Thinkpads Forum

I used Acronis True Image to do this. I had no problem doing this on my PATA drives on my X31 and X32. The cloning was successful, but the drive won't boot when I switch the old one out with the new one.

I was looking in the area where the drive's jumpers would normally be and notice that it is missing off of the Hitatchi 7200 drive. Is it supposed to be like this?

I upgraded to a drive with the same number of gigs, but a bigger cache (I'm doing audio work and it helps).

Any suggestions as to why this new drive won't boot? I just received it from New Egg and know it works fine. It's recognizable via USB and of course, I used Acronis True Image to clone the old Seagate and according to the program, it was cloned successfully.

You want the drive you are going to use mounted in the thinkpad and the old drive external (or ultrabay) when cloning.

Thanks for the swift reply. So you wouldn't recommend doing this by the old fashioned USB is what you're suggesting? I'll wipe the new drive (Hitachi) clean and redo the cloning using the Ultrabay if that's what you're suggesting (Lol, I should've done this in the first place).

I also forgot to mention that while I do have an Ultrabay, I do not have access to a second hard drive caddy for it. I'm going to have purchase one from eBay. Are these Ultrabay 3000 products? The 2nd Hard Drive caddy for the UltraBase 3x went under the Ultrabay 2000 moniker.

You can use USB just make sure the new drive is in the Thinkpad and the old drive is USB.
I never use a caddy in the Ultrabay HD adapter. It works fine without it as long as you don't bang it around a lot.

You can use good old USB, that's what carbon_unit meant by "external", I think. Take the existing drive out of the ThinkPad and mount it in the USB enclosure. Put the new drive into the ThinkPad. Clone external=>internal. You should be like downtown. Of course, if you want to use the Ultrabay, you can do that, too.

edit: clobbered again by a mod.

Okay. I tried everything and the cloning is successful, BUT when I put the new drive into the Thinkpad, the laptop stops RIGHT AFTER the Thinkpad logo comes up. The unit then just stalls with a cursor blinking in the extreme top left corner (which usually happens before XP loads anyway).

I don't know what gives.

Another question I have is why the Hitachi drive doesn't allow you to mess with jumper settings? There are no jumpers like there are on the Seagate, which allow you to change the drive from Master to Slave.

I'm not familiar with Acronis...but on Ghost, you have to select an option to copy over the boot sector information when you create an image. I believe Thinkpads require something special to be in the boot sector. Once you've got that information cloned over, it should be able to boot.

Someone familiar with Acronis might be able to tell you what's going wrong.

Did you follow carbon_unit's suggested method? Did you put the new drive in before or after cloning?

As to your second question, why would you like to change jumper settings?

I did try the suggestion thanks, but with no success. I'm not sure why I'd have to manually copy the boot sector using Acronis. When I did this very same operation with my X31 and X32 using XP, I had no problems like this at all. It was seamless.

epu wrote:Okay. I tried everything and the cloning is successful, BUT when I put the new drive into the Thinkpad, the laptop stops RIGHT AFTER the Thinkpad logo comes up.

As I read it you are installing the drive in the Thinkpad after you clone it. You must install it in the Thinkpad before you clone it.
Thinkpads (or laptops in general) read hard drive geometry differently than desktop computers or USB adapters. If you clone it outside of the Thinkpad it will not work.
Install it properly in the Thinkpad Hard Drive Bay and then clone to it from the old hard drive that is connected by USB or in the ultrabay.

Maybe things were different with the X3x BIOS. It's my understanding that the X40 has the same issue with harddrive transfers. There's just something on the boot track that needs to be copied over. I don't know why or what it is. Once it's on the drive, you're golden.

Thanks again for the replies. I'm afraid to do it backwards (Drive to USB Enclosure) for fear of overwriting the drive by accident (Sounds silly, but I'm paranoid).

Since the drive was already successfully copied, can I just copy over the MBR, since this is what you're suggesting? How can I do this?

Would anyone happen to know the difference between the BIOS on the X3 vs. the X6 and why it just doesn't work the way it did on the X3? If worse comes to worse, I will try your way. It'd take at least 7+ hours to reinstall everything if I screw up.

What options did you specify in Acronis? If I remember right, you're supposed to select manual and RAW. I have successfully done it that way on my X61 T. The difference was that I installed both hard drives on my friend's desktop as the 2nd and 3rd drives and cloned it there because I don't have a copy of Acronis.

Anyway you may be able to repair the MBR only. I'd try that first. If it doesn't work you can go back and redo the cloning again. You can try that using the command 'fixmbr'. The only thing you need now is to get it to boot, right?

I understand your concern about selecting the incorrect drive and then ending up cloning your new drive to your old drive.

When I use Acronis in this threads suggested method both drives are listed but one says USB. By carefully looking you can be sure you are selecting the correct drive.

I would be sure to have a backup at least of your most important files.

Brad

The problem is SATA and maybe the chipset of the X61. A quick search on the web showed people having this problem with SATA drives and Acronis as well as computers using dual or more processors.

