Large XP drive clones won't boot on T420 (yet fine on T61)

[Altekay]

In short, I have identical clones of an already-installed Windows XP system disk. On the T420, the one on a small PATA drive boots fine (via USB), and the ones on large SATA drives abort instantly (via USB or internal SATA slot), even with AHCI compatibility mode on. Yet every one of these disks boots fine in a T61 (USB or SATA) or T41 (USB).

The failures happen as soon as the T420 attempts to boot from the drive, and always one of these black text screens:
1) Blinking cursor and no text
2) "Error Loading Operating System"
3) "A disk read error occurred" - Press ctrl-alt-delete to restart

Facts:
- Two different methods were attempted for cloning: Full sector disk backup, and individual partition backup + copying and/or repairing MBR and boot sector.
- Drives that fail to boot on the T420 are 1TB and 2TB (i.e. both Advanced Format, although with 512e). "Disk Alignment Test" confirms that their logical block size is 512 bytes, even though their physical block size is 4K - i.e. 512 emulation.
- Identical behavior whether booting from USB or internally: 250gb in PATA/USB enclosure works, 1TB and 2TB in SATA/USB enclosure or in hard drive slot doesn't work, on T420.
- All work on T61, whether internally (SATA) or via USB.
- All work on T41 (the PATA drive internally, or any via USB).
- T420 has newest BIOS from Lenovo. (Behavior was same before updating BIOS.) T61 BIOS is 4 years old.

Ruled out:
- It's not AHCI vs. compatibility mode: Results are identical regardless of setting on T420. Plus it's the same when using USB, plus this isn't a "STOP 0x7F" blue screen, plus the black screen failure is way before that issue would happen.

- MBR/boot sector issues: I tried recovery console for fixmbr and fixboot, and also a third-party tool for fixing the MBR. But the MBR is probably fine, because...the same disk boots fine on the T61. If the MBR is bad, why does it boot on the T61?

- AF alignment issues: On a 512e AF drive, these would just degrade performance, not immediately stop before booting. (I did get the same results after I moved the partition into alignment: Failure on T420, success on T61.)

- Issue with the sector copier from small drive to large drive (i.e. different geometries)? But these large drives are booting fine on the T61. So, the copy looks fine to the T61.

- Some general driver issue with my XP installation? But the failed boot isn't even proceeding to the point where drivers would be loaded. These black screen errors are before any loading of kernel or drivers.

- Some other issue with my Windows XP installation: What could it be? This identical installation boots fine on the T420 when it's on the 250gb drive (PATA/USB). It only fails when cloned to the 1TB and 2TB drives, yet both of these clones boot fine on the T61.

- Windows activation issue? No, this would manifest at a much later stage of booting. Nor should it come up anyway, but that's out of scope for this message.

So, what about the T420 could be preventing the XP boot from proceeding, when the same physical disks (internally/SATA or externally/USB) boot fine on a T61, and a duplicate installation boots fine on the T420 when it's on the small drive? What kind of issue with my larger disk clones could stop the T420 but be fine on the T61? I think the black screen errors are generated by XP. What hardware difference in the T420 would lead to this boot failure, whether internally or USB, and only with the large drives?

I'm stumped! Is anyone up for the puzzle? I don't know that it has anything to do with the AF drives (again, the same disk working fine on the older T61 makes any AF theory weak), but looking scientifically, it's the only consistent variable I can observe.

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
Check BIOS StartUp, that "UEFI/Legacy boot" is set to Both and "boot priority" set to Legacy first.

[Altekay]

Check BIOS StartUp, that "UEFI/Legacy boot" is set to Both and "boot priority" set to Legacy first.

Thanks. Yes, didn't mention: That's already set. If it weren't, I wouldn't have been able to boot from the 250gb drive. See how mysterious it is? On the T420, the same image boots from the small drive but not from the big drives, and all three boot fine on the T61.

[Altekay]

I eventually got an XP clone to work in the T420 on the 2TB, but then faced other issues, and so I started over with a fresh XP install (partitioned in Windows 7 to avoid misalignment), which is working great except for my OSD/hotkey issues.

The combination of this fast 2.8GHz 2-core 4-thread multiprocessor machine and a completely clean XP install is making this thing run like lightning, compared to the T41 (4:3 and delightful keyboard, dr00l) and even T61 I've been using forever.

I may eventually get used to:

• Short 16:9 screen (1600x900 helps)
• Offensive shifting of function keys by one position (I might remap F1-F8 to F2-F9!)
• Tiny Alt and Ctrl keys (were gloriously big on T41 and easy to find by touch, with no Windows keys to get in the way)
• Non-recessed/large/bumpy touchpad (2-finger scroll is nice, though, and hopefully the filtering keeps the inevitable accidental touches from being too annoying)
• Disappearance of useful indicators like "plugged in"
• Non-tactile volume keys that are impossible to distinguish by touch
• Thinklight flashing on every power on
• Screen brightness switching to max on every power on
• Noisy keyboard
• and other minor irritations.

But having no readout on volume or brightness level is pretty annoying, and I hope there's a solution!