New HDD not booting

  • Thread starter Powerchordpunk
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Powerchordpunk

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I have a new 80gig drive set as master. I used norton ghost to clone my old 20gig to the new drive. Now when i restart my computer, it says that no operating system was found. I can work with the drive in windows, it just wont boot. i had to go into bios setup and tell it to boot from slave (20gig) to write this message. Now i didn't install windows on this new drive itself, but a disk image is a disk image. Does anyone know why my old drive will still boot but my new drive (1-1 copy of old, set as master) will not. Damn gateway says i need to consult norton about this issue. thanks.
 
If you just format the 80gb HD, and fresh install windows, you can just transfer all of your settings and files from the old drive, almost as easy as applying that image file. You will get much better performance that way as well. If you really, really must keep your image file in tact, you can take a look at this site.

I have not looked over it yet, but it seems like there is a lot of info about NG.

http://ghost.radified.com/
 
i agree with the previous post .use the file and settings transfer wizard its much better than using norton ghost
 
I only have the upgrade version of windows xp. I would have to install 98 again. would the guide on this page work as well to copy files? The problem with that guide is, I tested out step 5 in the command prompt with my drive letter and nothing happened (SYS E:)
 
You need to set that drive to be active or it won't boot. I use partition magic, but Fdisk may work. I'm just not too sure about Fdisk seeing and working with an NTFS drive.

That's Gateway's standard answer. They try to wash their hands of any thing they can. I bought mine 3 years ago because I thought I could trust their ads about 24/7 tech support. Soon after I got it I was tinkering with settings that are best left alone. I was trying to "optimize" my internet connection. I was playing with TCP/IP and hardware settings. I lost all ability to connect with the internet. I called Gateway, and told them what I had done. The idiot that answered the phone had me looking through Outlook Express to try to fix my problem. I guess hard things like TCP/IP wasn't in the video they watch to learn their job. I reloaded Windows and haven't called them since. Last year I built My own system. That's what 1 iidiot can cost a company. I'll never buy another system from them again.

I am pretty sure that setting that drive to be active will solve your problem. Let me know how it goes.

By the way, ghost is just fine to do what your doing. I use it all the time at work.
 
Drive copying

Hey powerchordpunk you never did mention whether your drive was NTFS or FAT32.

I'm assuming since you upgraded from 98 that you didn't perform a FAT conversion.

If this is the case then you can try using a very simple but almost idiot proof(nothing personal) method of copying the contents of one drive over to another and quickly I might add by using EZDrive9. EZDrive9 runs from bootable floppy of course.

It does everything from partitioning, activating and formatting your new drive and making it bootable.

It accomplishes this by making an exact image on the fly. It recognizes the drives that are attached and prompts you which drive will be the target and which one will be the source.

This way you can skip the the other processes when using the file transfer wizard.

Note: with file transfer wizard you might still have too re-install some of yours appz, like office, etc.

I've provided a few links to EZDrive9 for your convenience.

Good luck :)

http://www.compusave.net/Drivers/EZDrive9/
http://www.storagedrivers.com/drivers/40/40002.htm
http://www.interdev.de/frank/download.htm
 
whoops forgot to mention file system. Both are ntfs, and yes, i recently did a fat->ntfs conversion. will ezdrive9 still work?

Psychic51: fdisk wont work on a ntfs partition. what does setting the drive to "active" entail?
 
from what i can remember, setting your drive to active let's the computer know that THAT drive is the one to boot from.
 
Posted by Powerchordpunk
I only have the upgrade version of windows xp. I would have to install 98 again. would the guide on this page work as well to copy files? The problem with that guide is, I tested out step 5 in the command prompt with my drive letter and nothing happened (SYS E:)

NO! You don't have to insall 98 first. Just put the XP upgrade cd in and it will act just like the full XP cd, the only difference is th XP upgrade cd might ask you to insert your 98 disk in the drive to make sure you acctually have 98.
 
ok so i will install partition magic 8 :) and try the activate drive feature out. cant i set which drive to boot from in the bios? Again, I have to set it to boot from slave (my old drive) first for my computer to boot at all, with my current config as master being new drive.

Files and settings transfer wizard is exactly that, and won't perform a 1-1 copy.
 
Powerchordpunk

Check your Private Messages. I sent you some info on how to contact me.
 
Start from scratch if in fact you did convert fat => NTFS. Your cluster size will be way too small and you will get sluggish performance and a constant need to defragment with XP.
 
Gus K, i found that my computer actually boots much faster when windows is installed on a NTFS partition.
 
hey Elemental, that was my point. NTFS is much better and secure....but it should be an original NTFS format (4k clusters), not a Fat conversion.
 
yeah, i'm sorta really outta luck. i bought my computer WITH windows XP, and it had one 20 GB FAT32 partition, and one 40 GB NTFS partition. isn't that just stupid. i'm thinkin about just trying to find a copy of windows XP on the internet somewhere.
 
ok y'all. Norton Ghost 2003 support told me the secret to 2000/XP cloning. You have to run sysprep.exe immediately before you clone (without rebooting or plugnplay database will be re-written) so the system is ready for bigger hard drives. They also said to have only one bootable hard drive in machine after cloning, but even if the new cloned drive works, how will I be able to put in the old bootable drive if what they say holds water? Any comments? Oh and sysprep is on the xp installation cd.
 
Well based on what you have done you shouldn't have to much trouble doing this to test. Unhook all of the cables from the new drive and make sure you leave to old set as master and hook it up like it was the master and away you go into windows. That is the only way I know of to do what you want.
 
ok so I followed norton ghost supports advice, sorta. I disconnected my old drive after imaging but i didn't run that sysprep.exe app, since it preps the machine for hardware changes. I don't have any hardware changes, except drive. Now my 80 gig works fine and i am booted from it! By the way, I set the jumpers on it to single, not slave, chastity. Now I am confronted with a new, less annoying and urgent problem. If I have the new drive set as master and the old one set as slave, I can only boot from the old slave drive, since it says after my bios loads for the new drive on master: No operating system detected. Do you think, once I am confident my new hard drive works just like the old with only more rpms and storage space, that i should format the old drive on a different machine then put back in, or what? Is that even the problem (having the old drive bootable too). Do you think that now I booted with new drive some settings changed and I can just put old drive in and have it still boot from new, then format old? All I want the old one for now is extra storage. This is a very long message. Thanks again.
 
Posted by Powerchordpunk
ok y'all. Norton Ghost 2003 support told me the secret to 2000/XP cloning. You have to run sysprep.exe immediately before you clone (without rebooting or plugnplay database will be re-written) so the system is ready for bigger hard drives. They also said to have only one bootable hard drive in machine after cloning, but even if the new cloned drive works, how will I be able to put in the old bootable drive if what they say holds water? Any comments? Oh and sysprep is on the xp installation cd.

You could use Partition Magic 8 with the old drive installed and change it to non-active or not the bootable drive. I don't think that would affect it still functioning since you have already booted and are running. Then shut down and reinstall the new HDD on the Primary IDE and remove the old one and place it on the secondary IDE and reboot. That way both are installed and you can see them both in Explorer. Maybe???
 

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