I also tried the advice of putting the old drive in the USB enclosure, but my X61 won't boot from the USB enclosure for some reason. It's a headache, but I'm willing to sift through information to figure this out.

Could I use Fix MBR from a Lenovo recovery disc or something? Thanks for all of the replies really. While I haven't found a solution for my problem, you guys have been really helpful so far.

I wouldn't worry about booting your old drive from the USB enclosure.

I would simply switch the drives around and then perform the cloning.

Brad

Thanks Brad for the advice. I tried formatting the new drive, taking the old drive and then booting the Old Drive via USB to open Acronics and then clone the way you suggested, which was from the USB -> The Internal.

I can't boot from USB. Maybe I'm just slow (I think). Did you mean boot normally, and then after loading Acronis, switching the drives (while the laptop is on) and then performing the cloning? Is this even possible without damaging the laptop?

This just isn't making sense to me. Lol. I'm not a novice, but I sure feel like one right now.

Okay. I think I figured this out. It has to do something with my USB Enclosures SATA controller chip I guess (as someone mentioned there's something different in the BIOS or something).

A guy on the T6x board recommended in an earlier post from last year, that all clones should be done in the Ultrabase (which someone mentioned here as well). For that I'd need to purchase a 2nd HDD adapter for the Ultrabase X6 because a hard drive will not connect directly.

I've seen these on eBay for about $50.

Thanks for all of your replies, and really do mean ALL of your replies on helping me with this situation.

I see, you are using Acronis as installed on Windows. I have only used it that way one time. I made the Acronis rescue cd and I always use Acronis booted from the rescue cd. Do you have an optical drive with your X61? If so make the cd and use it that way.

With Acronis, can't you just do the following:
1. put the original harddrive in the computer
2. create a full disk image file of the original drive on a third (external) harddrive.
3. take the original harddrive out of the computer
4. put the new harddrive in the computer
5. boot up to Acronis and deploy the image from the third drive onto the new drive.

It would look something
A => C
C => B

????

WOW!!! I have had not problems cloning...as long as I use the Seagate software located at Seagates website:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?l ... 04090aRCRD

I have used it for PATA and SATA with no issues. It does require that a Seagate drive be found by the software (internal, external, etc) If I use the software to clone a Hitachi to a Hitachi I simply plug my Seagate USB drive into the ThinkPad and the Seagate Discwizard software takes off and does it's job. BTW...it is free and based on the Acronis engine.

Note: I let it do the cloning thing (no jumpers are required) and when it is finished you should reboot the ThinkPad (leaving all drives as they were since the software does one more operation). You then turn off the ThinkPad, remove the old drive and install the new drive, then boot up one more time. Also, it does not like to clone from a bigger drive to a smaller drive.

Use a USB external drive adapter as your connection for the drive cloning. You can get a SATA 2.5 case, pull out the circuit board and plug you SATA drive into it. Just lay it carefully on your desktop and let it do it's thing.

This all works for me just fine. Bill Pratt

I have not had a problem cloning disks, and haven't found it to be important where the disk to be cloned is situated. I used to use Norton Ghost 2003 almost exclusively, and from a boot floppy. I've not used ghost for direct cloning, rather for making an image file first and then afterwards restoring from it onto the new disk. I had a couple of bad results using Ghost 2003 for imaging vista drives, so I have more or less migrated over to a version of Acronis True Image (actually branded "Apricorn EZ GigII) that came with a USB/IDE/SATA disk drive adapter I bought a few months ago.

The Apricorn software was a lot slower than Ghost used from the machine to a disk attached via USB. My impression is that the Apricorn/Acronis software often defaults to USB 1 speeds instead of USB 2.0, which may cause this behavior. As a result, I've been doing both imaging and cloning through an ultrabay mounted either in a T60 or in the x6 ultrabase I have for my X60s. Imaging or cloning directly through the ultrabay is hugely faster than through a USB connection. My hard disks that typically have around 25gb on them (including the service partition) seem to take an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes to image (using default compression, etc.) with Apricorn/True Image, and cloning is much faster, less than half an hour. I boot into Apricorn EZ GigII/True Image via a USB optical drive, since obviously you can't get both the ultrabay HD adapter plus the optical drive into the same ultrabay slot. If I want to image the IDE drive in my X32, I have an old style PATA ultrabay drive that works fine in the T6x and X6x series via the ultrabay, and the imaging can then be done from that drive in the UB onto the primary drive in the laptop on which it is mounted.

Image files obtained, whether they are put onto an ultrabay drive (usually) or onto the primary drive of the laptop with the ultrabay, are later copied off of the ultrabay drive or the primary hard drive and then put on larger capacity 3.5"drives via USB adapters through Windows, for archival storage, and I then erase the files off of the ultrabay drive or the primary hard drive.

My own experience is that I have successfully imaged and cloned, with the drive to be cloned in either the primary or ultrabay adapter locations; it doesn't seem to matter much for me. I have had bad clone results and bad image files obtained periodically, but not often, and it does not appear to be related to where the drives were located.

You really can't assume that any image file or clone will work (even if you verify it), however most will. When I have had failures, repeating the process has always been successful the 2nd time around. It appears to be a matter of luck to me.

