Disk Boot Failure

[I-One-Da?]

Alright,

For history of what I have done it goes like this.

1. Built new PC, swapped HD(IDE) over from old PC with XP
2. Loaded VIsta on new HD(SATA) so I had two boot disks
3. Transferred data from IDE over to new SATA drive.
4. Used Acronis to Image old IDE HD
5. Formatted old IDE HD

Now after formatting the old IDE HD I get a Disk Boot Failure on my new SATA HD with Vista loaded. The IDE HD I formatted was the primary boot disk and the SATA was secondary. Is this problem caused by Boot sequence issues now?

I put in the Vista OS disk and went into WIndows Repair and it does not show any OS to repair. Am I screwed?

Please help. Any insight on this issue would basically save my life as my wife will kill me if I lost all her pictures

Thanks in advance,

Brandon

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

It's probably just not on the list of bootable devices within the BIOS. Enter the BIOS via the instructions upon powering on your machine (Enter Setup F1 for example).

Navigate your way to the boot sequence list (or something worded similarly), and toss your SATA drive on there somewhere. You should be good to go after that...

 

[I-One-Da?]

It's probably just not on the list of bootable devices within the BIOS. Enter the BIOS via the instructions upon powering on your machine (Enter Setup F1 for example).

Navigate your way to the boot sequence list (or something worded similarly), and toss your SATA drive on there somewhere. You should be good to go after that...

I thought that this might be the case. This all happened late last night so I have not had time to troubleshoot. I thought I would research today at work and have some possible solutions when I get home tonight.

Another piece of info that I forgot to mention is that once I loaded the new HD it would never automatically boot. I would always have to choose what to boot from manually.

Zenosincks- Do you think that your solution will work even if when I hit F12 (Boot menu for my MOBO) and choose the SATA HD manually I still get the error? It just seems like if my boot sequence was messed up I would still be able to boot manually to the device by choosing it in the boot menu?

Thanks,

Brandon

 

[I-One-Da?]

Also, right after I formatted the IDE HD I rebooted and this is when I got the error. I have not been able to boot since.

My Hardware in case in matters:

Gigabyte S2H MOBO
AMD 4600+ Dual Core
4 GB G Skills RAM
WD Caviar 160 GB

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Hmm, doubtful.

After giving your initial post a second glance - I am questioning this:

2. Loaded VIsta on new HD(SATA) so I had two boot disks
3. Transferred data from IDE over to new SATA drive.
4. Used Acronis to Image old IDE HD

If I am understanding this correctly, you created two separate partitions on the SATA HDD, installed Vista on one of them and then, you imaged the entire old HDD over to the second partition?

If the Vista disk won't recognize a Vista installation, perhaps you accidentally imaged the old HDD over onto the Vista partition?

However, if that were the case, you would probably be booting off the XP installation you had on the old HDD. Why not use something such as GParted to take a look at your partitions, see if you have anything installed on either etc. Let's determine what exactly is on your SATA drive now and then you can make a move from that knowledge.

 

[I-One-Da?]

Hmm, doubtful.

After giving your initial post a second glance - I am questioning this:

2. Loaded VIsta on new HD(SATA) so I had two boot disks
3. Transferred data from IDE over to new SATA drive.
4. Used Acronis to Image old IDE HD

If I am understanding this correctly, you created two separate partitions on the SATA HDD, installed Vista on one of them and then, you imaged the entire old HDD over to the second partition?

If the Vista disk won't recognize a Vista installation, perhaps you accidentally imaged the old HDD over onto the Vista partition?

However, if that were the case, you would probably be booting off the XP installation you had on the old HDD. Why not use something such as GParted to take a look at your partitions, see if you have anything installed on either etc. Let's determine what exactly is on your SATA drive now and then you can make a move from that knowledge.

To clear up what I did:
I only had one partition on the new SATA HDD. I copied over some of the data to the SATA HDD from the old IDE HDD. Just pictures and I-Tunes music.

Then I took an image of the old IDE HDD with Acronis which is like Ghost. It only takes an instance of the old HDD and saves it as a .tib file which I saved on the new SATA HDD.

