- Mar 21, 2014
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- 4,510
Hey guys,
I recently cloned my old 180 GB C drive to a new 2TB hybrid drive. I have never once replaced this HDD as my main... I've added other drives, sure, but never used any other drive in all my computers to boot from. This thing is an ancient relic. Needless to say I have no experience with cloning / replacing drives. I figured I could buy a new HDD, clone my old one, and then simply select to boot from the new drive in the BIOS. Turns out I was wrong.
I cloned my drive using the Miray HDClone 4.3 free edition program. There were a few options I wasn't sure about, including whether or not I should allow it to resize the partitions automatically or not, so after having trouble the first time, I wiped the new drive and cloned it again using the other options... no luck.
The problem is that while I can see the new drive (and its backup partition as well) in My Computer, I cannot select it while in the BIOS. The BIOS can't seem to detect it as a boot device. I would assume I can boot from it, seeing how it has all the Windows files on it. If I unplug my C drive and start my computer, then my monitor will just show a black screen with a blinking white cursor similar to the command prompt's located in the top left. Unfortunately nothing can actually be typed, and all the computer can do in this state is beep at me when I press the keyboard. The BIOS cannot be accessed.
When I first cloned the HDD, in Windows Disk Management program it said that the new HDD was "Offline" since it had the same signature as my old HDD, or something like that. Basically, my computer recognized its presence, but Windows did not and it did not appear in My Computer. After turning the drive "Online" it now appears in My Computer, but as I said previously, still not in the BIOS boot menu.
Shown for extra information that may or may not prove useful is what I see in Windows Disk Manager:
http://i.imgur.com/2FtcgxT.png?2
(Sorry for posting the link and not the picture itself, the forums required I confirm my email before I go posting pictures, but after clicking "Send confirmation email" 10 times to no avail, I gave up.)
In that image, Disk 0 is my second HDD, just used as extra storage. It doesn't have any OS on it. Disk 1 is the new HDD, which is essentially identical to Disk 1, my C drive, except that all of the partitions have been scaled up to fill the 2TB. Not sure if it matters or not, but as you can see in the picture the backup for Disk 1 is its own lettered drive, and therefore shows up in My Computer, while the backup on Disk 2 is not a lettered drive, and is therefore invisible to me. I think I can remove the path on the backup, so I doubt that is of any significance. The only outstanding difference between the two drives other than the backup, is that (D) is labelled as being "Healthy (Logical Drive) while (C) is labelled as being "Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Logical Drive)." While I am not sure what Page File or Crash Dump mean, I am quite sure that the lack of being a listed as a Boot drive may be the cause of the issue here. Is there any way to add that label to the drive, or is it merely an observation that Disk Manager has made after inspecting the drives?
Hopefully I have provided enough information to describe the problem in full. Thanks a lot for any assistance you can provide, anything will be greatly appreciated!
Cheers!
I recently cloned my old 180 GB C drive to a new 2TB hybrid drive. I have never once replaced this HDD as my main... I've added other drives, sure, but never used any other drive in all my computers to boot from. This thing is an ancient relic. Needless to say I have no experience with cloning / replacing drives. I figured I could buy a new HDD, clone my old one, and then simply select to boot from the new drive in the BIOS. Turns out I was wrong.
I cloned my drive using the Miray HDClone 4.3 free edition program. There were a few options I wasn't sure about, including whether or not I should allow it to resize the partitions automatically or not, so after having trouble the first time, I wiped the new drive and cloned it again using the other options... no luck.
The problem is that while I can see the new drive (and its backup partition as well) in My Computer, I cannot select it while in the BIOS. The BIOS can't seem to detect it as a boot device. I would assume I can boot from it, seeing how it has all the Windows files on it. If I unplug my C drive and start my computer, then my monitor will just show a black screen with a blinking white cursor similar to the command prompt's located in the top left. Unfortunately nothing can actually be typed, and all the computer can do in this state is beep at me when I press the keyboard. The BIOS cannot be accessed.
When I first cloned the HDD, in Windows Disk Management program it said that the new HDD was "Offline" since it had the same signature as my old HDD, or something like that. Basically, my computer recognized its presence, but Windows did not and it did not appear in My Computer. After turning the drive "Online" it now appears in My Computer, but as I said previously, still not in the BIOS boot menu.
Shown for extra information that may or may not prove useful is what I see in Windows Disk Manager:
http://i.imgur.com/2FtcgxT.png?2
(Sorry for posting the link and not the picture itself, the forums required I confirm my email before I go posting pictures, but after clicking "Send confirmation email" 10 times to no avail, I gave up.)
In that image, Disk 0 is my second HDD, just used as extra storage. It doesn't have any OS on it. Disk 1 is the new HDD, which is essentially identical to Disk 1, my C drive, except that all of the partitions have been scaled up to fill the 2TB. Not sure if it matters or not, but as you can see in the picture the backup for Disk 1 is its own lettered drive, and therefore shows up in My Computer, while the backup on Disk 2 is not a lettered drive, and is therefore invisible to me. I think I can remove the path on the backup, so I doubt that is of any significance. The only outstanding difference between the two drives other than the backup, is that (D) is labelled as being "Healthy (Logical Drive) while (C) is labelled as being "Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Logical Drive)." While I am not sure what Page File or Crash Dump mean, I am quite sure that the lack of being a listed as a Boot drive may be the cause of the issue here. Is there any way to add that label to the drive, or is it merely an observation that Disk Manager has made after inspecting the drives?
Hopefully I have provided enough information to describe the problem in full. Thanks a lot for any assistance you can provide, anything will be greatly appreciated!
Cheers!
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