New hard disk on T43 - clone failed

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pcdj · #1 Post by **pcdj** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:31 pm

I've recently purchased one of the recommended Fujitsu hard disks - the 120Gb version - and attempted to ghost my current 40Gb hard disk to the new one.

Whilst this worked using the published method on these forums of using True Image to image the drive before using Partition Magic to resize the partitions, the former worked and the latter failed - meaning a load of wasted space on the new drive.

I attempted this twice and both times PM failed to resize the main partition and reposition the R&R partition with the same error (unfortunately I don't recall what it was, but a lot of googling seemed to point to simply running chkdsk on the drive, which didn't help). I attempted to image the drive using True Image and then do the partitioning with Disk Director which seemed to work, but the new HD then failed to boot into windows and was instead just coming up with a blinking cursor symbol.

I then went back to my old HD and this randomly stopped booting into windows (which i'm sure is unrelated, but...) - i then attempted to load the R&R partition to perform some sort of repair, but the option didn't appear when the laptop was booting.

Likewise, placing the new drive into the laptop didn't bring the option to get into the R&R tools either. I understand this should be done by pressing F11 but i wasn't prompted at any stage and could see no further options upon pressing the Access IBM button.

Consequently i had to obtain an XP CD and boot from that - performing a fixboot and fixmbr on my smaller, old drive fixed it straight away but the new one was beyond repair.

My questions are the following:

Can anyone suggest why my R&R partition is not working? It is at the end of both drives, hidden, has the correct type set according to PM and yet doesn't work.

I'm thinking of simply loading XP from scratch onto my new HD and transferring data across from my old HD using an external USB. The only problem I have with this is that I'll lose all the "Access IBM" software installed - is this available from the IBM site or does it only come on the restore CDs?

Given my experience of the above, should I attempt to keep the R&R partition and transfer it to my new drive? Do people actually find it useful in performing a recovery or do you usually just use a vanilla XP CD for any rebuilds?

Thanks in advance.

#2 Post by **richk** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:42 pm

How did you clone the drive (using Acronis True Image)? Was it mounted as a 2nd hard drive in the machine? USB? Other?

If you have Rescue and Recovery installed, you can do a full backup to another drive (mounted as USB), install the Fujitsu as the only hard disk (keeping original in case of problems) and doing a full restore. The later is what I do, but I have extra drives and USB connections around.

pcdj · #3 Post by **pcdj** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:44 pm

The new 120Gb drive was mounted over USB in an external enclosure.

I followed the instructions as per this post - http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... disk+ghost

As i mentioned in my previous post, I cannot access R&R from either drive. If you're referring to using one of the Access IBM utilities from within Windows to perform the backup, i'm unsure as to how this would help me as I'd have no way of restoring the data as a vanilla install from an OEM XP CD doesn't contain any of the Access IBM utilities.

Or did you mean something else?

zdriver · #4 Post by **zdriver** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 4:47 am

Instead of using true image and then manually resizeing the partition, why not use acronis Migrate Easy which will clone your old drive to the fujitsu and resize the partition to 120gb on the fly for you.
Migrate Easy has a free trial download.
I did exactly what you are attempting on a T43 with a new fujitsu 120gb 2120AH drive and it worked perfectly

pcdj · #5 Post by **pcdj** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 6:45 am

Thanks zdriver, i'll give it a try.

#6 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:09 am

zdriver wrote:Instead of useing true imaage and then manually resizeing the partition, why not use acronis Migrate Easy which will clone your old drive to the fujitsu and resize the partition to 120gb on the fly for you.

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know 'Migrate Easy' existed. I will be doing a similar exercise in a few days on my T61. Going from an 80GB to a 250GB drive. I have (2) partitions of 40GB each currently and want to expand each to 125GB or there-abouts. (Ubuntu and Vista with GRUB, no R&R partition). So it seems with Migrate Easy I can just hook up the new drive to the T61 via an SATA to USB 2.0 adapter and run the program. The rest sounds almost automatic. Hopefully it works with Linux partitions, although if it does sector by sector cloning it should. 15 day full functional trial too...very nice.

pcdj · #7 Post by **pcdj** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:54 pm

I've downloaded migrate easy and am currently in the process of copying the disk over, which should be done soon.

First impressions though:

- it looks, and works, exactly the same as the drive clone function of true image!

