What order of imaging is required?

Sam · Nov 26, 2007

It just dawned on me. Should I use Acronis via Dos (CD) or within XP to
copy
the image onto the SATA drive to make it bootable? Then reboot?

With the current main C drive, will XP may get confused if I have 2
boot drives with the new drive having also having a Windows Directory.

Rod Speed · Nov 26, 2007

Sam said:
It just dawned on me.

Hope you had your selt belt on |-)

Should I use Acronis via Dos (CD)

Its not dos, its actually linux.

or within XP to copy the image onto the SATA drive to make it bootable?

Both will work fine. And True Image calls that op a clone. An image isnt bootable.

Then reboot?

Yep, but you will have to adjust what drive you are booting from in the bios.

And its safer to physically disconnect the original boot drive for the first
boot of what True Image calls the clone. XP can get rather confused if
it can see both bootable copys on the first boot of the clone.

With the current main C drive, will XP may get confused if I have 2
boot drives with the new drive having also having a Windows Directory.

Yes it can do, but only on the first boot of the clone. You can plug the original
back in again after the first boot of the clone on the new drive, and do whatever
you like with that drive like formatting the partition from within XP etc. You can
also just keep the original for a while, in case the new drive dies a very early death.

I personally leave the original for a month or two so its easy to go back if the
new drive does die a very early death. Not that has ever actually happened to me.

Timothy Daniels · Nov 26, 2007

Sam said:
It just dawned on me. Should I use Acronis via Dos (CD) or
within XP to copy the image onto the SATA drive to make it
bootable?

The MBR and the Boot Sector and the boot loader (ntldr) don't
know what kind of controller runs the hard drive. To enable a
SATA hard drive is up to the BIOS and the driver. So if you can
transfer the data, you have all that is needed. If you can run XP,
Acronis can do the deed as an installed program.

Then reboot?

If you intend on making a clone, you can reboot the "parent"
OS all you want. Just remove the hard drive containing the
"parent" OS before you boot up the clone for the clone's 1st-ever
run. By removing the currently booting hard drive, you'll cause
the 2nd hard drive to assume the booting role, and no adjustment
to the boot.ini file will be necessary.

With the current main C drive, will XP may get confused if I
have 2 boot drives with the new drive having also having a
Windows Directory.

Once the clone has been booted and run in isolation, it will
see the "parent" OS as merely a collection of files and folders
(that is, as mere data). The "parent" OS will see the clone OS
a merely data right from the beginning.

*TimDaniels*

Sam · Nov 27, 2007

Ok, exactly as what I suspected was going to happen, did. I
disconnected the old C drive. Had copied the bare working XP image that
would be the NEW C drive onto the new SATA drive. Upon booting,
selecting SATA drive as primary boot, I got invalid or corrupt NTLDR
file.

How do I fix this without having to take a valium?

Timothy Daniels · Nov 27, 2007

Sam said:
Ok, exactly as what I suspected was going to happen, did. I
disconnected the old C drive. Had copied the bare working XP
image that would be the NEW C drive onto the new SATA drive.
Upon booting, selecting SATA drive as primary boot, I got invalid
or corrupt NTLDR file.

How do I fix this without having to take a valium?

Did you tell True Image to make a clone or an image file?
The former can be booted, the latter cannot because there is
no Boot Record to pass control to ntldr. Does the new XP's
partition have the same partition no. as the old XP? Is the new
XP in a primary partition? If so, is it marked "active"?

*TimDaniels*

Sam · Nov 27, 2007

Timothy Daniels wrote:
:
: Did you tell True Image to make a clone or an image file?
: The former can be booted, the latter cannot because there is
: no Boot Record to pass control to ntldr. Does the new XP's
: partition have the same partition no. as the old XP? Is the new
: XP in a primary partition? If so, is it marked "active"?

I just did an image of C Drive. I don't know what you mean by "does the
partition have the same partition no. as the old XP"? The new drive
only has one partition.

