I just received a response from Microsoft about this issue. This is what Gordon Lou had to say about this:

First of all, please allow me to explain that SCSI, SATA and PATA are different interfaces of Hard Drive, but only PATA drive can working fine with Windows XP without install drivers. We need to install drivers when installing Windows XP on SCSI or SATA Hard Drive. If we made a clone file of PATA drive but restore it to a SATA drive, it may failed to boot up since it did not have a SATA drive in the original clone system, vice versa.

So, we only recommend our customer to clone and restore system between same interface Hard Drive, the issue is more related to a hardware limitation instead of a software/Operating System (OS) issue.

Hope I have provide a simple but clear explanation.

Well, that's certainly no help, is it? From what they are saying, it seems like the clone of my IDE drive should not even boot. That's funny since everything works perfectly EXCEPT the backup process when I choose to back up busy files (Shadow Copy).

My husband and I are looking for a copy of Ghost 2003 (which has the ability to clone the whole drive, not just each partition separately like more recent versions of Ghost) so I'll let you all know if that has a different result than the Acronis product!

Try Amazon, under New and Used section:

http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Ghost-2.../dp/B00006FXML

I'm having the same BSOD using Windows Backup Utility but I got to it via a different route.

I upgraded my 40GB laptop HD to 100GB using Apricorn's EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL aka "EZ Upgrade." EZ Upgrade comes with a HD case, a USB cable, and software. Insert the new HD into the case, load the SW, and it clones your old HD to the new one. Swap the drives and you not only have a new drive but your old drive can now be a spare drive off of your USB port.

It turns out that Apricorn's version 2.0 Upgrade Suite (clone software) is really Acronis version 10 build 5114.

Now there are two ways you can clone a drive with Apricorn's Acronis -

1. under Windows
2. boot from the Apricorn/Acronis CD and the clone will run under Linux.

Since I cloned mine under Windows, Apricorn suggested I do it again by booting from the CD. Then enter F11 to get to a Linux command prompt and immediately after "Quiet" enter (space)acpi=off(space)noapic to turn off all power controls in Bios for this one instance.

Haven't done it yet but will post an update once I do.

So other posters - did you clone under Windows or by booting from CD??

Also, searching doesn't seem to turn up any Bad Pool Header probs related to Norton Ghost so I too was considering trying that. In fact, I talked with level 2 support at Symantec and they hadn't heard of a Bad Pool Header prob - but then Apricorn hadn't either.

If anyone has tried Norton Ghost or doesn't think that's going to change anything, please let us know.

Jim

I did mine while booting off of the CD.

I did mine from within windows using the MaxBlast 5 tool from Seagate (oem from Acronis)...and, by the way, I went from PATA to PATA...even the same size disc...200GB to 200GB...both Maxtor drives...

Let me know how it goes with Ghost, as that is what I use for backups...or at least used to...

(Sure sounds like this is really an Acronis issue...surprised they haven't stepped up and worked on this...it is very repeatable !!!)

Add me to the list of people who are experiencing a BAD_POOL_HEADER error after having done a disk clone with a Seagate / Acronis product.

For me, I used the Seagate DiscWizard (really from Acronis) to clone a 160 GB Seagate SATA drive to a 500 GB Seagate SATA drive.

Now when I try to do a backup or copy operation in NovaBACKUP 8.0.55.0 I consistently get the BAD_POOL_HEADER BSOD when it runs.

I too feel that it is up to Seagate and Acronis to own up to this problem, thoroughly investigate it and provide a simple fix (short of reinstalling Windows on a clean disk).

I will submit support requests to Seagate and Acronis for whatever good it will do. Maybe if we keep up the heat, they will do something.

That is what I have suggested. I just received a reply back and I am going to let them know more about what happened. Maybe if enough people submit a report to them they will see it is a wide spread problem and will fix it.

I spoke with Apricorn again about their Acronis OEM SW for cloning disks and the tech said to try unchecking all startup items in msconfig before cloning from the CD (not from within Windows). He wasn't guaranteeing anything - just suggested that as something to try - apparently one of their customers had told them that it worked. He seemed to be fairly knowledgeable about both Acronis and Norton Ghost. Apparently the two products clone quite differently so Ghost might work. But, and this is important - Ghost 12.0 comes with its own huge set of potential problems.

TechSpot won't let me insert a link until my post count reaches three or greater (this is my second) but there are some very revealing reviews about Norton Ghost 12.0 at Amazon.com - I'll make a couple more posts and then give you the link to the reviews.

I haven't tried Apricorn's suggestion yet and I'm no longer sure I want to try Norton Ghost - but I'll advise if I try either.

This is my third post - the link I promised is coming up next.

Here is the link to the disturbing Norton Ghost reviews at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/review/product...DateDescending

In a hopless attempt to get my systems working without having to re-install all my programs again has anyone tried doing a "repair" of the existing windows installation? IE starting from the XP install CD and instead of installing newly, just do a repair of the existing installation?

To help others I can offer the following information since I have the exact same problem on two completely different systems:

Going from PATA to SATA does not matter as I have done that on one and PATA to PATA on the other.

Video cards/drivers does not mater as I have one ATI and one nVIDIA.

CPU/motherboard does not matter - two completely different rigs.

