of
reference to a Western Digital program you used? The WD disk copying
program?
You need not "pre-format" a destination disk prior to the cloning operation.
A clone is a clone is a clone.
3 - No, I could not do a physical swap (eliminating the original boot
drive from the PC) b4 reboot. Ghost has no option (that I can find)
to just finish the clone and shut down the pc, or die in DOS or
anthing else besides automatically rebooting to Windows after
completion. Also, I cant change the HD boot order. My bios limits me
to drive C, floppy, or CD-ROM. No choice as to HD selection. There is
no drive D option even in my current and original config.
Click to expand...
As I previously explained -- after you use a disk imaging program such as
Symantec's Norton Ghost to clone the contents of a bootable drive to another
drive, it's important (and even, in most cases, critical) to DISCONNECT the
source disk and THEN make that INITIAL BOOT with the cloned drive. You must
NOT make this initial boot with the source drive connected at this point.
No, there is no "option" in Ghost to automatically "shut down the pc". This
is YOUR option. IMMEDIATELY AFTER the cloning process YOU shut down your
machine. Then you proceed as I have explained.
Another errata that I found on Maxtor's site, of relevence perhaps?
The initial drive C actual shows two partitions, one tiny one with no
drive letter assigned and the bulk labeled drive C. According to
Maxtor, Dell sticks the boot.ini file in there and they indicate that
a copy of the that file must be manually moved to its original
location following restoration via (what I assume is their) Retrospect
restoration procedure prior to boot with clone. Then again, they are
not cloning to a new HD, just restoring to the current HD.
Whatever, if I cloned only drive C then I didn't get that little
partition in my clone. I still see no way to apply this procedure
with Ghost because of the boot-to-windows-at-completion. Hence, my
inquiry for non-Ghost options.

thanx again, I'm still begging for more help.
Click to expand...
I see in a later posting by you that you had previously installed that
"silly EZBios ... with my original Maxtor data drive D". I assume that's the
"little partition" you mention that was missing from your cloned drive.
Count your blessings. The last thing you need on a hard drive is the EZBIOS
"little partition". As long as you didn't install that "silly EZBios"
program on your source disk that shouldn't pose any problem here. But it
might. At least I hope it didn't. Those "drive overlay" type of programs are
a curse (there's no other word to describe them!). They cause all sorts of
mischief because of their proprietary non-standard protocols that they
impose on the drives they're installed on. They should *never* be used,
especially so in an XP environment. Hopefully the cloning process will
"obliterate" that overlay, but not necessarily so. It probably wouldn't hurt
to "zero-out" that drive, i.e., the recipient of the clone, using a program
like wipe.com or zap.com (see http://www.tburke.net/info/utils/) prior to
the cloning process.

I use Ghost 2003 to clone my hard drives. I use either the Ghost bootable
floppy disk or bootable CD to do perform the cloning process. I'm not
particularly fond of the Ghost 9 program (haven't as yet worked with Ghost
10). Ghost 2003 is a solid performer. It does its job and does it simply &
effectively. Provided, that is, that the source & destination disks are
non-defective & free of corruption and that they are properly
connected/configured and that the user correctly employs the program.
Anna
 
Dave H said:
Background - Dell PC came with OEM XP installed on Maxtor 40GB.
It's a 1.7 P4 so the machine is several years old. Routine winupdates
to current SP2 config. Second 80G Maxtor installed as data disk,
drive D on same primary ide. Two DVD.CD drives on secondary ide.

Problem - Started getting these 'Dell' warnings at boot that the
primary drive was 'going out-of-tolerance' or words to that effect.
I read this as 'time to replace the drive'.

My failed solution - Temporarily installed new 80G WD replacing
existing drive D with the intent of "Norton Ghost"ing the drive C
image(=clone, not backup) to the new drive, swapping it with current
boot drive C, and re-installing the original drive D. This I did and
problem is simple - no boot. Nothing, PC just hangs with black
screen and unmovable/unresponsive carot, ">".

Help please - This should be a simple, routine issue yet I find
nothing in a myriad of web searches. The process I used has been
successful on multiple Win98/ME drive replacements on other machines.
Can anyone link me up with a procedure proven for XP?


Errata - Should I dump the Ghost approach and use Maxtor or WD or
other posted drive utility?
Could I have nothing more than an authentication issie and if so, what
next?
Drive letter issue? - Ghost insists on reboot to windows after clone,
boot ok on same 'failing hard drive but cloned drive showes up as an
unformatted drive N.. Boot sequence in setup utility is limited to
Drve C, floppy or CD; no choice for D, N or other.
Any other SW recommendatiuons? I've got three other XP machines
running and sooner or later, same problem will occur. I'm more than
willing to spend a few bucks on a 'working' solution.

Any help is apreciated. Aplologies if there is a more appropriate NG
for this question and if so, what?
Click to expand...

Comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage is another good NG for this
kind of stuff.

If you were using Ghost 9.0, you may have forgotten to tell it to
1) copy the MBR from the old HD to the new HD, and
2) mark the partition "active" on the new HD where the load files will be
(i.e. in your case, where *both* the load files AND the OS will be).
Both 1) and 2) are necessary for the new OS to boot.

Also, mind Anna's warning to disconnect the old HD before you
boot the new HD for the first time. If you don't, some of the clone's
file descriptors will actually be pointers to the corresponding file
in the "parent's" file structure, but you won't know it until you
remove the old HD. After the clone's first isolated startup, it's OK
to let the clone "see" its "parent" OS when it boots up.

With Ghost 9.0, you will have trouble implementing that isolated
1st boot of the clone because Ghost 9.0 (and its predecessor,
PowerQuest's Drive Image 7) automatically restart the PC after
the copy process completes.

Here's the remedy: Download a free trial copy of Casper XP
from www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp/ . Casper XP will
automatically copy the MBR (perhaps making a new one) and it
will automatically mark the copied partition "active". Since it
does not leave Windows during the copy process, it has no need
to restart the PC upon completion, and the clone is NOT booted
with the "parent" OS visible to it.

Once you disconnect the source HD (that contains the "parent"
HD), there is no need to change the jumpers or to move the new
HD in order to test the clone. If the new HD had been jumpered
as Slave, and the old HD had been jumpered as Master on the
same cable, the default boot order will move the Slave HD to the
head of the list, and the clone will boot. If the clone runs OK in
isolation, you can shut down and reconfigure the HDs as you
wish.

*TimDaniels*
 
As Anna wrote - first of all make sure your clone is good
(compare files... )
Boot from your XP setup CD and select Repair.
It should find the XP system directory and repair the boot sector
and whatever else to make the new disk bootable.
If the repair procedure won't find the system to repair, then
either your copy is not good or the disk connection is not good.

Regards,
--PA
 
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