November 20, 2005
HELP: Why is cloning a PC drive so hard?
As a (former?) Mac user, it truly is amazing to me how hard some things are to do in Windows. For example, let’s say you have a 20 gig drive and you want to upgrade to a 120 gig drive - this is the exact situation I find myself at my parents place in NY right now.
On a Mac, this would be ultra easy. Remember that on a Mac, you can boot up from practically any device, and you can image any drive to any drive, and that you can tell the hardware which drive to boot off of.
So on a Mac, you would do this:
1. Buy and install new hard drive. Format.
2. Download Carbon Copy Cloner which is free/$5 donationware (or you could use the apps that are bundled with the Mac - CCC is just a 1 click wrapper around them.)
3. Run CCC to clone drive with about 4 clicks. (no need to install)
4. In control panels, tell the startup control panel to use the new drive.
5. Shutdown to remove old drive.
6. Reboot.
On my parents PC, this is what I’ve done so far:
1. Buy and install new hard drive. Format.
2. Download DriveImage XML (which a few folks at MS recommended because its free)
3. Install DriveImage XML
4. Run DriveImage XML and tell it to clone the C: to the D:. Go past some strange errors. This will take 5 hours.
5. Shutdown to remove old drive.
6. Reboot.
7. Oh… the PC says that there are no bootable volumes. [You might want to just hit page down now...]
8. Go through the drill of trying the permutations of jumper settings and cable positions. Makes no difference. Damn.
9. Wonders if it was so smart to clone a drive while booted from it. Reads up on BartPE.
10. Reinstall old hard drive.
11. Download Bart PE (which is fantastic tool for making self booting CDs)
12. Install Bart PE
13. Run Bart PE to create a bootable CD with Drive Image XML
14. Reboot using new CD and use Drive Image XML to clone drive. This time, it only takes 1 hour.
15. Remove old hard drive.
16. Reboot. Oh… the PC still says there are no bootable volumes.
17. Go read up on MBRs and get frustrated. Looks for a WinXP install CD to try and use the recovery console.
18. Oh wait… this is WinXP Pro and the CDs that came with this machine were restore only. (not that I could find them anyway.)
19. Find a WinXP Home CD and use that to launch the recovery console.
20. Try running fixboot.
21. Try running fixmbr.
22. Reboot and eject CD. Oh… the PC still says there are no bootable volumes.
23. Hm… maybe this mysterious MBR thing is still hosed. I know, I’ll start installing WinXP home up to the point that the hard drive can be booted and then reimage it with the old drive.
24. Start install WinXP home
25. When it reboots and boots from the hard drive, interrupt and repeat step 14.
26. Reboot. Oh the PC boots up from the new drive!!! Oh… wait… now it hangs at the welcome screen.
27. Connect the old drive and try rebooting.
28. The PC boots up all the way, though the old hard disk is getting quite the work out.
29. Hm… Drive Management says that the new drive is using the old drive as a Page file store
30. I know how to fix that- I’ll just tell Windows not to use a Page file.
31. Reboot… and now the PC hangs at the welcome screen no matter if the old drive is connected or not. ARGH.
32. Wait… how do I get the PC to boot from the old drive now to erase the new drive?? (panic!)
33. Oh I know, I’ll use the recovery console again. Put CD in the drive and reboot.
34. The PC reads the CD, and then decides that reading the hard drive is better. Boots into the hard drive where it hangs.
35. Remove new drive. PC boots fine into the old drive.
36. Now I’m screwed. I guess they’re stuck with their old drive.
I thought I was stupid, until I started searching around the internets for solutions to this problem - a lot of people run into this same problem where they clone/ghost a Windows drive, and it never boots up again!
Windows XP: XP refuses to boot after ghosting
I recently ghosted a machine and now it doesn’t want to boot.
Originally the OS was on a 3gb partition which quickly ran out of space. So I ghosted the partition, deleted the old partition, made a larger partition, and put the ghost back in. Now it won’t get past the screen that says “windows xp” in the middle, just before the login screen. I can move the mouse around all I want, and ctrl alt del does nothing. It does the same thing when I boot into safe mode. I used Ghost 8.0, so it’s not a compatability issue.
