I know there’s been some threads about installing new hard drives and cloning them. Unfortunately the search tool is worthless, so bear with me.
I have an 80GB internal hardrive on a laptop running WinXP Pro SP3.
I used Norton Ghost 12 to clone the new hard drive which is connected to the computer via USB to SATA cables.
During the cloning process, I checked “Copy MBR”. Was that wrong?
Somewhere around 99.9% completion, Norton reported some type of copy error. I clicked on Details and it appeared there were only like 3 or 4 files which failed to copy. Not sure why.
The new drive appeared to at least have all the windows files so I decided to go ahead and switch them out to see if the new drive would at least successfully boot to a working operating system.
It would not. The black and white boot screen reported some type of hardware configuration error or some such. Sorry for being too technical.
I switched things back again and rebooted with the original hard disk. Looking at the new drive in Disk Management I see that it’s only reading as an 80GB drive. Is it the MBR that makes it think it’s an 80GB drive?
How do I get this thing back to normal to reattempt the cloning process.
I’ve been searching for freeware which will erase everything including the MBR. Is this the correct route to take? Where are the effective trustworthy free apps for doing this? Preferably I would like one that works in XP, since I dont have any blank CDs to make a boot disc. Though I’ll go get some if I must.
Please help. What do I do with my new drive to make it realize it’s a 320GB drive, not an 80GB one?
The new drive is a Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEKT. I’ve read a couple things online that talk about using the manufacturer’s software to fix the drive, but I can’t find anything on the WD site.
The new HDD didn’t come with a disk or instructions.
I can format it all day long. But since now it’s only showing up as an 80GB disk, I’m only formatting a drive with a max partition of 80GB. It doesn’t recognize the disk as being 320GB anymore.
Before I started the cloning process, it worked fine as a 320GB disk. It was formatted and partitioned as a single 320GB drive.
Now my computer only recognizes it as an 80GB disk.
I think the reason that you’re winding up with an 80gb drive is because you’re doing a straight clone of an 80gb drive. Ghost has a switch that you can use to tell it “Use the entire available capacity of the target drive”.
I’m not sure if these are the same for your version of Ghost, but you can get a full list by running ghost from the command line with a /? at the end of it, that should show you a screen full of all the switches.
This reminds me-I’ve always wondered what the advantages are of using a cloning program such as Norton Ghost? I’ve bought several hard drives over the years and I’ve always just right clicked one hard drive and cut and paste the entire contents to the new HD-it does take a while but I assume copying 300 GB is supposed to take a long time, so I don’t know. I’ve never had any problems though.
Ghost method is better for copying old boot C: small drive to new bigger drive. Another potential issue Ghost handles is copy-protection-activation signatures on the C: boot drive (such as Macrovision used in Adobe Photoshop.)
You can’t copy/paste your entire C:\ drive using Windows XP. Files that are “currently in use” cannot be copied in Windows. It’s that “make sure file is not write protected or currently in use” error. And many of your files will have to be in use, otherwise how could you be running your OS.
When you copy/pasted entire hard drives, I’m betting the source hard drive was never the same one containing your operating system?
I can’t just create a new partition. The hard disk is not recognized as being 320GB. It thinks it’s 80GB. I can’t make a partition larger than 80GB. It thinks that’s 100% of the drive.
The issue is something about the Dell MBR and LHA-3 which that link above tries to explain. It makes it seem oh-so-simple:
I can’t get any of the programs to even work properly and boot from a CD. I can’t seem to find how to “unhide the HPA” even with the ones that will run. For example, Seagate. It runs fine, but I dont see anything in that program to do what I need. Magic Boot Disk… doesn’t boot. HDAT2 doesn’t do anything for me.
I’m going insane!
Anyone have another software recommendation for “unhiding an HPA”?
astro, Thank you so much!! Those sites were saying the same stuff, but they actually went into the “dummies” specifics that I needed. God, this was so damn frustrating. I took a day and a half off for Christmas and sat down this afternoon to follow the threads you linked to and see if it worked! Finally!!
Anyway, thanks again. Everything is working great! I can actually see the difference between the 5400rpm and 7200rpm hard drive. I love it! And now I have the storage space to keep all my stuff.
One small problem remains:
When my computer boots up, it goes to a Black and White option menu asking me to choose the Operating System. Windows XP/2003 and Windows Professional.
I just chose Windows Professional and it works perfect. What can I do to fix this though? My computer came with XP Pro, I dont know why it’s asking about versions. The old original harddrive never had any issue like that.