tried to clone hdd

AllThingsEnd · 01-09-2008, 05:29 PM

i went ahead and decided to upgrade my hard drive in my carpc. i went and bought a 120 gb sata 2.5in hdd. i have in there right now a 30 gb IDE hdd. i usased norton ghost to clone the hdd to the new one. it finished successfully and i then turned off the computer and unplugged the IDE hdd. i booted it up using the now cloned SATA hdd and it gets through the windows xp bootup screen and then whenit gets to where its supposed to be loading the desktop it freezes. the screen then flashes between the light blue desktop backround and a darker shade. the numlock light also flashes as the desktop changes colors. booting into safe mode does thesame thing. what am i missing? please help im going on a roadtrip next week and would like to have this working before then. thanks in advance.

jontz · 01-09-2008, 07:00 PM

I'd just re-clone it for starters, and make sure you have data verification turned on.

If that doesn't work, I'd try another program besides Ghost...I personally use this:

http://www.drive-image.com/

Good luck!

AllThingsEnd · 01-09-2008, 09:10 PM

im going to try that right now. i did have both error checking options turned on. to me its just weird that it will go through booting up and then just stall right there flashing the numlock and screen.

KCarPC75 · 01-09-2008, 10:44 PM

The easiest way I've found it to just use another PC running the same OS as the CarPC to do the cloning...if you have one available with IDE and SATA. This will work with NT 4.0, 2000 and XP. I haven't tried it with Vista.

1. Plug the IDE and SATA hard drives into the PC to be used to perform the cloning.
2. Format the new Hard Drive with the desired File system format. I use NTFS. This will set the boot records up properly.
3. Copy all files from the original CarPC hard drive to the new Hard Drive. You can use explorer, copy, xcopy or whatever desired copy tool you have.
4. You may have to set the C: partition on the new hard drive as active so you can boot from it. I can't remember for sure. Go into disk management, right click on the partition where you copied the files and click "Mark Partition as Active". If it's greyed out you'll probably already see (Active) in the status window.
5. Put the new SATA disk in your CarPC, set the bios to use it as a boot device and it should start up.

What I'm not sure of is if XP will care that you went from an IDE boot device to an SATA boot device. I'd make sure you have the SATA drivers installed first if you haven't already and then do the cloning.

If it still won't boot fully, it's possible that you may have to run a repair with the XP disk because of the switch from IDE to SATA. Not the first repair but the second repair option. Act like you are installing a new copy of XP, when it finds your original windows installation it will ask you if you want to repair it or install a new copy. This is the repair you want. It will leave all applications as it but will rebuild your hardware profile.

There's many other ways to do this but I've found this to be the easiest expecially with being able to use external USB enclosures to hook up hard disks.

AllThingsEnd · 01-10-2008, 12:01 AM

ok i tried re-cloning the hdd and that showed no results. im going to try what KCarPC said and repair my windows installation. lets see how that goes. actually now that im thinking about it, im using an NLited copy of XP. is it possible that i might have accidentally deleted something neccessary to boot from a SATA HDD?

KCarPC75 · 01-10-2008, 12:09 AM

The nlited copy may be the problem. The nlited copy may also may not work if you try to use it to do the repair install option since the unattended option doesn't give you the second repair option (If you have it set unattended that is). You may have to use a regular copy of XP.

Make sure you choose To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER not the first repair option. If you don't get the second repair option, you'll need to quit and try an unmodified copy of XP.

Here's the Article from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ps/doug92.mspx

AllThingsEnd · 01-10-2008, 12:48 AM

yea i just read that article. the nlited copy isnt letting me get to the second repair option or even the first for that matter. i dont have an XP cd handy at the moment so im going to try to do a frsh install. not what i want but if it at least lets me boot then ill look for the xp cd later.

AllThingsEnd · 01-10-2008, 12:04 PM

ok i got an xp cd to do the repair and it booted up. but now the problem is that the drive letter is now D instead of C. how can i change it to C? i went to administrative tools, computer management and it says that it cant change the drive letter. i need it to to be C so all the programs will work right.

KCarPC75 · 01-10-2008, 03:13 PM

That's odd. How many partitions do you have on the hard drive? If it's only one and you don't have any other drives in the PC, it should show up as C:

AllThingsEnd · 01-10-2008, 06:46 PM

its the only partition. how the hell do i change itC

Spyder · 01-10-2008, 07:17 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by AllThingsEnd

its the only partition. how the hell do i change itC

Make sure it is set to Harddisk 0 in the bios... Not sure how you do that on your particular machine, all bios's are different. Windows as best I know reads disk 0 as C: It's also possible you have the drive in the wrong slot... Another thought if you still have the IDE installed it will always see the IDE as drive C.

tracker64 · 01-10-2008, 07:28 PM

Ok, first off, I'll put this straight to the point

#1: When you ghost an IDE drive to a SATA, there's a newer control set standard within SATA that IDE does not have. The BIOS has an option (most do anyways) to enable "Compatible" or "Legacy" for SATA so the software (windows) will work on it as if it were an IDE drive more reliably. It's not the fact of making it LOOK like an IDE, it's to make it WORK as if it was the same drive type (IDE) that windows drivers were installed on to. You cannot always just slap a SATA HDD on a IDE installed system as a replacement and expect it to work, it's the same as taking the HDD out of one system and throwing it into another, the chances of it working are...?

#2: I work in retails, last time I checked, the 120's were disco, and unreliable because of how they were built.

#3: Hope #1 helps you out, and #2 doesnt have any bad CRC/Sectors/failure.

Good luck
Tony

AllThingsEnd · 01-10-2008, 08:59 PM

1. the IDE HDD is disconnected and the SATA HDD is set as master.

2. i have the SATA HDD running. it has no bad sectors. the only problem is that for some reason its set to D drive now and because its set to D all of the program shortcuts are wrong because they were cloned as C being the boot drive. i think it has to do with norton ghost. when i cloned the hdd thats what the drive letter was while it was cloning.

KCarPC75 · 01-10-2008, 09:29 PM

I agree that it sounds like norton ghost messed up your drive letter. I used the windows version of ghost a couple of times and never used it again because it just didn't work properly. The older dos based versions always worked flawlessly but don't run in windows.

This microsoft article may help you get things back to normal. Just keep your original IDE drive in case.:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

jontz · 01-10-2008, 09:56 PM

There is an option in most clone programs to either assign a drive letter to the cloned drive or not to. Maybe you had this option set for next available drive letter, and it happened to be D:? Just a thought...