Why is microsoft torturing me? I’m stumped.
Hey that sounds like the problem I have! The answer? It requires a $9.99 monthly subscription to find out. Seriously.
Do you have the answer?
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15 Comments to “HELP: Why is cloning a PC drive so hard?”
November 21st, 2005 at 4:38 pm
After much hell trying to find a working login from bugmenot (thanks, bugmenot firefox plugin!), it turns out none of the answers were satisfactory. I’d have been pissed if I paid $10 just to find that out.
I’m going to attempt to upgrade my father’s laptop’s hard drive this week… hopefully I won’t run into the same issue.
November 21st, 2005 at 9:05 pm
Oh wow… bug me not. I didn’t even think of trying that. Good idea!
November 24th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Success!
Follow your steps 1-6. (Step 4 only took me an hour)
7. Download and burn Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org) ISO image.
8. Boot Knoppix with the new hard drive in.
9. After the Knoppix GUI starts, open a terminal and run “sudo bash” (or hit ctrl-alt-f2 and get to console).
10. Run fdisk. Type ‘p’ to see the list of partitions. Type ‘a’ to set active partition, and choose the one you want. This is the important step that Windows doesn’t seem to let you do. Type ‘w’ to write the changes to the partition table.
11. Reboot.
12. Run FIXMBR and FIXBOOT from the XP Recovery Console. This may not actually be necessary.
(…and for me: 13. Put old hard drive back in to deactivate Photoshop CS2 so it can be reactivated on the new hard drive; 14. Put new hard drive back in and reactivate Photoshop)
March 14th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
I just went through (almost) exact same problem of Windows XP not booting up even to the login screen. I think what finally did it was that the partition that you clone to needs to be set as an Active partition. The easiest place to do this is to make sure that it’s set to active in the storage management utility.
I also, for good measure, redid the cloning process, using drive-to-drive instead, making sure that the new drive was actually installed in the bloody IDE cable, instead of through the USB housing. So I don’t know, it was probably one of those two
April 8th, 2006 at 9:41 am
To the person who posted this question, thank you - my question PRECISELY.
To Alan - you’re brilliant. I didn’t use Knoppix - I used Ubuntu, but same difference. It worked beautifully. A non-bootable drive became a fully bootable instance of windows identical to my previous install on the old drive. Where do I send the new car?
June 12th, 2006 at 3:18 am
place new drive as master c:\ in pc load windows.
remount old drive as slave.
copy slave to master.
works for me
even better if u have another drive to boot with then copy e: to d:
October 10th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
If you use Nero Back it up, you can make perfect bootable backup images of your hard drive on to cd or dvd-r or +-rw the Cd/DVD-r is bootable and you have a complete image of your old drive on removable media.
you can complete a hard upgrade rather simply by using nero7
1. make image of old hard drive to cd/dvd-+r/rw using nero back it up disc image tool
2. remove old drive
3. make new hard drive (master) and put it into your computer
4. boot from the DVD or CD image that nero back it up made of your old drive, when your computer boots follow the prompts and you’ll be back in business in no time.
http://ww2.nero.com/enu/index.html
December 2nd, 2006 at 3:00 am
If I’m not very much mistaken your banner photo is the sculpture that stood at the foot of the world trade centers that fateful day on 9/11/01.
It was recovered from the rubble and is on display as it was found, though it has been moved futher downtown to Battery Park.
You work in NYC then?
(by the way I regularly go the Ubuntu route to repair partiton tables / make drives bootable came across your article when looking for a way of speeding up DriveImage XML)
April 26th, 2007 at 1:35 am
FUCK OFF!
“It requires a $9.99 monthly subscription to find out.” Hehehehe
June 13th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
The reason why you are stuck in the XP screen is because your new drive has taken a different drive letter than the original C: Try installating a slave drive with it so it forces it back to a c: and it might work. Kind of messy but it got me out of a jam once.
God Bless
September 15th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
well i use symantec Ghost and i never had such problems!!
Try norton Ghost or Acronis for cloning old hard drive to new ones is the best way and fast.
