Hard drive ?

[1firecapt]

I've tried to clone this new Seagate 80GB hard drive for use in this Dell L500r that I got out of the trash. I want it as a back-up unit. It's running XP Pro. I installed SP2 after a major clean-up. The BIOS picked up the new drive. I used Seagate's Disk Wizard to format, partition and copy from the old Quantum 20.5GB grinder. Every thing checks out A-OK. No apparent capacity issues.The drive is running as master as I type(?). Thing is, it won't boot the OS. I installed the old drive as slave and the system boots from the old drive and then switches back to the new drive. I can watch and hear this happen. I ran Seagate's Tools and find there are errors in the partition. I ran CKDSK and defrag'd. I wiped and re-formatted. Same results. I'd try to run an OS repair if I had an XP Pro disk. Any Ideas? Thanks.

[J1mmy]

So basicaly, when you boot up your PC, it boots from the slave and then switches to master? Am i Correct?

[1firecapt]

Precisely. Or, rather, it used to. I wiped the drive and used Norton ghost to clone. Now the new drive will bring up my desktop and immediately log off where before it would only load the Windows logo and then go back to the Dell boot screen. Again Seagate's Tools finds errors on the drive. Specifically,INDEX and METADATA file errors. The old drive is back in the case as Slave. The new drive shows up as Master in the setup. The unit now boots to the slave and the slave is shown as the C: drive in "My Computer". I set Ghost to assign the new drive as C: and remove the old drive. Though I cleaned up the old drive(Adaware. Spybot, VirusScan, etc.) before starting this whole clone process, I'm thinking the old drive has errors, although, CKDSK and Norton Disk Doctor and WinDoctor don't see any errors and the unit runs quite satisfactorily with the old drive. I'm trying to bear in mind that this is an upgraded Win98 computer. The current file structure on the new drive is such that it won't DEFRAG.
I'm planning on trying some other options before I wipe the drive and reformat again. I really feel like Ghost got the drive closer to functioning. I located a Dell Win XP Pro Recovery CD. But there may be BIOS, Windows Update issues and who knows what associated with running that disk. Thanks for your interest. Any input would certainly be appreciated.

[J1mmy]

Well, what makes you think there could be any problems with the old drive. As everything seems to be running fine, how could you possibily tel.

If you do suspect this, maybe you should start keeping backups..

[Zoltar]

A fresh install of the OS would surely be preferable. Cloning the old disk to a new one should work okay, but you need to start with a totally clean new disk. How are you "wiping" the new (target) drive? I am not sure what Ghost does. Since you have attempted this at least once, the new drive needs to be "zeroed out" first - at least that has been my (painful) experience with cloning.

What if you physically disconnect power from the old (slave) drive? Do you get a sucessfully boot? Can you give the new disk boot priority in BIOS?

If you look at the disks in Computer Managment (Ctrl panel>Admin tools>Computer mgmt>Disk Management) which disk is listed as "system?"

If the old disk was badly fragged, then your clone will be the same, and de-fragging is probably going to be difficult.

[1firecapt]

Thanks for the input, you guys. Remember this is a Dell Win98 computer upgraded to XP PRO by who knows what means. I rescued it from the recycler so I could have a back-up unit. It has some nice Apps installed on it. I have no OS or any other CDs. The OS seems to be legit because Microsoft will give it Windows updates. The old drive worked fine but was just noisy so i thought I'd put in a new, larger drive and save the old unit for emergencies. When I got the unit it had so many issues I couldn't believe it ran at all. I still can't get to Safe Mode through F8 or any other means that I can find.

At one point, running only the new drive, I did manage to get to the desktop screen before the system would log off. This with the old drive completely removed. Throughout this ordeal the drives have always shown with the desired positions and notations.

As of this moment the new drive is running Windows on it's own. The problems all seem to have originated in the old drive. Even though swept clean with Adaware, Spybot, AVG and defragged with Windows. I went back to a SystemsWorks 2003 disk. Ran all of the utilities on the old drive. Found 100 or so issues. Ran Norton Speed Disk. Wiped the new Seagate drive again as before with Seagate's Disk Wizard. Partitioned and Formatted with Windows. Cloned with Ghost 2003. Great! Not one glitch. Left both drives alone. Rebooted. Old drive (C=Master. New drive(D=Slave. Windows ran CKDSK. AOK. Shut down. Pulled the old drive. Jumpered new drive to CS (Dell) and plugged it in. Rebooted. New drive (C Windows ran CKDSK. AOK. The system started. All the Apps are there and functional. Defragged. Smooth.
Firefox is moving slowly. I'll re-install it.
Install problems always seem to arise from existing, though invisible issues and errors.
I'm going to use Ghost 2003 to backup this old computer

Dell L500r
PIII@500MHz
256MB SDRAM (added by me)
Win XP Pro
Sony CD-RW
Sony DVD_ROM (hanging out side the case)
Creative Audio PCI Sound
Integrated Video

I backup the main computer with Ghost 9

Dell 8400
P4@3.2GHz HT
2GB DDR2 SDRAM
Win XP Home
Dual DVD drives
Audgy Soundblaster
ATI All-In-Wonder
17" LCD

[Sixpac_XP]

Your first mistake was using ghost! All Symantec products are GARBAGE!

Use Anacronis for cloning drives.. very good software.

Also what did you use to "wipe" the drive?

Have you made sure there isn't some hidden partition on the drive?

Also since you found the comptuer in the trash doesn't mean you own the software on the computer. Personally I would wipe it clean anyways and install your own paid for software.

[1firecapt]

Point A= I started with Seagates DiskWizard. Ghost worked in spite of my ignorance.

Point B=That would be Acronis-good reviews indeed.

Point C=read the above.

Point D=double checked.

Point E=One can purchase a nice barebones with OS for the price of XP Pro.If Microsoft doesn't mind, I don't mind.

Point F=Smell? One corporation is as bad as another now-a-days.

Bottom line=low cost, functional backup unit Excellent educational tool. Good bye Tech Support.

Rains too much in Victoria. Don't it?

[Sixpac_XP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1firecapt

Point A= I started with Seagates DiskWizard. Ghost worked in spite of my ignorance.

Point B=That would be Acronis-good reviews indeed.

Point C=read the above.

Point D=double checked.

Point E=One can purchase a nice barebones with OS for the price of XP Pro.If Microsoft doesn't mind, I don't mind.

Point F=Smell? One corporation is as bad as another now-a-days.

Bottom line=low cost, functional backup unit Excellent educational tool. Good bye Tech Support.

Rains too much in Victoria. Don't it?

Yes Dell and Symantec are JUNK.

There you go....

And actually it doesn't rain much here for a costal city on the Pacific smart guy.

[J1mmy]

OMG...My life IS Symantec/Norton!