- it does resize the partitions on the fly in exactly the same way as true image does... both programs suffer in that they resize the R&R partition to be about 12Gb in size, which given that it only requires 4.7Gb and never changes in size is a complete waste - so either way you need to manually modify the partition sizes as before

#8 Post by **Johan** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:35 am

pcdj wrote:- it does resize the partitions on the fly in exactly the same way as true image does... both programs suffer in that they resize the R&R partition to be about 12Gb in size, which given that it only requires 4.7Gb and never changes in size is a complete waste - so either way you need to manually modify the partition sizes as before

While I have never used the "Acronis Migrate Easy" I have however used Acronis True Image (incl. for cloning) quite a bit, and there the trick is to select the Manual Mode for the cloning, so that you can (manually!) decide the size of varoius partitions. If selecting "Automatic Mode" and e.g. cloning an old, say, 40 GB HDD onto a new 80 GB HDD, then a, say, 4 GB R&R partition will become 4 GB x (80/40) = 8 GB which is of course completely waste of space.

Ooh, well; I just checked it and it's exactly the same with Acronis Migrate Easy:

In the [url=http://de1.download.acronis.net/pdf/migrateeasy7.0_ug.en.pdf][color=blue][u]Acronis Migrate Easy Manual[/color][/u][/url], on page 14/15, Acronis wrote:3.3 Executing transfers
Selecting transfer mode

You will see the Select transfer mode window just after the welcome window.

We recommend using automatic mode in most cases. The manual mode can be useful if you need to change the disk partition layout.

Therefore, I believe it is not fair state as you do: "...both programs suffer in that they resize the R&R partition to to be about 12Gb in size". Read the user guide!

Johan

pcdj · #9 Post by **pcdj** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:28 pm

Johan wrote:Therefore, I believe it is not fair state as you do: "...both programs suffer in that they resize the R&R partition to to be about 12Gb in size". Read the user guide!

Johan

I have read the user guide, and i can do the math. I also clearly stated in my post that you need to go into manual mode and manually modify the partitions to the required size within True Image/Migrate Easy.

Under any other circumstances resizing the partitions as the software does would be ideal. However in this particular scenario both programs suffer in that they cause an unnecessary waste of space on the R&R partition, as you've said yourself. Perhaps "suffer" is too strong a word, but let's not get pedantic about it

zdriver · #10 Post by **zdriver** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:37 am

Harry, did you do your T61 drive upgrade yet, and if so, how did it turn out with the partitions?

#11 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:20 am

zdriver wrote:Harry, did you do your T61 drive upgrade yet, and if so, how did it turn out with the partitions?

Yes I did it yesterday. I just used straight Acronis Home 11 and did a clone. It worked perfectly, resized all partitions to fit the new drive, etc.

Brisingr · #12 Post by **Brisingr** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:19 am

Hi Harry, I have been trying to clone my T42 using an External HDD via USB using Acronis 11.

Everytime I tried to boot it, I just see blinking cursor and do not go any further.

Am I doing anyting wrong?
[/quote]

#13 Post by **Harryc** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:36 am

Every time you try to boot what? Do you mean that the clone appears to be successful but your machine will not boot? What was on the target drive and did Acronis copy over the MBR as well?

CeeBee · #14 Post by **CeeBee** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:57 am

I just upgraded the OEM drive in my T43 1871-4BU to a 100GB HD via an Acronis TI 10 backup of the old drive (w/ the hidden partition) to an external USB drive. Then I mounted the new drive in the T43 and did a manual TI restore. Finally I partitioned the unused space w/ PM8.

It all worked well w/o any problems, as far as I can determine, but how do I know the hidden partition was indeed properly moved? I don't have R&R installed, so what's the scenario when booting and when using Access IBM during boot? I didn't clone old->new because of everything I have read about T43 and the special partition.

#15 Post by **Johan** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 10:01 am

Brisingr wrote: I have been trying to clone my T42 using an External HDD via USB using Acronis 11.

Everytime I tried to boot it, I just see blinking cursor and do not go any further.

Am I doing anyting wrong?

It sounds as the topic discussed in the thread Having quite a bit of difficulties cloning my new HD - so I suggest you have a look there, and see the threads referenced to.

Johan

New hard disk on T43 - clone failed

New hard disk on T43 - clone failed

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