How to Clone XP partition to new drive?

[starwisecom]

I HAD SUCCESS!
THANKS FOR THE GREAT ADVICE! :-D

Last night I
1) used EASEUS Partition Master to successfully clone the entire source boot disk (NOT just the 'C' partition) to the new destination disk (leaving a lot of unallocated space left over, which I easily dealt with later).

2) DISCONNECTED the source disk's SATA cable and attached it to the new hdd BEFORE I REBOOTED!

Thought I tried this procedure before, but obviously not.



HISTORY:
My goal: add space & speed to my computer.

1) I got a new 1TB Samsung hdd & installed it. My OS (XP Pro,SP3) recognized, partitioned & formatted it perfectly! :-D

2) I made a 20GB primary active partition on the Samsung for the OS plus 1 more primary partition for data. Then I cloned my reliable-working, identical-sized 20GB OS partition from the "old" 74GB Velociraptor I'm using.

3) Changed the BIOS so that the Samsung = boot drive.

4) Computer boots up fine UNTIL THE VERY END when I get an error message that says, "kernel32.dll" (or sometimes "ntoskrnl.exe") is unhappy and must close. When I close the message, the computer freezes, needing power-off to reboot. ;-(

5) Read online that this error means I must run FixBoot & maybe FixMBR from Recovery Console of my original M/S XP installation disk.

6) BUT, my original M/S disk is XP Home Ed (2001). I got a Microsoft package (2004) to upgrade from XP Home into XP Pro, but it is only software, not a boot-able disk. I then let M/S update my software to SP3.

7) Sadly, there is NO Recovery Console program on my XP Home Ed disk, nor in the XP Pro upgrade software. So no easy way to run FixBoot.

8) So, I used BartPE to run "WINNT.exe" (& later tried "WINNT32.exe") off my XP Home Ed disk, and launch FixBoot that way. BUT Fixboot warned, "the Windows version (= Pro) on this computer is NEWER than on this disk (= Home)." It then tried to connect to M/S website for some reason. I was off-line at the time, so I shut Fixboot down.

9) I then read online NEVER to let the old (= Home) version of Fixboot link to M/S because it will destroy up my Pro SP3 configuration. This information scared me away from using the Home version of Fixboot.

10) So, I used BartPE to run "bootsect.exe /nt52" off my original Vista disk (got in '07 before I learned Vista stinks). "bootsect.exe /nt52" is the Vista name for Fixboot.

11) Although "bootsect" says, "the boot sector (boot.ini) was updated correctly", now the computer only boots up to the blue screen "Installing Windows" and freezes, needing power-off to reboot. ;-(


What I have tried:

a) various cloning software: Macrium Reflect, DriveImage XML, EASEUS Partition Master, Seagate DiskWizard, WD's version of Acronis True Image, etc. No success. ;-(

b) swapping cables so Samsung uses the Velociraptor SATA cable. ;-(

c) read about Hardware Abstraction Layer archetecture issues to learn if the Samsung is incompatible HAL-wise with my 1.5 year old desktop, but this seems unlikely.


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Any ideas from better minds than mine?

Any one know what happens when XP Home version of Fixboot "fixes" a XP Pro upgrade configuration by connecting to M/S website?!?
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thanks

 

[LookinAround]

A couple thoughts...

1) Given the list of cloning tools you've already tried, i don't think it's a tool issue

2) I'd try going back to original HD and run chkdsk /r to verify disk and filesystem integrity and correct errors before trying another clone

3) Maybe someone knows different, to best of my knowledge i believe XP Home vs XP Pro both use the same recovery console (the diff between the two is just that XP Pro has additional Windows system and program files to provide added functionality. (do you remember the link where you read that warning????)

And even in worst case, you're running fixboot/fixmbr tools on the clone, right? You needn't run them on the original if it boots fine

 

[gbhall]

The boot sector still resides on the original drive. You are now booting from the new drive, which has NO boot sector on it after cloning. You could reset your original drive to be the boot drive, the new one now being second drive in the boot order (called drive(1), the first is drive(0)) and that new drive also has a copy of windows after cloning. You just edit the file boot.ini ( a hidden, system file at the root of the first drive, and edit it to find the second copy of windows on the second drive instead.

Where there is a line saying
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
and another
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="blah bla

you just change the disk(0)rdisk(0) bits to point to the new second drive disk(1)rdisk(1)

You can do this editing using msconfig see here - http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/bootini.htm check the values against your own system, they can differ.

When you have this working, you can delete the original drive version of Windoze, use the space for backups (drive image for preference) What you need to understand is that boot.ini is NOT the boot sector. THAT is a bit more special, and only later does it hook into boot.ini by using ntldr which actually needs to be where the boot sector says it is, NOT where boot.ini might be THOUGHT to say it is. Boot.ini is actually saying where the OS is.