Boot failure after hard drive upgrade

[avoelp]

I am trying to upgrade the 80 GB hard drive of my T61p to a new Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB drive. The old drive has 4 NTFS partitions, plus the FAT32 Lenovo utility / recovery partition. The OS is Windows XP Prof. This is what I have done so far:

Using Acronis TrueImage 10 I created an image (on an attached USB drive) that includes all partitions of the original drive as well as the MBR. After exchanging the HD I started the system using the TrueImage recovery CD and restored all partitions and the MBR. However, after finishing this process, the notebook won't boot from the new HD. Then I repeated the entire process, leaving out the Lenovo utility partition - same result. I also tried to restore only the system partition and the MBR, leaving out the other partitions - same result.

Finally, just to see whether there was anything wrong with my image, I performed a restore of the original system state from the Lenovo recovery CDs that came with the notebook. It installed on the new drive and booted without any problems (so the drive apparently works in the machine). Then I created an image of this installation and tried to restore, but again the system failed to boot after completing the restore process.

What might be wrong here? Any suggestions?

[Harryc]

Yes, you must clone from the source (old drive attached externally) to the target (new drive installed inside the hard drive bay in the Thinkpad) using an Acronis boot CD.

[avoelp]

Yes, you must clone from the source ...

I'll try this but I have to get an external enclosure first.

However, your reply brings me to another issue: My primary motivation for using Acronis TrueImage is to be able to restore my system if needed, e. g., in case of misconfiguration or hard drive failure. If you are correct, this would imply that on the TP an image backup of the system drive does not help in case of a HD failure as there would be no source drive to clone from - is that correct? And if it is, how can I protect my system without having to re-install the OS? Is there any other backup or drive image software that can do a system restore to a new drive when the old one is unavailable?

Secondly, when there is a need for restoring a system drive image backup to the same HD (e.g. in case of misconfiguration), will this work on the TP?

I have performed system drive restores with Acronis TrueImage to old and new drives on other systems time and time again, and I have never had any problems booting those machines after the restore. What is special aboot the TPs so that the same process does not work here?

[Harryc]

Yes you can backup a Thinkpad to an external drive (or the same drive to a different partition) using Acronis, but not as an image (clone), you need to do it as a backup/restore in which case each partition and the MBR will be backed up individually. then when you restore it will work, I have done this many times. So, you have (2) choices, do it this way or the way I mentioned in the previous post (try both if one method does not work). A 'clone' will not work unless the target drive is 'in' the HD bay. I do not know the exact reason for this, but I suspect that the MBR is written differently when the drive is native to the TP...just a guess. This is not something I made up to confuse members here. It has been proven time and time again over the years to be the case.

[avoelp]

... you need to do it as a backup/restore in which case each partition and the MBR will be backed up individually ...

I think that this is exactly what I have already done: I created an image backup that includes all the partitions on the original drive, plus the MBR and Track 0, not a clone of the entire drive. Then I tried different ways to restore the data to the new drive installed in the TP: I restored the entire image backup in one go, I restored only the system partition and the MBR and Track 0, I restored the MBR and Track 0 first and then the system partition - it simply won't boot and I can't find the reason why. I tried the same with another image backup from the same machine and it would not boot either - so the problem obviously does not depend on this particular backup.

I will try the cloning method later, but it should work in the way described above, shouldn't it?

Could this be a problem related to the new drive that I am trying to use? I have read in other threads that more people are using Seagate Momentus XTs on TP61s and, as I said before, resturing the original system installation from CD does work (but again, Acronis TrueImage backup and restore fails on this installation as well). Unfortunately I do not have another 2.5" SATA drive that I could try ...

[Harryc]

Agreed, try the clone idea. Come to think of it, the backup / restores I have done were to the same drive which already had an image on it, and not to a new blank drive, so perhaps that is a clue.

[avoelp]

... the backup / restores I have done were to the same drive ...

