Trouble cloning new disk HELP!!!

[jeffmonteith]

I just bought a Seagate 250GB disk (ST3250823A) to replace an older Seagate 120GB disk. I have tried to clone using Acronis (both restoring from an image and straight clone) as well as Paragon Drive Copy without success.

After cloning, I shut down, swap disks, change cable setting to 1st postion, jumpers set to cable select, and remove the old disk. When booting up I get an error message saying it cannot find the operating system.

I eventually got fed up and tried to reinstall XPMCE2005 to the disk from scratch, with everything going fine... copying files etc. until it was time to reboot. After booting I got the same message, "cannot find operating system" at the DOS prompt.

I have a fairly new component system running an EPOX EP-9NDA3+ mobo (BIOS 9ND35915) and 2GB of RAM. Nothing unusual with the rest of the system.

I need some serious help here. The disk works fine as a slave but cannot seem to handle being the primary disk. Oh, I formatted the darn thing at least 10 times as well.

 

[Hawkeye22]

This may be relevent.

Also, did you remove the old hd? Having two system disks might be causing confusion.

 

[cowboytech]

just do it right once, sounds like you have gotten some practice, then it sounds like you need to do a bios check on the specific hd the system is supposed to boot from. (if you have just installed an operating system and it will not boot to it, Check the BIOs, and be sure it is looking for and at the correct hard drive this time.)

Doesn't Seagate come with Caldera on a cd or download and make a cd, like most other hard drives?

 

[jeffmonteith]

Yep, removed the old disk from the system before rebooting.

 

[jeffmonteith]

There's only one disk in the computer so it should boot from it just fine. I can clone to the disk (just doesn't load) as well as install MCE05 from a cd, just won't boot back to the hard drive.

 

[cowboytech]

I wish that were true, but if it was I wouldn't be able to command it to boot to the hard drive I wanted, it would go to the one it wanted, so, what am trying to tell you is; If I have a operating system on one drive (120gig, and the motherboard is commanded to boot to it) and I clone it to a 250gig, then I shut the machine down and pull the 120gig, then you start the machine and it says it can't find the operating system, It is because it is looking for the 120gig that is not there! So, go into bios and tell it to boot to the 250gig, Please!

 

[pscowboy]

If you don't have a Dell comp, don't use Cable Select.

 

[ProHandyman]

My guess is that there is one of 2 problems here. First, the mobo BIOS can't see an HDD over 132GBs... a BIOS update would take care of this. Second, and more then likely, you have misconfigured your HDDs jumpers, and position on cable. Alternatively, when partitioning and formating the drive, you are not setting your primary partition as the bootable.

Convention puts the boot drive on the primary channel, master position. If you do not follow the common convention, Windows is apt to see the drive as a different drive letter (address), and once it is done, even on an install, get's confused.

I would install the new hdd in the standard position, end of primary channel 1, with jumpers set as master (if it is the only drive on this cable, some HDDs have a single drive jumper configuration). Place your original HDD on the secondary channel, master position at end of cable; and "clone". Remove the original drive, and boot.

Most "cloning" software utilities give you the option to clone a partition, or a disk. Even if you want to partition your new disk, and the old one wasn't, don't clone as a partition! This WILL NOT transfer the neccessary boot sector info. Clone as a disk, but only in the size you want.

Don't just FORMAT that drive... I would suggest after all the trouble you have had, that you "zero-write" (low-level format) the new HDD. Your HDD should have come with the software, or you can go to Seagate's website and download the appropriate software. This will render the HDD to the "as delivered" state.

 

[jeffmonteith]

<<So, go into bios and tell it to boot to the 250gig, Please!>>

I did that tonight, and then tried to reinstall from scratch. Same problem. Next step I guess is to flash the bios with the latest version, I just don't see how a 1 year old mobo could not recognize a 250GB disk from the boot. It works just fine as a slave in MCE2005.

To answer the other questions, it is on the end of the primary and I have also changed the jumpers to MASTER, still no go.

 

[jeffmonteith]

I already have the latest BIOS installed. I guess from here I need to low level format. If that doesn't work, I guess I am stuck with a slave drive...