Re: Hard Drive Upgrade

Carl Farrington wrote:
"John Doue" <notwobe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dNDNg.321$ib4.240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Carl Farrington wrote:

"John Doue" <notwobe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:QqsNg.44$ib4.9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Carl Farrington wrote:


"John" <johnpaulwatkins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1157966444.504895.196810@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


I am having difficulty upgrading my IBM R51 Thinkpad HDD. I used
TrueImage to clone the disk, including the FAT32 partition used for
rescue and recovery, and that seems to have worked. The problem comes
when swapping the new disk fir old, the machine will not boot and I
receive a "Operating System not found" error.

I have checked BIOS, and it does recognise the new disk. I have also
double checked the drive partitions to make sure the clone has worked
as requested, and that the right partition is active etc.

OS is XP. Old disk is 40GB Hitachi. New disk is 80GB Toshiba.

Any advice welcome, thanks.

I have had strange results with cloning laptop drives, quite often with TrueImage as well. The problem seems to arise when doing the cloning with a desktop computer, and then moving the drive back to the laptop. Odd as this sounds, it's as though the desktop machines seem to address the disk slightly differently to the laptops. In many cases I have been left with what appears to be an MBR or boot sector problem, and the only fix is to repartition and reformat from within the target machine. Odd.

Perhaps though, the problem in this instance is more to do with you trying to clone the HPA partition. You should really be backing up and restoring the HPA partition with the Phoenix tools, as per the IBM instruction document which details the procedure.
Carl,

I think I have an explanation for the "strange results" you are referring to. IMHO, and although nobody has been able to explain clearly to me the cause of the problem, it looks like Thinkpads has a different way of "addressing" a HD.

This does seem to /possibly/ be the case, although it's not limited to Thinkpads, and in my experiences it's been bootsector/mbr only, not the entire drive/filesystem. I have had exactly the same problem with a variety of laptops. I can't remember brands right now, but I suspect Compaq & some Dells to have shown the same symptoms.

In all of the cases where I had this problem, the filesystem did actually seem fine. From a Windows XP recovery console, I was able to chkdsk, fixmbr, fixboot etc. and all report no problems, however I could absolutely not boot the system.


I agree with what you say. Although PMagic reports a faulty geometry, it is faulty only in its opinion and as you say, the file system is perfectly accessible. But how do you get such a partition to boot is beyond me, fixing MBR issues is something I have never dreamt of!


Seems like we are indeed talking about the same problem then. That's good to know. I had a brief look on the wilderssecurity Acronis forums some time ago, but didn't go much further as I felt I'd just get walked through the obvious, which this is not. It certainly seems to be an anomaly between the way some brands of laptop address the disk geometry, and the 'normal' way of addressing them. As a result, I have stopped restoring TrueImage images to laptop HDDs via desktop machines, and instead work from DVDRW's on the target machine directly.


Yes indeed, this is the safest way. I personally use a Firewire Hard drive when needed, but the reasoning is the same. I wonder why so few users report/complain about a situation which makes life difficult. You might want to look at the thread "replacing HD on R52" on ibm.ibmpc.thinkpad which brings an additional piece of information.

Regards

--
John Doue
.

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