Among the tests that I've done, I've also re-installed the original system state from Lenovo's recovery CDs, which worked without any problems (so the T61p can boot from the new drive). Then I created an image backup using Acronis TrueImage 10 and restored it to the drive (with and without restoring the MBR, track 0 and the disk signature). After the restauration the system wouldn't boot ...

Wouldn't it be possible to make the drive bootable after restoring the data?

[Harryc]

You can try this disc. Be prepared for failure though. I've seen people try everything for days/weeks until the originally suggested cloning method was tried.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54483

[avoelp]

I will try the cloning method as soon as I can get my hands on an external enclosure. However, as you can see from my last post, system bootup after restauration of the backup image does not work even when the image was taken from the same disk (in which case the cloning method would not be of any use). This is a serious issue for me, as it means that I cannot restore my system from an image backup in case of a HD failure or unintentional misconfiguration.

The CD image from IBM's support web site did not help. I first tried to repair the MBR. The program said that the operation was successful but the system wouldn't boot from the HD nevertheless. Then I tried to replace the MBR. The program aborted with the error message "Filters returned an empty menu" (whatever this is supposed to mean ...).

[robert213]

Disclaimer -- As I do not own a T60/T61...

I have installed Acronis True Image Home 11 on the C: (System) drive on my T30.

I am able to clone my internal HDD (as source drive) to external HDD (as target drive). I am able to successfully clone both brand-new blank and used formatted external HDD(s).

If I remember correctly, I have successfully cloned one USB external HDD (as source drive) to another USB external HDD (as target drive).

I am not familiar with running Acronis under their Bootable CD.

[avoelp]

Meanwhile I did some additional testing: I installed Windows 7 on the new (blank) drive, performed an image backup of both partitions and the MBR, erased the drive completely (using TrueImage's Add Diks option) and restored the Windows 7 installation. After that the system booted from the HD without any problems.

The bottom line is that the image backup and restore process on my system works with Windows 7, but not with XP Prof. So there appears to be some kind of incompatibility issue between the Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB drive, TrueImage 2010 and Windows XP (some time ago I remember doing a system restore of my XP installation to the original 80 GB drive that came with the TP, and it worked without problems).

Another strange thing is that when I insert an original Windows XP installation CD (not the Lenovo recovery CD) with the Momentus XT installed the installation program tells me that it can't find any hard drive to install XP on. However, system recovery to the new drive from Lenovo's recovery CDs works without any problems.

What does this tell us?

[Brad]

Check your BIOS SATA configuration. If it is AHCI change it to the other setting COMPATIBILITY and try that last test again.

bRAD

[avoelp]

Setting the SATA configuration to compatibility mode did not improve anything (anyway, thanks for the suggestion). Meanwhile I also did as advised and tried the cloning method - same frustrating result. After everything I've tried so far I either get a black screen with a blinking cursor, or a "Disk read error" message when trying to boot to XP.

It's frustrating, and I am close to the point of giving up and either sticking with my old drive and the existing XP installation, or switching to the new drive and installing Windows 7 (which will mean a good deal of installation work ...).

[avoelp]

I have finally found a solution to my boot problem (actually two solutions, to be more precise) :

- Use Paragon Backup & Recovery instead of TrueImage. After restauration to the new drive it boots without any problems.

- Use TrueImage 11 instead of version 2010 - it boots without problems, too. Fortunately I kept my old version 11 recovery CD and tried it after everything else had failed. Believe it or not, it worked.

Andreas

[Harryc]

Those are (2) solutions that I would never have thought of in a million years, particularly Acronis 11 vs 10, although I always keep the latest version on hand and use it to avoid little issues like these.

[avoelp]

... as a p.s.: I have just tried system recovery using the demo boot CD of TrueImage 2011 provided to me by Acronis support (after all that hassle they might as well have provided the full product ... ). It worked. So the problem is apparently related to TrueImage 2010.

I find the TI version numbering scheem a bit confusing: version 2010 did not work, version 11 (the predecessor of 2010) did, and version 2011 (the successor of 2010) did as well ...

Andreas

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Edit: Meanwhile they did provide a license for version 2011 for free