Regards
Daniel
October 25th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I use ranish partition manager, works really fast…. just connecting new Drive as slave or into SATA port, using a bootable floppy and cloning partitions or whole disks with only 64K exe file. (cloning whole disk works better, ignoring warning about diferent sizes)
I’ve been cloning and upgrading the same configuration several times…..
)
(every time getting a bigger HD
At 300Gb, my last upgrade, my first from 20Gb to 40Gb, some years ago.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:58 pm
This is for me a very valuable exchange of messages. I once had a totally crashed C: drive, and got back into business by wiping it and then doing a Restore of an image I had previously cloned to another drive using DriveImage XML on a BartPE boot CD. But … there seems no way to really test your clone made by DriveImnage without giving it the freedom to wipe your existing drive C. It seems, therefore, we have an important short-coming of DriveImage XML for those who want to be sure it will work when needed. (Who wants to wait until you actually have a crash to know whether or not your clone will actually work to boot the computer?) Does any one know which backup-and-restore programs are able to offer this security — their clone-and-restore process can be fully tested and made to boot the computer without your having to wipe your existing drive C in the process? (I do not wish to start a debate here; but I too have many times confirmed that your mother-in-law could do this on a Mac, and probably almost in her sleep.)
February 18th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I was wondering if I, or any other mac user, can use CCC to clone a PC harddrive by inserting the harddrives, Source and Target, into a Mac Pro.
Do CCC see the PC harddrives at all (NTFS, FAT32 etc.) ?
June 11th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Hmmm… Since I only use Seagate drives (well, “only” is a bit strong–I sometimes use Western Digital and even a Maxtor once in a while–but same diff for following procesure), and Seagate’s Discwizard utilities (and Western Digital’s and Maxtor’s, same Seagate tool for Maxtors) will mirror the drive using a subset of Acronis TrueImage, I’ve not had such problems. If doing a Windows install of a new drive, one can do the mirroring from withing Windows using a nice GUI. If booting off the Seagate DW CD… nice GUI to use there, as well. Simple. Even a child can do it. Well, a child who can read. *heh*
Now, that doesn’t mean I won’t run into a problem somewhere down the road upgrading a hard drive, but I’ve not had any issues upgrading even a Western Digital smaller capacity to a Seagate larger capacity using the Seagate tools for the mirroring.
Or, just have a ral Acronis TrueImage boot disk available. You can download the full commercial version of Acronis TrueImage 8 and register it with Acronis for free by following this link (http://www.acronis.co.uk/mag/pcpro/ati8pe).
I’m sure there are some nightmare upgrades that are out there awaiting me, but in 15 years of doing PCs (yeh, and some Mac stuff thrown in), it just doesn’t get a lot easier than using the tools the hard drive manufacturer recommends to do the job. Or use the full version of the relevant tool (in this case, Acronis TrueImage) to do a particular job (disk mirroring).
Once the Windoze comp is all set up, though, a simple lil disk imaging/backup software like DriveImage XML (also free) might suit the avdoze user better.
While I’ve done system repairs of Windoze systems using various Linux tools, this is one case where such are probably unecessary overkill–and unecessarily over complex. Simple is better, IMO, as long as it works well.
Simple in this case =
Download and burn the (ISO) appropriate installation tools from the relevant hard drive manufacturer
Install the new drive as slave to the old drive
Boot using the manufacturer’s tools
Run the AcronisTI subset (clone disk, WD uses the same process, same tool)
Let it trundle along and then reboot after changing the master-slave jumpering on the drive(s).
Done.
Someday this process will fail me and I’ll need to jigger a jury-rigged solution, but until then, I’ll just use the manufacturer’s tools to do the job.
BTW, I’ve been known to make tasks using a Mac more cumbersome than needed, so don’t feel like this is a slam.
When working on a Mac, one just has to learn to do things “The Mac Way” and when working on a PC, one has to learn that doing things “The PC Way” means that there are (always *heh*) many, many complicated ways to do things and (usually) a few simple, uncomplicated ways to do the same things. It’s the wide array of choices and decision tree branches that can throw one off. Just remember: if there’s an apparently obvious but complicated way to do things on a PC (in any OS), there are also probably several much simpler, uncomplicated ways to do te same thing.
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