Cloning 500gb to 250gb hard drive problem

[esecallum]

"The whole point of my previous post is that INSTEAD of "copying partitions resizing them", you rather CREATE new partitions (of changed size) then copy FILES to them.

jaclaz "

but that is what i intend to do.the new hard drive will have 4 primary partitions just bIg enough to hold all the files and a few gigs extra.

you are saying restore MBR will not work?

what about fixmbr?

or what if i install FRESH windows me to partition c: on new hard drive then delete all the files then copy/paste the old windows me from old hard drive.surely that will work/boot because i have done it before and it works.

only question is will xp1 ,xp2,xp3 work on the partitions :e: f: using the boot.ini file on c: on new hard drive.

[Pauldog]

Having some bad sectors doesn't necessarily mean that your disk drive is going bad. Get some diagnostic software that can read the S.M.A.R.T. data logged on your drive, and see if it's reporting anything abnormal. The free software available from the maker of your drive will probably have something that can do this.

As far as making clones of your multiple partitions, XXCLONE will work for all the XP partitions. It doesn't care that the target partitions are smaller as long as all the files fit.

For the ME partition, I think it's likely that it would work like it does for W98. With W98, I could make a working bootable copy of my W98 disk by simply copying everything from a working W98 disk to a blank partition if I do it on a system running W98. (It didn't work if I was running Windows 2000,and so it's unlikely to work if you're running XP.) My process involved shutting off virtual memory on the source drive, then shutting it down, running W98 from another disk, and then copying all files from the source W98 disk to a cleared target drive. That way, there's no problem with files on the source disk that are in use and changing. There was a simple way to make the new disk bootable (to get the right boot sector, I think), but I don't remember how. When you boot up the new disk, remember to activate virtual memory.

But this whole discussion could be moot, because I think there's a good chance that your 500 GB disk drive is OK. But at the same time, backing up your systems with XXCLONE is not a bad idea. It means that in case of a disk failure, you will be up and running again very quickly.

[jaclaz]

@esecallum

The general idea when I write something trying to help someone on the board, is that what I write is READ.

If I meant that a "restore MBR" procedure was needed/useful, I would have written about that.

I tried my best to explain to you the steps involved, WHICH DO NOT INCLUDE "restoring a MBR".

I then tried to explain to you WHY this is NOT ONLY NOT NEEDED, but also WRONG.

Let's try again :

• YOU DO NOT NEED/WANT TO "RESTORE" the MBR of the "source hard disk" to the "target hard disk".
  
• Doing so would be WRONG and would botch for good the "target".
  

The only DATA from the "source disk" MBR that you may want to "migrate" to the "target disk" is the Disk Signature.

If you do so, the \DosDevices\ keys inside the Registries of the various XP installs will need not a modifications and your "target" will be "identical" to the "source", BUT there are some caveats AS SAID, when you connect to a NT system two disks with the SAME signature.

The alternate procedure is to NOT COPY the Disk Signature BUT modify the \DosDevices\ keys inside the Registries of the various XP installs.

The one proposed (partitioning/formatting under XP the 250 Gb disk) is one of the possible methods to prepare the "target disk"

Copying the Me as you proposed would also work, BUT:

1. you will need to change the bootsector of first (active) partition (or use a third party bootloader/bootmanager like grub4dos) to boot the NTLDR
   
2. you won't be able to create NTFS partitions for the XP installs
   
3. you will need ANYWAY to provide a solution for the Disk Signature
   

Or, as said, study XXclone features.

jaclaz

[esecallum]

@esecallum

The general idea when I write something trying to help someone on the board, is that what I write is READ.

If I meant that a "restore MBR" procedure was needed/useful, I would have written about that.

I tried my best to explain to you the steps involved, WHICH DO NOT INCLUDE "restoring a MBR".

I then tried to explain to you WHY this is NOT ONLY NOT NEEDED, but also WRONG.

Let's try again :

• YOU DO NOT NEED/WANT TO "RESTORE" the MBR of the "source hard disk" to the "target hard disk".
  
• Doing so would be WRONG and would botch for good the "target".
  

The only DATA from the "source disk" MBR that you may want to "migrate" to the "target disk" is the Disk Signature.

If you do so, the \DosDevices\ keys inside the Registries of the various XP installs will need not a modifications and your "target" will be "identical" to the "source", BUT there are some caveats AS SAID, when you connect to a NT system two disks with the SAME signature.

The alternate procedure is to NOT COPY the Disk Signature BUT modify the \DosDevices\ keys inside the Registries of the various XP installs.

The one proposed (partitioning/formatting under XP the 250 Gb disk) is one of the possible methods to prepare the "target disk"

Copying the Me as you proposed would also work, BUT:

1. you will need to change the bootsector of first (active) partition (or use a third party bootloader/bootmanager like grub4dos) to boot the NTLDR
   
2. you won't be able to create NTFS partitions for the XP installs
   
3. you will need ANYWAY to provide a solution for the Disk Signature
   

Or, as said, study XXclone features.

jaclaz

OK.

THIS IS WHAT WORKED FOR ME.

I simply used unstoppable copier operating from windows me to copy ALL the FILES from each partition to its respective partition on the new hard drive.

c to c

d to d

e to e

f to f

as expected the new hard drive did not boot.i even tried about 12 different boot utilities from a live cd to no avail.kept saying non system disk.

i then installed xxclone to one of the the xp partitions on the original hard drive and then using the cool tool in xxclone made the new hard drive bootable and also copied the signature to the new one.

when i tried it worked.

i can now boot in to win me ,xp1,xp2 or xp3. on the NEW hard disk.

Edited May 29, 2011 by esecallum