Yes, the new partition is the new marked as active. I created a floppy
from this site and I am able to boot as long as I select option 1 of 10
options and boot from floppy.
http://www.tinyempire.com/shortnotes/files/ntldr_missing.htm

The above is not a real fix though.

Rod Speed · Nov 27, 2007

Sam said:
Rod Speed wrote

Ok, exactly as what I suspected was going to happen, did.

A Jap would at least have the decency to disembowel itself.

I disconnected the old C drive. Had copied the bare working XP image
that would be the NEW C drive onto the new SATA drive. Upon booting,
selecting SATA drive as primary boot, I got invalid or corrupt NTLDR file.

How do I fix this without having to take a valium?

Just boot the XP install CD and do a repair install.

And take the valium anyway.

Timothy Daniels · Nov 27, 2007

Sam said:
Timothy Daniels wrote:
:
: Did you tell True Image to make a clone or an image file?
: The former can be booted, the latter cannot because there is
: no Boot Record to pass control to ntldr. Does the new XP's
: partition have the same partition no. as the old XP? Is the new
: XP in a primary partition? If so, is it marked "active"?

I just did an image of C Drive. I don't know what you mean by "does the
partition have the same partition no. as the old XP"? The new drive
only has one partition.

Yes, the new partition is the new marked as active. I created a floppy
from this site and I am able to boot as long as I select option 1 of 10
options and boot from floppy.
http://www.tinyempire.com/shortnotes/files/ntldr_missing.htm

The above is not a real fix though.

Stop making image files. They don't have a boot sector to which the
MBR can pass control, and which in turn pass control to ntldr.. Make
a clone. Read chapter 13 of the User Guide, downloadable from here:
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATISWin/

Since you will be cloning a single partition that is the only partition on
the hard drive and making it the only partition on the destination hard drive,
the partition nos. will be the same - "1" - so the boot.ini file can be used
as-is in the clone without having to diddle with the value of "y" in
"partition(y)" of the entries in boot.ini.

BTW, the author of that web page whose link you gave forgot to include
"Boot Sector" in the sequence of boot control.

*TimDaniels*

Sam · Nov 27, 2007

Hmm, thanks. The thing is that in the past I never wanted to clone the
entire drive because I had other partitions and data that I did not want
to clone. With this new drive I may clone it if I choose to do a fresh
install and not use the drive image. I am surprised these imaging
programs do not have a feature or tool where it could make a MBR for you
upon reboot so you won't have the NTLDR error.

Sam · Nov 27, 2007

Not in this day and age. ;-)

That will reinstall everything, right? Or is there a way just to fix the
MBR while doing the repair? I haven't never done an XP repair before.

I don't have a prescription for it.

Timothy Daniels · Nov 27, 2007

Sam said:
Hmm, thanks. The thing is that in the past I never wanted to clone the
entire drive because I had other partitions and data that I did not want
to clone. With this new drive I may clone it if I choose to do a fresh
install and not use the drive image. I am surprised these imaging
programs do not have a feature or tool where it could make a MBR for you
upon reboot so you won't have the NTLDR error.

One of the features of True Image (according to its User Guide) is
that for cloning, it will only clone an entire hard drive, and it cannot clone
just a single partition (directly) as Ghost and Casper can. In your case,
since you're cloning a hard drive that contains just a single partition, it
doesn't matter, and True Image should do the trick.

I'm not familiar with True Image enough to know if it gives you the
option to copy the MBR (as Ghost does), but since the goal of cloning
is to make a bootable copy, the MBR should be cloned along with the
partition(s) and their Boot Sectors. You might try running "fixmbr"
from the XP CD's Recovery Console to see if that does the trick. If it
doesn't, follow it with "fixboot" to repair the Boot Sector. Otherwise,
just run the cloning operation as described in ch. 13 of the True Image
User Guide.

*TimDaniels*

Folkert Rienstra · Nov 27, 2007

Timothy Daniels wrote in news:[email protected]

Did you tell True Image to make a clone or an image file?
The former can be booted, the latter cannot

because there is no Boot Record to pass control to ntldr.

Then how does one get "invalid or corrupt NTLDR file" without a
bootrecord, Timmy?

