HDD upgrade failed - advice needed

[Matthew_Greening]

I have cloned my T61 HDD (100GB) to an external 500GB Hitachi hard drive with EaseUS Todo Backup Free 4.0. However, when I install the external HDD it is not recognized, i.e. a disk failure is displayed. Fortunately, the Hitachi still works in the external HDD caddy. I wonder what is actually the problem here. Possibly the cloning has not worked properly or the HDD did not connect properly.

Some info on the Hitachi: 5400RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, OCT-10, 2.5 inch.

Your advice for trouble shooting is need. Thank you!

[Brad]

I would attempt another clone with the source drive external and the target drive internal.

Brad

[lead_org]

probably the external hdd is the advanced format drive.

[miro_gt]

probably the external hdd is the advanced format drive.

most likely this ^

eventhough the advance format usually comes on drives bigger than 500GB, your hitachi might as well use that.

[EOMtp]

As noted above by Brad, the problem is that the target drive was not in the primary drive bay during cloning. What also works is placing the target drive in a 2nd Hard Drive adapter and inserting the adapter into the T60's optical drive bay.

However, cloning to an external target drive in an USB enclosure generally will not produce a bootable drive.

[mdclow]

I regularly clone my T60 SSD & the prior HDD to an external HDD via either UBS or eSATA (via the expresscard slot) so maybe I have just been lucky? I periodically check it by putting the target drive into the computer to make sure it will boot.

I also have had the target drive larger and smaller.

[ac12]

What OS is on the computer?
Did you format the target drive first, the same way your existing drive is formatted (ie basic, NTFS)? Check w Disk Management.

Could also be that the cloning s/w is not cloning properly.

I have used Norton Ghost (older version) to clone drives to an external USB drive, then moved the drive into the computer, and it worked fine.

[EOMtp]

I regularly clone my T60 SSD & the prior HDD to an external HDD via either UBS or eSATA ... it will boot.

Good to know. What software?

Happy New Year!

[mdclow]

I first accomplished the task with the EZ Gig II software that came with the Apricorn DriveWire Universal Hard Drive Adapter (SATA, 2.5" & 3.5" PATA connectors for HDDS). To work with VISTA or Win7 you need to use version III or higher. The only down side to the EZ Gig software is it will only work with their adapters which is fine if you want to go the USB 2 connection route. As I clone the drive a couple of times a month I wanted to use eSATA which is three times as fast as the USB2. So when I got a HDD dock that would connect via eSATA (along with USB2) the EZ Gig would no longer work.

I bounced around between EaseUS Total Backup & Macrium. I dont like to image the drive as I prefer to do a sector by sector clone which can immediately be put into computer rather than being a separate file that has to be restored. The down side of the cloning route is that you will need a couple of extra HDDs which WERE very cheap prior to the Thailand floods. My recollection is that Macrium would only do an image file. The EaseUS worked fine for about 6 to 8 mos and then I started getting error messages for reasons unknown. I did some web research on the error message and could never get it resolved so I went to Acronis 2012 True Image Home and it has worked flawlessly for the last 3 or 4 months. It is a bit pricey at around $75/80 for three computers and $40/45 for one computer. Though Microcenter in Metro Detroit just had it on sale for $30 sometime in December.

Wikipedia has a pretty good list of cloning software at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_di ... g_software
if you want to investigate.

[rumbero]

probably the external hdd is the advanced format drive.

This should be of no importance. I have already successfully cloned a Vista installation under Linux using ntfsclone(8) from a standard format HDD in the Ultrabay to an advanced format drive already installed in the main HDD bay. Just had to make sure that the Vista partition actually had a bootable flag and after running the Vista startup repair with a Vista recovery CD it worked just fine. BTW, i have never ever used any other disk cloning utilities than dd(8) and ntfsclone(8), and always and only with some Live Linux CD.

[Matthew_Greening]

It worked for me by following Brad's recommendation.

I would attempt another clone with the source drive external and the target drive internal.

I have now 400GB free space that is not formatted yet. I plan to transfer two data partitions from another hard drive to it and would like to resize them so that they cover the whole 400GB. How do I do that best so that I do not run into problems again?

Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone for your helpful advice.

[miro_gt]

never had any problems with cloning, but I use Acronis True Image. I've cloned from primary internal into USB and into eSata (expresscard), both worked from the first time. Besides, the partition adjusts depending on the drive size, and the new HDD is bootable.

so might as well get better cloning program

[EOMtp]

How do I do that best so that I do not run into problems again?

Any partition manager will work. Once you have a bootable drive, adding or resizing partitions poses no issues in the context of the prior discussion.