Once I had a backup image of the old HDD I then formatted it. Once formatted I restarted and was planning on taking an image of the new SATA HDD with Acronis and saving it on the IDE HDD. That way I would have a solid backup of my Vista install with all of my data. I was planning on using my old IDE as a backup drive to hold my images.

I hope that this makes sense.

The problem occured when I restarted my comp after formatting the old IDE HDD that had my XP install on it.

On a side note has anyone used one of those file recovery tools that claims they can recover data from formatted drives? I might have to go this route to get my data off of my old IDE HDD.

Thank you so much for the help with this. I really want to be able to save my data. We have tons of pictures. It just really sucks because I was literally one restart away from having my data fully backed up.

Brandon

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Ah, yes, that makes sense. Don't get yourself too worked up yet, your data may very well be on the SATA drive considering the fact that you've used utilities to access/write to it.

Download this copy of Knoppix in .iso, burn it as an image and boot off it (using the system with Vista). It will take a few minutes, eventually you'll have a desktop in front of you with access to any storage devices attached to that system.

Browse your SATA HDD and take a look at what's on it. If your data is there, and you want to cover yourself, just copy it over to the IDE drive and take things from there. Now you have two copies of your data so there should be no worries .

You might also want to take the time to test your SATA drive with one of the utilities here.

Like I said, let's see just what's on your SATA drive and stuff before you make any moves. I assume by your words, having your data in a safe place is the most important thing to you in this situation, so, let's figure out where it is .

 

[I-One-Da?]

Ah, yes, that makes sense. Don't get yourself too worked up yet, your data may very well be on the SATA drive considering the fact that you've used utilities to access/write to it.

Download this copy of in .iso, burn it as an image and boot off it (using the system with Vista). It will take a few minutes, eventually you'll have a desktop in front of you with access to any storage devices attached to that system.

Browse your SATA HDD and take a look at what's on it. If your data is there, and you want to cover yourself, just copy it over to the IDE drive and take things from there. Now you have two copies of your data so there should be no worries .

You might also want to take the time to test your SATA drive with one of the utilities

Like I said, let's see just what's on your SATA drive and stuff before you make any moves. I assume by your words, having your data in a safe place is the most important thing to you in this situation, so, let's figure out where it is .

Thank you so much!

I will try this utility tomorrow at work. I do not have a CD burner on my laptop here at home so I am unable to burn the boot disk tonight.

I will then run this utility tomorrow evening and see what I get. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Yes, having my data in a safe place is priority number one for me. This was the whole idea when I built the new PC. I wanted a way to backup up my entire PC so that I would not loose any data.

If you have not used Acronis before you should try it out. I have used it for about 5 years now and it is the best Disk Imaging tool out there. If you are in a network enviroment that uses clone type machines Acronis has a new product out called Snap Deploy that is awesome.

Thanks again,

Brandon

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

I have used Acronis for a few tasks, just not extensively.

Post back with your results tomorrow, and best of luck to you.

 

[I-One-Da?]

I have booted to Knoppix and it looks like my data is there. My backup file of the old IDE HDD is there for sure. The problem I am having now is I can not copy any of the files from one HDD to the other.

I tried to right click the HDD and click on "Change Read/Write mode" but it will not let me do it. It gives me the following error: "The remount command failed. maybe there is another process accessing the filesystem currently."

If I can get the one acronis backup file copied over to the IDE HDD I would be fine. I could then just reload Vista on the SATA and then mount the image on the IDE once windows was up.

Do you have any suggestions now?

Thanks,

Brandon

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Perhaps this thread will be of some assistance with Knoppix: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27793.

It's not really necessary to use Knoppix, it's just an easier method than removing your SATA drive and attaching it to another PC.

You could use another Linux Distro's LiveCD, install an OS on your PATA drive again and access your SATA HDD via that installation, then, transfer the data over, reinstall Vista etc, or as mentioned above you could just attach the SATA drive to another PC.

If you can see the data, I wouldn't worry too much, it should be safe unless something absolutely unsuspectingly catastrophic occurs. You just have to move it from point A to point B.

Something I would definitely recommend (after your data is secure) is testing your SATA HDD with one of the utilities in the link above. Better safe than sorry and it doesn't take long to do...