Rod Speed · Nov 28, 2007

Sam said:
Rod Speed wrote

Not in this day and age. ;-)

Yep, they still do it.

That will reinstall everything, right?

Nope, it will just fix anything that needs fixing.

Or is there a way just to fix the MBR while doing the repair?

It will fix anything that needs fixing, including the MBR.

I haven't never done an XP repair before.

Its one of the real advances with XP, you wont lose any of your files or settings.

I don't have a prescription for it.

Easy to get from your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer.

Timothy Daniels · Nov 28, 2007

"Folkert Rienstra" (a.k.a. "Rod Speed", et. al.) asked:

Then how does one get "invalid or corrupt NTLDR file" without a
bootrecord, Timmy?

It could be due to a lot of things, Roddels. According to this
website, it could be a corrupt Boot Sector:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Troubleshooting-Startup-Problems.html
Or... ntldr or boot.ini or ntdetect.com wasn't copied along with
the other folders and files just below the root level of the file
structure. Whatever the cause, it isn't consistent with a proper
cloning operation.

*TimDaniels*

Eric Gisin · Nov 28, 2007

Timothy Daniels said:
"Folkert Rienstra" (a.k.a. "Rod Speed", et. al.) asked:

It could be due to a lot of things, Roddels. According to this

Another crackpot who thinks people are forging news headers.

website, it could be a corrupt Boot Sector:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Troubleshooting-Startup-Problems.html
Or... ntldr or boot.ini or ntdetect.com wasn't copied along with
the other folders and files just below the root level of the file
structure. Whatever the cause, it isn't consistent with a proper
cloning operation.

No, the message comes from the volume boot sector, which only loads NTLDR, nothing else.
It typically means a mismatch between BIOS and boot sector geometries, or volume corruption.

Timothy Daniels · Nov 28, 2007

Eric Gisin said:
No, the message comes from the volume boot sector, which
only loads NTLDR, nothing else.

That's logical and probably true.. I'm only going by what several
websites stated - that other missing boot files could also result in
"ntldr missing or corrupt" error messages. It *is* conceivable that
ntldr returning an error code upon not finding a valid boot.ini or not
finding an ntdetect.com to pass control to would cause the boot
sector logic to class the error as due to a "missing ntldr".

It typically means a mismatch between BIOS and boot sector
geometries, or volume corruption.

...caused by a boot sector that actually applied to the old
partition now being overwritten by the new image file which
does not have a boot sector? IOW, an obsolete boot sector?

*TimDaniels*

Folkert Rienstra · Nov 28, 2007

Timothy Daniels wrote in news:[email protected]

"Folkert Rienstra" (a.k.a. "Rod Speed", et. al.) asked:

It could be due to a lot of things, Roddels.

Clueless, as always.

According to this website, it could be a corrupt Boot Sector:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Troubleshooting-Startup-Problems.html
Or... ntldr or boot.ini or ntdetect.com wasn't copied along with
the other folders and files just below the root level of the file
structure. Whatever the cause, it isn't consistent with a proper
cloning operation.

In other words: you don't have a clue, Timmy child.

Rod Speed · Nov 28, 2007

Timothy Daniels said:
"Folkert Rienstra" (a.k.a. "Rod Speed", et. al.) wrote

Shit you're a terminal ****wit Timmy. We dont even use the
same usenet server, or the same usenet client either, fool.
The styles and even the spelling is quite different too, stupid.

Eric Gisin · Nov 28, 2007

Timothy Daniels said:
...caused by a boot sector that actually applied to the old
partition now being overwritten by the new image file which
does not have a boot sector? IOW, an obsolete boot sector?

I think they copy boot sector exactly, which is insufficient.
They have to patch the CHS values to match the partition table.

Timothy Daniels · Nov 29, 2007

Rod Speed said:
Shit you're a terminal ****wit Timmy. We dont even use the
same usenet server, or the same usenet client either, fool.
The styles and even the spelling is quite different too, stupid.

And you can't even tell yourselves apart anymore, Roddels.

*TimDaniels*