Disk Read Error following HD Upgrade

[Theuyas]

I'm trying to upgrade the hard drive on my T60 laptop and am getting the message "A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart." I'm grateful for any help anyone can give.

The old hard drive is a 60 GB Hitachi model HTS541060G9SA00. The new hard drive is a 500 GB Samsung model HN-M500MBB. I used Acronis True Image to create an image of the partitions on the old hard drive, following the procedure and guidelines I found here:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost ... ostcount=9
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=203480

To reiterate a few aspects of the process: I had the *new* hard drive within the machine; I booted to the Acronis CD; I restored/resized the image stored on a USB hard drive to the new hard drive. When I boot to the new hard drive, I get the "disk read error" message.

What I've tried:
* I booted to UBCD. From this, I can open "My Computer" and see the partitions on the new hard drive, and I can see the files and folders within it. The C: partition is NTFS, 64428 MB with 43501 MB free; the D: partition is NTFS, 418765 MB with 393804 MB free. I assume this means that the hard drive itself is not faulty.
* I tried changing one BIOS setting: the "Serial ATA (SATA)" setting on "[Compatibility]" and booting (got the disk read error) and then on "[ACHI]" and booting (again, the disk read error). This is beyond my knowledge base, but I read on a forum somewhere that toggling this setting helped someone with a somewhat similar problem.

Any suggestions? I'm grateful for any help you can give. Thanks!

[ac12]

Is the partition "active"?
I remember in working on older machines, that it would not boot if the partition was not active. I am not near my XP machine, so I can't walk you thru this. But from memory you go into Administrative Tools and then Disk Manager, after that I can't remember.

Another option is:
Since you still have the original disk.
Try doing a clean install on the new disk, including formatting the drive.
The idea is to see if there might be a "problem" in the MBR of the original disk that was cloned over to the new drive.

[richk]

That is an advanced format drive. What OS are you running?

[Theuyas]

richk: I'm running Windows XP SP3

ac12: I'll try to do this tonight and report back tomorrow.

[richk]

It won't work unless you do something to the partitions. Read this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adv ... ,3046.html

[Theuyas]

This issue is now resolved. Moderator/Administrator can close the thread, if that's protocol. If I need to do it somewhere, please accept my apologies for overlooking this and direct me to where I do so.

richk and ac12: thank you for your advice.

In the end, the boot partition was a Primary and Active partition, so this wasn't the issue. I was able to get it working without having run the Align Tool, so the Advanced Format of the drive wasn't the issue either. (Though I didn't know about this and made sure to run the align tool once I was finally able to boot into Windows--thanks for the info, richk!)

It turns out that there were two additional partitions that for some reason Acronis True Image wasn't detecting. Or something. Anyhow, after much mucking around, I borrowed a friend's Partition Manager bootable CD and it showed that there were two additional hidden partitions that were duplicates of two existing partitions. I wound up deleting all of them and formatting the HD.

I then used Acronis True Image to redo the full backup image archive of the old, smaller 60 GB drive (which was booting fine). This was an image of the entire drive--not just individual partitions--which maybe enhanced the odds of success (though I think this was what I did the first time, too). I then used TI again to restore that image to the new, larger drive, in the process resizing the partitions. I then restarted, and presto: it booted into Windows without problem--no disk read error message!

I don't know what the issue was, since I'm not a tech person. I can only guess that maybe the MBR didn't realize that there were two additional partitions and so couldn't find the boot partition. Or something.

Anyhow, I thought that I'd report back what many others probably already knew:
-- it is possible for a 500 GB Advanced Format drive to work in a T60 machine; and
-- it is possible to use Acronis True Image to restore and resize an image of a smaller drive to such a new, bigger drive.

I guess it just didn't work properly the first time and all I needed to do was redo the steps I'd taken (or intended to take but somehow screwed up) the first time.

Thanks again for your advice, hope that this post can help someone else who is trying to do what I did and encounters problems.

[Johan]

@ Theuyas:

Thank you very much for sharing your experience - that's certainly very much appreciated (many people come here to just ask for help, and never bother to say neither "thank you" nor to reply back when/how the issue has been resolved).

Please hang around here and learn/share for the future as well!

Johan