Greetings all....
I did apply to have an actual account here, but no email has shown up yet, so I'll post this way in the mean time.

HP Laptop.
Failing 40Gb HD.
Used SpinRite to get it safe (and booting, just slow, but all appears intact)
Great.
Grabbed a new 80Gb HD for it, and a bootable Ghost 8 CD we have in the lab. (we use them all day long to clone student drives, from images, from other drives, etc -- no problem)

Two adapters, and a tower machine later, I have the old drive, and the new drive, on separate cables, running, and Ghost 8 doing a Disk to Disk copy.
I let it re-size the parition on the new one, to the full space of the drive (not usually a problem).
I also (the second time) added the -IB (I think) option... the one that's supossed to copy the boot info.

Copy went fine... took about 35 minutes.
Exit, turn off machine.
Take new HD to laptop, and install.
No boot.
Bios POST finishes, it checks the DVDRom for a bootable, and then just black screen, flashing cursor in the upper left.

I've been digging in google for answers... but never seem to find a clean copy of this problem. And then I found you guys.

Anyhow... the drive is there, it's running, the data is intact.
If I boot from the XP/sp2 CD, into recovery console, I can connect to the OS install, dir the drive, run commands etc.

I have tried fixboot, fixmbr, and a few others, to no avail.
It seems to change how much HD light activity there is at boot time, but still nothing more than the black screen...

Funny thing is, after years of GHost 7, 7.5 and 8, I've only ever seen this once before, and it was another HP laptop... and Windows 98. At the time, I think we just booted a floppy of 98 dos, and "sys C:" the thing, and that did it.

These days... I'd think that's what fixboot is doing... but maybe I need more? Or in the correct order?

Since I do still have a master, that I consider sort of safe, I did try a repair install of XP overtop... but that wouldn't boot either.

If the bios couldn't see it, I shouldn't be able to get into the recovery and see it... is my logic... so I don't think it's a HD size limit. Besides, that usually happens at 32gb, and the original is a 40.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew,

It doesn't sound typical but have you tried Method #3? Bottom of page.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

Andrew Bienhaus

Quote:

Many laptops appear to have *hidden* recovery and utility partitions--which change the *normal* default settings you would expect in the *boot.ini* file.

Do you know if there are/were additional *hidden* partitions on the HP laptop's old HDD?

Can you use Recovery Console to *grab* the *boot.ini* off the new HDD, and also get the *boot.ini* off the old HDD--compare and/or post here for review.

Here's a tool for looking at and editing *boot.ini* on a NTFS partition from a DOS floppy boot disk (or bootable optical media that boots to DOS) :

TeraByte Unlimited Freeware--See *EditBini*

Andrew Bienhaus

Just to clarify--in your last post you state you did a *partition copy*, and in your original post you stated a *Disk to Disk* copy--these are two different procedures and could have different outcomes.

*Disk to Disk* *should* have been successful, and *partition copy* probably would not be successful in creating a bootable *clone*.

Looks like the partial install of fresh WinXP corrected some unknown problem in the Master Boot Record/Boot Sector on the new HDD.

I'm glad you have it fixed, Andrew.

I haven't "cloned" a laptop drive but I have restored an image. The C drive partition (single partition HD) was imaged to a desktop computer over the network. The new HD was installed in the laptop and I used a BartPE/ Ghost 9 CD to restore the image over the network.

NightOwl, all of my "clones" have been partition to partition. I did 15 a few days ago and all booted. I've never tried disk to disk.

John, I was really trying to make the clone process fail, but couldn't. Several times I did the no-no. Copied old HD to new HD, then made new the Master and old the Slave, then booted to the Master. It booted. Conventional advice is to boot to the new master HD on the first occasion with the slave HD not attached. Then the slave can be reattached and the slave will have an active primary partition with a drive letter (not C drive).

For Ghost 9/10 you should copy into Unallocated Space, don’t assign a drive letter and Copy the MBR. Remove the old HD before booting to the new HD.

NightOwl wrote on Feb 12^th, 2006 at 5:43pm:


I agree for Ghost 9. But I doubt copying with Partition Magic does copy the MBR. And that booted too.
In the Acronis TI group they say the same about a disc to disc copy as you are saying about Ghost 2003. I haven't tried copying with Acronis TI.
So I remain confused about the partition to partition copy. With new HD's I've always done an image to partition restore, but not with Ghost 2003, and that always works.

"Apples to Oranges" sums it up.

NightOwl,

I started out to see if the “Copy a Partition” in Partition Magic could produce a bootable “clone” on another hard drive. It does and it’s very easy to use. I then became sidetracked into using Ghost 9 and CasperXP but that was mainly because I was trying to make the process fail.

My statement about PM and the MBR was glib and I have no evidence.

The HD’s that I used were partitioned and I simply deleted the first partition to create Unallocated Space for the copy. (PM will only do the copy into Unallocated Space but Ghost 9 can copy to a partition as well.) The original MBR may have helped me inadvertently. I don’t have a factory fresh HD to try your suggestion but the results would certainly be interesting.

When is the MBR created? Say you have a fresh HD and you partition it (using PM floppies) to an active primary partition and an extended partition with logical drives, does it now have a MBR?