I also tried re-installing SP2 and that did nothing.

Other fourms suggested turning off the MS indexing service and that did nothing as well.

Also tried manually starting the VSS and Shadow copy providers without results.

All I can conclude is that the Discwizard/Max Blast/Acronis made some very small/minor change to the disk that causes the shadow feature to crash.

I did read somewhere and I can't find where I read it that this software somehow messes up the DOS names for the files on the disk. This might explain why there are no errors from XP in normal running. However I have not figured out how to check/fix this.

kam33mitch, I just tried Windows Repair right now and it did NOT work for me. I'm still getting BAD_POOL_HEADER errors when doing backups or copies with NovaBACKUP with the "Enable Open File Copy" option checked. This is VERY frustrating! :-(

I suggest to do what I did and just re-install windows and install all of your software again. I would suggest to make a copy of your "C:\Documents and Settings" folder somewhere off of the C drive. You can restore all your Documents and Settings when you install Windows XP by copying over the files back over. Some files you may not be able to copy but they will be re created when you install Windows XP again.

I would also suggest to submit a tech support request to Seagate. If enough people send the same sort of problem than Seagate will have to fix the problem with their software. I do understand where Microsoft comes from because SCSI and SATA are not built into Windows directly so it can cause a problem with a clone. We are mixing different Hard Drive Interfaces together on the boot drive. Especially when the Windows Kernel is build at the time of install meaning it is working with whatever Hard Drive Interface the boot drive was when Windows was installed. This doesn't get repaired when you do a in-place install. It replaces everything but the kernel (also called HAL - Hardware Abstraction Layer).

Oh, I have a submitted a question to them and it's been four days now with no response.

I still have my original drive so I can go back anytime I want and just copy my new data files back but the whole point was that it was time for a bigger drive. For me, re-installing windows would be the last, last resort. I hate having to re-authorize all my software and go through the hours of swapping CDs & DVDs. There has to be an easier way, right?

It took them about a week for them to respond to my question. I'm still working with them hoping they can offer an answer or even a bug fix.

Well my first response was not all that great:

[COLOR="Blue"]Thank you for your E-mail inquiry. With regards to your query, I would be glad to assist you.
I understand that you are having trouble using the MS backup utility in XP, let me inform you that if the drives are working fine when you are not using the MS backup, then there is no problem with the cloning, the drives are working fine. As for the BAD_POOL_HEADER error, Microsoft has identified this problem and you may call Microsoft more assistance on this error.[/COLOR]

The only other question I have at this point is if everyone having these problems used the boot from CD option. I'm wondering if I would have better luck running it straight from windows.

Any comments?

No - I did not boot from the CD. I cloned from within XP Professional SP2.

I have received some reasonable responses from Apricorn (their product includes Acronis version 10) but have not been able to try them all yet.

Before you clone - make sure all BIOS passwords are turned off and uncheck all Startups in msconfig - I haven't recloned yet so I haven't tried these.

Suggestion for after you have cloned - increase IRPStackSize by 3 at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameter s (insert it if necessary - default is 15 decimal, max is 50 decimal, see Microsoft knowledgebase Article ID : 285089 ) - this didn't stop my Bad Pool Header problem.

I have a perfectly reproduceable problem. Start Windows Backup Utility and in less than 30 seconds I get a BSOD Bad Pool Header 19_20.

I'm getting ready for a trade show next week so I won't be able to try anything else until I get back. Then I will try unchecking all Startups and then clone again - I already know that no BIOS passwords are enabled.

If that doesn't work, I may try Norton Ghost but I'm nervous about all the bad reports I mentioned in a previous post.

I won't bore you with the details of how much digging and where I found this but I've tried it and I can now do shadow copy backups again.

Try the following:

1) regedit from the run menu.
2) goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE-10318}
3) Export this key so you have a backup of it. (I know this solves the MSbackup but I don't know if other problems will pop up.)
4) delete the key "UpperFilters"
5) re-boot
6) My computer did a "Found new hardware" when it re-booted and required another re-boot.
7) Go ahead and re-boot
8) Run your backup software as ususal.

If you want to know how I found this . . .

This key is the device manager for the disk drives. I found this from a thread where the CD drive was causing the same BSOD and the solution was to delete this key from the CD ROM device manager registry. I went down a couple and saw that the disk drives had the same filter and had an entry of "partman". After deleting and re-booting my PC is behaving like it used to. Obviously I'll do some more testing but the BSOD is gone and I'll take it. Anything to not have to re-install everything. I KNEW IT HAD TO BE SOMETHING SIMPLE!!

I really hope this works for everyone else!!

I can verify that kam33mitch's solution DOES WORK! No more BSODs after this procedure. Great detective work!

I did find a side-effect on my system. Explorer now shows three new "Local Disk" entries (E:, G:, I that appear to be small FAT partitions on each of my 3 NTFS drives (1 internal, 2 USB). I believe these were hidden before and contain the Dell re-install files.

I tried using the Computer Management\Storage\Disk Management console (right-click My Computer > Manage) to hide these partitions somehow, but didn't have any luck. (Their context menu just has a "Help" item, nothing else - unlike the NTFS partitions.) Any advice on how to hide these again would be appreciated.

Three cheers to kam33mitch!!!