XP NOT Booting on Mirrored Drive

[jcs83md]

To make a long story short I used HDCopy to mirror my 8.4 Gigabyte Windows XP Drive to a newer 27 Gig drive. The copy was successful, However after attempting to boot off the 27 gig drive, A screen came up after POST that said Press Key To Restart or something similar to that effect, and it does that everytime. Anyone know how to fix this??

 

[jcs83md]

Anyone??? is My MBR messed up?? Should I try and use another program to copy my old system drive... should I re-install Windows over the existing copied one and attempt to import my registry from the other computer??

 

[Teddy]

Did you format the new hard drive before copying over the data?

 

[jcs83md]

Yes I did format. However, I believe it was only a quick format, an existing NTFS partition was on the drive. I deleted it, and made a FAT32 partition very similar to the system disk I was attempting to copy.

 

[jcs83md]

After looking at HDCopy's web page I see that there is a logical copy and a physical copy. Perhaps I went wrong with choosing a logical copy??? Logical was the default option.

 

[Teddy]

I had a recurring error with a new HD when i bought it, i'd recommend a proper format of it...that sorted it for me.

Have you tried using the XP CD to do a repair on the newer drive? This sometimes helps. To do this i think you have to boot to the XP CD and it will give you a list of options you can use....Repair should be one of those. You may just have problems with the boot sector.

Another thing, have you made sure the jumpers are set correctly on the newer HD...ie, set as Master. Im guessing you only have the newer drive in the system when you are experiencing this problem? If this is so then you should take a close look at the jumpers.

let me know how you get on!

 

[jcs83md]

Yeah, thanks for the help. I'm not an amateur but its good to know someone's thoughts are similar to my own. I don't often have to mirror hard drives.

Anyway, for starters, I'm at work right now so I can't try any of this, however I am 100% positive the jumpers are set properly. I can use a boot disk and get into DOS. The first thing I'm gonna do is check on BOOT.INI and make sure everything is correct there.

I also made an Emergency Repair Disk here at work, I think if the disk lets me boot into Windows then its a Boot Record problem. If all that fails, then I Will attempt to clone the drive with another program or a different method.


I'll update you on my progress.

 

[dick471]

Copy Drive

I use PowerQuest "Drive Image" and have done this many times and they always boot. The destination drive must be unallocated space without any format and larger than the source drive. The program asks if this is a replacement or a backup. This selection determines if one drive will be "hidden". I don't let it hide either drive since I don't leave both in after Disk to Disk copy. Either one will boot by themselves and are both set as "active". I keep the old drive on the shelf as a backup, which I update every month in case of a BSOD. Good luck!

 

[jcs83md]

Well I really cant get into Windows currently, if I have to I'll pull everything out and pop the ancient drive back in to get into Windows..

The thing is my first plan failed strangely. I had Norton Ghost installed on my C: drive, and I Also had a D: and E: Drive which was my slave hard drive. When I took the slave drive out, and put the newer drive in.. Norton Ghost failed to run... even though it was installed on the C: Drive. .

MY question is, what exactly is preventing me from booting off of this drive.

 

[jcs83md]

I have discovered I can successfully boot off the drive as long as I have a floppy in with NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, BOOT.INI and BOOTSECT.DOS.


Are one of those files corrupt on my system drive or is this a master boot record problem?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Go to my computer/properties/advanced/startup & recovery/settings/edit. Copy your boot.ini & paste it here. Home or Pro?

 

[jcs83md]

Problem solved.... Ran good old trusty FDISK and my partition was not set as active.