Like others posting in this thread, I have always used the bootable Acronis/Apricorn CD, and not run the programs off of a hard disk.


EDIT See my later post in this thread; I have been having less luck lately . . . . .

Thanks a lot guys!!!! I did it!! I think someone bought it up before, and if they did, thanks again! I've been doing it in Windows, but the RESCUE MEDIA is where it's at. I made it using my UltraBase onto a DVD last night. The process was even faster than if it had been done in Windows.

Thanks again for all of your help, and I do mean ALL of you. Any of you notice any performance difference between the Seagate 7200.2 and Hitachi 7K200 drives? I went from Seagate (straight from the Lenovo factory) to the Hitachi, which unlike the Seagate, has a 16MB Cache.

The Hitachi at the moment seems a tad bit slower. Any thoughts?

Nicely done!

I haven't used Seagate so I can't compare. The 7K100 to the 7K200 was an improvement for me.

Glad it went nicely.

Brad

And what about further cloning ?

I usually use cloning for disk backup; by cloning the whole disk, in case of disk crashes i can have a running system up in ten minutes.

But if i have to swap the disks for every backup, it wouldn't be a usable operation.

So, the actual question is: if i clone back from the new disk (now in the X61) to the old disk for backup purpose, will this cloning operation destroy the MRB and make the disk unusable for booting the laptop ?

Thanks,
Maurizio

Question: Can Vista's Complete PC Backup be used to clone a hard disk?

What about Lenovo Rescue & Recovery?

I have posted earlier on this and other threads having to do with disk cloning, that I have done it many times and usually without incident. In fact, I have done a lot of cloning over time, but it has been done primarily from image backups made with either a Norton Ghost 2003 boot floppy, or from tib images made with Acronis or Apricorn software. In the past, most of this experience has been with XP (and Windows 2000 before that) and only recently has been with Vista.

By coincidence I have done a lot of direct hard disk cloning the last few days, as I have been trying to switch physical disks around in my many Thinkpads so that their sizes are more rational for where these disks are located (for example, it makes more sense for me to have 200gb 7200rpm disks in my X60 and X60tablet machines than in T60s which not only have an ultrabay for additional storage, but are generally used in my home, where storage is not an issue). Some of these clones have been from smaller to larger drives, the opposite, or from one brand (Hitachi) to another (e.g. Seagate).

I've had very mixed and in fact unsatisfactory results and have wasted a lot of time, and I am quite familiar with the cloning software I'm using and have used it correctly. In all instances I have put the source disk in either an ultrabay 2nd hard disk carrier or in the case of my X60s, in the same carrier in the ultrabase. The disk on the receiving end of the clone has always been put in the main hard disk bay of the respective computer.

The direct cloning goes quickly but there has been less than a 50% rate of success when the disks have been completely tested. I test the functionality of the Master Boot Record (blue button on boot up), the functionality of the service partition itself, and such things as whether or not Perfect Disk or Chkdsk can do a boot time defragmentation and if I can defrag the main Windows partition. These clones have been mostly with Vista systems however have been done off the bootable CD from Apricorn (same as Acronis) or the bootable floppy from Ghost 2003. If you use Perfect Disk v8, there is a small application available on the Perfect Disk website called "pdbootfix.exe" that may help you to do boot time defragmentation with this program, resolving at least temporarily and for one time, the inability to have exclusive access to the disk for defragging system files at boot up (I believe this is the same issue as the "chkdsk" failure).

Cloning errors have included MBR failure, failure to boot into windows, corrupted files on the Windows partition, and the afforementioned Chkdsk/Perfect Disk malfunctions indicating possible corruption on the Windows partition. Some of the "failures" on further testing were in fact not really cloning failures but due to some software incompatibilities such as issues with the current version of Rescue and Recovery, and other programs that seem to be putting themselves into the first position on the boot up services part of the registry that make Perfect Disk and Chkdsk not function on bootup.

Direct cloning with Ghost 2003 has not succeeded for me in a single instance out of 2 tries yesterday. With Apricorn Driveware EZ Gig II v. 2 (I believe this is a version or two ago of True Image) I have succeeded less than half the time but have ultimately succeeded in most instances doing direct clones. In the one case where Apricorn failed 2x in a row, I was finally able to do the clone by first making a tib image file from the source disk and then writing it onto the destination disk later.

I think several things are going on here. One is that these cloning programs, which were reliable with earlier hardware and operating systems are no longer as reliable as they were and need to be updated. Another thing is that we seem to have developed some software incompatibilities with some Thinkvantage (and maybe other) applications which are giving the appearance of bad cloning when in fact the cloning has worked.

Anyone performing disk clones with the T6x and X6x level systems (and likely others), especially if you are running Vista, need to check, double check, and triple check your cloning results before you assume that they will work. You will likely have to repeat the effort one or two times in order to get a fully working result. If direct cloning doesn't work, try making an image file first and then put that image onto the new disk rather than cloning directly. I think the ultimate solution is going to be with newer versions of these software products that fix whatever bugs are out there, and with bug fixes for some of the Thinkvantage applications, as well.