Attempting to clone

[coyote]

I am having an issue with cloning my OS drive. I want to switch from a Maxtor SATA to a Seagate SATAII (300 gb/s) drive. I thought all I had to do was use Ghost (2003 in this case) to do a Drive to Drive copy (clone), but when I boot with the cloned drive it is unable to load the OS. Then I tried to treat this as a disaster recovery scenario and restore an image (backup) to disk, but I get the same error.

Am I missing a step? I thought this was supposed to be a no brainer.
I am running WinXP SP2 on an ASUS A8N-SLI, AMD 64.

Thanks Much

[Ol'Tunzafun]

What kind of motherboard/chipset are we dealing with? Ghost 2003 has issues with SATA on intel 865 chipsets which are resolved by running Live Update.

[coyote]

I do not believe this to be a motherboard/chipset issue, however, as I said in the initial post, this is an ASUS A8N-SLI which is an NForce 4 chipset. This particular board supports SATAII. The issue is most likely with the volume id or the boot track, but I'm not sure, thus the post. Thanks Much

[BipolarBill]

1. You're using the same controller in both instances? Nothing has changed except for the drive?

2. The new drive is connected to the same SATA port?

3. Have you checked the boot sequence in BIOS setup? Most new motherboards require that you specify the exact drive for booting.

[coyote]

Hi BiPolarBill -

1. You're using the same controller in both instances? Nothing has changed except for the drive?

-- Yes they are the same controller and nothing else has changed except for the drive. There are 4 SATA ports on the board. After the clone, I disconnect the Maxtor (on SATA1) then plug that wire into the new Seagate (the original drive is no longer connected). When I boot, I get the error that it can not load the operating system. The data is there, because when I boot with the original drive leaving the cloned drive connected (this is after the failure), I can read and see the data on the cloned device.


2. The new drive is connected to the same SATA port?

-- Yup! After the clone, the cable is switched.


3. Have you checked the boot sequence in BIOS setup? Most new motherboards require that you specify the exact drive for booting.

-- On this board, it only wants to know about the device type, ie, Floppy, CDROM, HD.

Hope this helps
Thanks Much

[coyote]

Just a thought, but could going from an SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) to an SATA II (in this case, 3 Gb/s), I noticed that on the POST, it shows the Maxtors as LBA and the Seagate as CHA. Hummm....

[coyote]

Sorry, I meant CHS (not CHA).
So, Maxtor SATA I drives are LBA
Seagate SATA II drive is CHS. I think I may be on to something here...

[BipolarBill]

Many 3.0G SATA drives flat will not work unless the controller is 3G too. Otherwise, you must use the drive maker's utility to set it back to SATA II.

I think you should examine BIOS setup more closely. I have 2-year old VIA motherboards where you must specify drive type (floppy, CD, HDD) for boot sequence, but you must then set the particular had drive too.

[coyote]

In this case, the board natively supports 3 Gb/s SATA II.

I think the problem lies with the difference between the SATA I and II as it relates to cloning. I guess the big test would be to install WinXP on the new drive and if it works then it must be some difference between the SATA I and II hardware. This may be a case where the OS needs to be reinstalled, but I'm not at that point yet - there must be a way.

The bios is not specific, although each drive can be set to LARGE or AUTO support. Tried that, but it just hangs with LARGE Support.

Called Seagate, and they are clueless.
All I can say is..."You gotta be kidding!" because this shoud be a no brainer.

[bruceb]

I think you did the procedure in the wrong way

Try it this way:

Slave the new hard drive into the pc

Create a 2nd partition on the new hard drive which is large enough
to hold the Ghost Image from the OLD Drive ... this should be at the end of the drive

Run Norton Ghost and create the Image on the newly created partition

Now run Norton Ghost and Restore the Image to the Other (first) partition of
the new drive

Shut down the computer

Remove the old drive and connect your new drive as the Primary to the same
controller the old drive was on ... It should reboot and load fine ... if it does
you now have two choices

Keep the 2nd partition with the backup image as just that .. a backup of the
system as it currently is ... or delete the partition and resize the drive as needed

[coyote]

Hi bruceb, and thank you for your contribution to this fiasco, however, and with all due respect, I can not believe that all of that is necessary for a simple full volume restore or image copy (clone).

If I may iterate what has been done:

- Maxtor 300GB SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) being copied to a Seagate 300GB SATA II (3 Gb/s)
- Tried Ghost 2003 Disk to Disk Copy
- Tried Ghost 2003 full volume restore from an image backup
- Tried Ghost 2003 restore for specific partition, the one with the WinXP OS
- In all cases, we get the "Error loading operating system".
- When booting with original drive and hooking up cloned drive to different port, it appears that the restore or clone operation copied all the data just fine, it just appears that the drive will not boot
- Tried changing that specific drive in the BIOS from AUTO to LARGE, and it just hangs after the POST (well, at least I didn't get the error).

A restore should not require a bunch of hoops to go through. I still think there is an LBA/CHS issue here, but I have nothing to go by, or I am just using the wrong utility. Any thoughts?

[bruceb]

You could try to run a Fixboot from the repair console

BOOT SECTORS - REPAIR WINDOW XP/2K/NT
XP/2K: To Repair a damaged Windows XP or 2000 Boot Sector:
1. Make the CD-ROM, or floppy drive, the first Boot Device in the BIOS/CMOS.
2. Boot from the XP/2K CD or the installation disks.
3. At the Welcome screen, press F10.
4. Select Repair.
5. Select Console.
6. Type in - and then press [Enter]
FIXBOOT
Answer Y. You sometimes must specify the PC system partition (read FIXBOOT).
7. Type in Exit to exit the Console/reboot. Rectify BIOS's first Boot Device. Test.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If that does not help, try using ghost the way I suggested

Ghost should support Cloning (at least in the one shipped with NSW 2003)
However, since you tried it that way and it did not work, I would try it the
other way

[coyote]

Tried FIXBOOT to no avail.

I will try another utility - perhaps Acronis True Image 9 and see what happens. If that works, I may have drop Ghost.

[dajogejr]

I know I'm late chiming in...but, Ghost 2003 will not see the 80GB Seagate drive I purchased a year or so ago. I switched to Acronis TI 9, works just fine. I've long been a ghost user, and can honestly say with no reservation the user interface is much, much more intuitive than that of Ghost. That being said, I purchased a 200GB Hd from Western Digital late last year, Ghost 2003 likes that one...

[bruceb]

Well, it works ok for me with Windows XP Home SP1 & most other updates except SP2
I have the version that comes with Norton System Works Pro 2003 ... My hard drives
are both WD 120GB units ... sees them fine ... it doesn't say what version Ghost it is