New HDD, cloned old one, both now corrupt - help!

[Darth Windu]

Hi guys,

Okay to give a bit of context, I have recently installed a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM which I was able to get working after a few troubles. The computer booted, made lots of changes to the system (finding 'new' devices etc) and told me to restart.

This I did but may have caused my own problem. What I was also doing was cloning my current WD 160GB HDD boot drive to a new Seagate 3TB boot drive, so instead of booting back into windows (7 Pro) I used the Seagate clone program, can't remember what it's called, to successfully clone the drive.

Since that point, the computer won't start regardless of which drive I'm trying to use as the boot, and yes I've tried both in at the same time, just one, then just the other - no different. Booting from the Windows 7 Pro disc tells me that the the operating system is 'Unknown' for both drives, yet when I've been able to use the boot DVD to explore the file structure, it looks like all of the files are fine.

The error I keep getting is that the partition is wrong or corrupt - if I try to boot from either disc it immediately goes to a blue screen (which I can't read as it only appears VERY quickly) and restarts. I've had a similar problem in the past which I was able to fix after about three days but I'm getting really frustrated and don't want to break anything!

Any info would be very greatly appreciated.

 

[rgd1101]

Do startup repair off the windows dvd.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/windows-7-startup-repair.htm

 

[fzabkar]

In order to boot from a 3TB drive, you need a UEFI BIOS.

To see the full capacity of a 3TB drive, you would normally need to partition it in GPT mode, not MBR.

Was the original drive partitioned in MBR mode?

When you cloned the drive, did you "image" it, ie did you make an exact sector-by-sector 160GB replica, or did DiscWizard (?) expand the original partitions(s) to fill the target drive?

Can you show us the contents of sector 0 for both drives? You could use one of the following disc editors for this purpose.

Roadkil's Sector Editor:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P24/Sector%20Editor

HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
http://softdm.com/download.html

 

[Darth Windu]

rgd1101 - I've tried many times. It tells me that on the new drive there is no valid Windows install to fix, which is just great. On the old one it says that it can find Windows, but there's a partition error and it will fix it, yet the fix never works. I've also tried System Restore which also achieves nothing.

fzabkar - yeah I know, which was the driving reason for the new motherboard/CPU/RAM. The board does have UEFI and yes the new drive was GPT. The old drive is MBR. DiscWizard told me that it was best to use the 'automatic' option so that's what I did, I imagine that it expanded the partitions but I'm not entirely sure. I also don't understand why that would make my original drive corrupt.

I haven't tried the programs you suggest just yet, but will and report what happens.

 

[Darth Windu]

Okay this is odd. I have a spare boot drive from another computer and tried to boot my comp from that drive instead - I got the exact same blue screen error that I got from my original boot drive, even though I know the spare boot drive is fine. What is going on?

 

[JKatwyopc]

What is going on is that you are trying to boot windows from a drive which is setup for a different Motherboard. Even when this works the result is often unstable, esp with windows 7. Your best bet is to do a Clean install of windows to the new drive and then copy your data from the old drive.

 

[Darth Windu]

As another update - Windows will not start under any condition. I've tried 'last good configuration', 'safe mode', 'debugging'. Nothing works.

 

[Darth Windu]

Okay I'm stumped. I have to install Windows 7 using UEFI so that I can installk it on my 3TB, but my system isn't giving me tthe option of booting with UEFI from the disc, only normal BIOS, and I have no idea how to get around it. I've tried this guide (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/186875-uefi-unified-extensible-firmware-interface-install-windows-7-a.html) but I can't figure out how I'm supposed to force the system to use UEFI, as in where to input that command prompt stuff. I tried on the Windows 7 intro screen from the boot disc, but it tells me it doesn't know how to open the file.

 

[fzabkar]

If "the partition is wrong or corrupt", then the first place to look is in sector 0 where the partition table lives. Next is the boot sector, either sector 63 or 2048 on your MBR drive.

I would dump these sectors before writing anything to the drive. Writing to the drive in this state, including a repair install, may only make matters much worse.

 

[Darth Windu]

Best answer selected by Darth Windu.

 

[Darth Windu]

As it turns out, doing a clean install through the 3TB worked a treat. Everything is up and running properly now, thanks for the info guys.