Gazza_99

Hello All,

I have just bought a new Maxtor ATA 160Gb hard drive for my PC. However I have tried to Clone my old 20Gb Maxtor hard drive to the new one. But when I come to swap the new 120 Gb Clone hard drive to be the boot up master drive after setting the jumper pin, the PC will not boot up and comes up with an error stating there is a problem with the hard drive configuration settings.
I am using Norton Ghost 9 Copy feature to clone the new drive BTW and the old hard drive is disconnected completely after cloning it.
Anyone got any ideas ?
The motherboard detects the new hard drive as the master drive on boot up , so I know that it can't be a motherboard issue.

Cheers


Gary.

SJ_Skyline

Please correct me if I am wrong guys but IIRC Win2K introduced the "Hardware Allocation Table" which pretty much associated bits of hardware with the operating system. A bit like "this bit goes here and I can expect it to be here next time" Some bits of this are interchangeable such as graphics cards, sound cards, memory, etc. Some bits are not - motherboards, primary hard drives.

I had exactly the same problem as you did - solution was a rebuild on the new drive, add the old drive as a slave and copy settings and files over.

Gazza_99

Hi SJ_Skyline,

I did replace the motherboard a couple of months ago and had to re-activate my windows XP with microsoft after doing a recovery/repair windows with a bootable CD. Do I have to do all this again with a new cloned Hard drive ?

Cheers


Gaz

babber

Not sure if this will help, but mate suggested it the other day. Delete all the drivers for all the cards, etc within system, so the machines hardware is very basic.

Transfer the basic version of XP onto the new hard disk (not forgetting the system files) and boot the machine up with the new hard drive as the master and the old as the slave.

As XP boots all the drivers will re-install, and copy the files from the old disk onto the new disk after the O/S is stable

Seemed like a bloody good idea to me

Phill

class_A

Have you tried using Maxtor MaxBlast to clone the drive outside of Windows?

http://downloads.maxtor.com/_files/m...t_3_cd_iso.zip

Download the ISO, burn it to a CDR and boot your system from it with both the old and the new HDD's connected.

cong

xp cannot be cloned and harddrive swapped if the mother board is changed xp is mother locked from what i remember

SJ_Skyline

XP also locks itself every 3 major hardware changes, e.g. graphics card, network card, etc.

Gazza_99

Cheers Lads for the help.

I am going to try the outside of windows Maxtor method tonight.

Thanks

Gary

class_A

Details on Windows Product Activation for full boxed (retail) copies of Windows XP, including what changes will require a reactivation:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...ctiv.mspx#EEAA

FWIW, I used a similar drive cloning tool from Western Digital about 3 months ago and had no problems booting from the new drive so you shouldn't have many problems.

Gary, please could you post back with your results?

Cheers!
Alex

BuRR

ouch!!! You got a few days spare? 16 bit disk access on a 160GB drive won't be nice

XP CAN be done, but isn't straight forward like other OS'. Use Casper XP, or a hardware disk cloner (such as a Image Masster device).

We do it all the time in the office, so don't believe the hype that it can't be done

Lum

Microsoft's utility SysPrep is the correct way to clone Windows installations or move it to another HD or to move the HD to a different system.

Run SysPrep, it does the job of stripping out drivers, deactivating Windows etc. then clone the disk with Ghost or whatever, bring it up and you get a mini version of the last part of XP setup, it asks you for your product key, PC name and that's about it. all your applications and settings are kept.

SP1 version - SP2 Version - be sure to use the correct version for your Service Pack level.

Gazza_99

Lads,

My new hard drive still won't clone !! Tried the Maxtor tool last night. Still no luck in getting it to boot up. This is the error I am getting :

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314477


The original hard drive was part of my dell PC which was 3-years old. A couple of months ago I upgraded the complete PC except for this 20-Gb Hard drive with my Windows XP OS on it. I had to reactivate my windows XP after doing this. All worked fine. I am just wondering now whether it's needs re-activating again because I have tried to cloned my old drive on to my new one.

Any ideas ??

Cheers


Gary.

Gazza_99

BuRR,

You were right about the Maxtor tool running in DOS !! Took bloody 4-hrs to copy a 20GB drive !!

Gaz

Gazza_99

Lads,

This is what I also found.
On the original Hard drive there was a FAT invisible partion which contains some dell utilities. Then there was the usual NTFS which is where the Win XP OS is held.
Now.. When I did the clone to the new 120Gb it only copies the NTFS area over from the original drive.

So it appears that maybe my Boot.ini file could be setup incorrectly for the new Cloned drive.

What do you think ?

Cheers


Gary.

Foot_Tapper

Good possibility Gazza, boot.ini would have to point to correct startup partition.
BTW it's read only, change permission to it b4 trying to edit.

P_v_G

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=58



This will get you the Maxtor windows software for setting up the hard disk. I've got the 160Gb drive, and cloned XP ok from my 80Gb.

paul.

Gazza_99

I did this the first time around. Still it wouldn't allow me to boot up on this drive.

I am going to have another hack of it tonight !!

Cheers

Gary.

BuRR

You anywhere near to Wakefield?

class_A

Sorry it didn't work for you Gazza, guess the "recovery partition" you mentioned must be causing some conflicts.