Drive restoration problems

[bcohea]

My hard drive is failing. It is a WD 120 GB HDD (WD1200BB), OEM equipment from HP, and it has a recovery partition and then the OS partition.

After noticing poor performance, I tested the hard drive, and it is failing. So I purchased Ghost 9.0 (and I am slowly figuring out it was a mistake) and backed up the drive to an image. I didn't want the recovery partition anymore and want to utilize this space, so I only backup up the OS partition since Ghost can resize partitions to fill unused space.

I purchased a new WD 120 GB HDD, connected it to my laptop (where the image is stored) via HDD enclosure and tried to restore it using all of the applicable switches like "Set drive active for booting (OS) - Primary Partition", "Restore original file structure", and "Restore MBR", as well as "Verify backup image..." and "Check for file system errors after restore"

Well, it finishes the restore just fine, then when I install the HDD into the HP computer it is meant for, it seems to start booting and then hangs at the "Windows is starting" screen before the logon screen.

I suspect that the recovery partition is somewhat to blame for this. Any suggestions would be greatly appeciated. Thank you!

bcohea

 

[RealBlackStuff]

I guess that the restored main-partition expects the recovery-partition as well somewhere on that new HD. After all, an image is a snapshot of the then current status of that partition, with all its implications.
If you can, also make a backup of the recovery partition and put that on the new HD.
What utility said that your original HD is on the way out?

 

[bcohea]

You are correct, sir.

I took a look at the boot.ini file, and what do I see? It is trying to boot from "partition(2)" which was, of course, the correct partition if the recovery partition had been included with the restoration. After changing it to partition(1), it worked like a charm.

By the way, Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Tools prog is what I tested the failing HDD with, and the extended test would find many, many errors.

Thank you for your help, fellow Guinness lover. I wish I could email you a pint! :haha:

bcohea