Ide to sata using acronis will not boot

[fpresiado]

i cannot get the sata drive to boot after making a cloned drive from a ide drive using acronis. i know i am supposed to load the new drivers to boot from sata instead of ide (pata) connection. so i do i load the drivers, i already tried repair mbr and the other one i cant remember.

 

[GhislainG]

Are both the old and the new hard disk connected to the same system? What OS? Is the SATA controller configured for IDE mode?

 

[fpresiado]

Are both the old and the new hard disk connected to the same system? What OS? Is the SATA controller configured for IDE mode?

its a new system, OS xp. the old computer had ide only and it was a pentium 3 computer so i cloned the ide drive to a new sata drive. i already tried bios settings from ide to sata still wont work.

 

[GhislainG]

You definitely need to set the controller in IDE mode; not AHCI or RAID. Before cloning the drive, did you use MergeIDE? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082 You can save the file to the hard disk; there's no need for a floppy.

 

[Paperdoc]

You have tried to use an old OS from a Pentium 3-based system in a "new system". I am betting that there are LOADS of devices in this new system that never were part of the old one. By "devices" I don't just mean hard drives and USB ports. A typical mobo these days contains maybe 30 to 50 "devices" like sound chips, USB chips, drive controllers, on-board video, memory controllers, etc. All of these need their correct drivers installed in the OS. During a regular installation from an Install CD, the process takes an inventory of all devices present and selects the related drivers and installs them as part of the OS. It does NOT install drivers for other devices not present. Net result in your case is that the OS you cloned has all the drivers needed for your OLD machine, and is missing most of the ones needed for the new one.

There is a way to try to fix this, but with machines so different it may not work. You need the Win XP Install CD and start out as if you were going to Install to your new SATA drive in the new machine. BUT you do NOT do a normal Install. Instead you choose from the initial menus to do a "REPAIR INSTALL". This process, ideally, compares all the drivers already on your HDD against all the actual devices it finds in the machine, and tries to fix all the mis-matches. If it works, you get to boot and use your machine normally. But it does not always work. If it does not, your only option will be to do a brand new Install on your new machine, then Install all your application software on it, then copy all your data files and folders from the old IDE drive to the new one.

Since you cloned from an older IDE-based system I am sure you do NOT have the driver installed for SATA or AHCI devices. And you cannot simply install that driver AFTER booting from a SATA drive, because Win XP can't read a SATA drive and boot from it! You MUST go into BIOS and find where you configure your SATA drive port, and set its mode to IDE Emulation. That way the BIOS will make the actual SATA HDD behave just like an IDE HDD and Win XP will be happy to deal with it, never knowing the hidden truth. This setting MUST be made BEFORE you try the Repair Install from the CD.