Hard Drive Upgrade -- VERY FRUSTRATED!!!

[Leesburg_Dave]

Hello. I am trying to replace the Hitachi 40 GB hd that came with my T60 with a Toshiba MK1234GSX, 120 GB drive. You would think this would be easy...

I bought the new drive and a USB to SATA external box so that I could have two hard drives working; ultimately, I want to have a spare USB drive around and the old Hitachi would do well for that. I didn't want to drop $40+ on the fixture that lets me replace the CD-RW with a second HDD since it makes the drive only usable on the laptop and nothing else. In any case, it seems it should be straight forward...

I started with the new drive in the USB enclosure and the old drive in the T60. I reset the SATA mode to "COMPATIBILITY" then used GPARTED to copy the partitions. I first copied the small "recovery" FAT32 partition to the end of the new drive, then copied the NTFS partition to fill the space from the beginning to where the FAT32 partition begins. While the process takes quite some time, it seems to copy everything over fine. After it's done, I exit out of GPARTED and shut down. I then disconnected the USB drive (new drive), reboot to Windows XP Pro, log in, the re-attach USB drive. After USB drive mounts, I go to manage hard drives and set the new NTFS partition to active, then shut down. I then remove the old HDD, install the new HDD in its place, leave the old one disconnected, then reboot.

Reboot process ran through the CHKDSK process -- as to be expected because partition size is much larger. Following CHKDSK, XP re-boots and asks for my login. Once I login, the system immediately logs me back out before I ever see a desktop and there seems to be no end to the cycle. Here's what I would like to do:

I would like new HDD to have all of the "Blue Button" features of the old -- e.g. be able to restore to factory settings using the hidden partition and blue "ThinkVantage" button. I would like to also have my old build on the new hard drive, but with the additional space available on the same partition (so I don't have two "drives" to deal with) and not have to install new certificates, new music licenses, cache all new passwords in IE, etc., etc. I just want to be like before, but with more space. I then want to use the old HDD in the USB enclosure.

I currently have the USB enclosure and GPARTED bootable CD. I do not have a USB Floppy Drive or the adapter to mount the HDD in the CD-RW slot, and would much rather avoid buying hardware I won't need after this project. Am I missing some major step here? Should I be using a different partition editor such as Symantec Partition Magic? Any explanation for the constant, automatic log-off? I'm about ready to go get my System Builder OEM XP Pro CD and do a clean install because I'm so frustrated. Thanks in advance.

[Leesburg_Dave]

...and in case anyone asks, the immediate logout occurs even when I boot up in safe mode. I've had to put the old hard drive back into the computer and try and figure something else out. I'm hoping to avoid having to do a re-build -- that's sooooo much more work.

[axiom]

Are you able to use your recovery partition on the new harddrive to recover it to factory state?

[Brad]

So sorry for your trouble and welcome the forum!

If you can I would suggest using other software if this is an option. I have done this literally hundreds of times with Ghost using a floppy which you said you don't have and Acronis True Image using their program created rescue media bootable CD.

This solution will solve your problem. I just did what you are trying to do yesterday in about an hour.

You can justify the cost of additional software because you will no longer be frustrated. Less than $100.

Brad

[pae77]

Actually, I think you can download a functional trial version of Acronis True Image, so you don't even have to buy it, (but it's only $49.95 to purchase). http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... trueimage/

[Brad]

Dave,

You can do this without even leaving your house.

Brad

[Nebzar]

Maybe the problem is the MBR of the new disk, since on Thinkpads it is a non standard one (in order to boot from the hidden recovery partition).

Try to use this utility:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54483

in order to rebuild it on the new disk. I remember that this utility existed in the form of an Iso image too, to be burned on a cd, but I can't find it anymore.

Regards

[bontistic]

I agree with the above posts. Try using a different cloning software. I use Symantec Ghost all the time. I do encounter problems sometimes, but this is due to my own error. If I do everything correctly, I do not experience any problems even when cloning the hidden partition. If you need a step by step guide to cloning with Ghost, let me know.

[Brad]

Which version of Ghost do you like?

I have 2003 (version 9?) on floppy that I have used for years.

Brad

[bcrooker]

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

It has a free trial, is very cheap to buy ($35 I think). I have used it a number of times to upgrade my HD (80GB->120GB) and some of my business partners (T23, 40GB->80GB; T42, 40GB-80GB).

I can get it upgraded in no time now. I simply install the new HD as primary and install bootitng to the end (this part is important) of the partition. Then I launch bootitng and copy the old hd partition over (with the HD connected via USB or using an Ultrabay adapter, I have tried both). Then enlarge the partition to use all available space.

All of my upgrades were NTFS partitions.

[Brad]

There are many solutions and I have not tried them all.

So far Acronis, for me, has been the most accurate. Seems to work all the time. For that reason I have looked no further. With Acronis even with multiple partitions the newly cloned drive works with just a few clicks. No worries of where anything should be. I want cloning another drive to be as simple, seamless, and painless as possible.

Brad

[bontistic]

I use 2003 as well, I used v7.5 before but I does not seem to work well when cloning whole disks to another.

The only difference is I have Ghost 2003 installed on my USB flash drive as it is easier to carry than a floppy disk.

[GomJabbar]

To begin with, the new drive needs to be in the ThinkPad the first time it is set up or cloned. See following thread.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=38496

If you are not using cloning software, then you may need to zero out (sometimes called low-level format) the drive and start over. See following thread.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=38582

[Leesburg_Dave]

A sincere thanks to everyone who posted a reply. The problem was perplexing for me, but I believe the root cause was the GPARTED utility somehow not faithfully copying the partition. I got suspicious when the R&R partition type came up 0x11 instead of 0x18. While the Symantech PM/Ghost bundle I ordered a week and half ago still hasn't arrived, you all suggested Acronis TrueImage and the Terabyte Bootitng utilities as alternatives. In short, the Acronis worked, but here's what I ended up doing...

At first I thought the problem was with the MBR so I got a utility that would back-up/restore the MBR. Not thinking it through, I decided I'd try to take the working MBR from the old HDD and copy it over to the new (!) Bad idea. I tried the GPARTED utility again and that's when nothing seemed to work right. I even tried using the Lenovo MBR utility to correct it, but to no avail. For those that care, I made the bootable floppy on a desktop workstation, then, using Nero, created a bootable CD from that floppy. It worked, except that you had to manually type the command to run the utility (didn't have time to figure out how to do an Autorun for just one command).

Finally, last night I ran the R&R from the back-up set I made when I first received the computer over a year ago. The restore worked fine and the ThinkVantage button worked as well. Figuring this process would also correct any disk geometry miss-matches and what not, I figured it was safe to go ahead and try out the Acronis utility. I installed the app onto my new HDD that I just restored the factory load onto. I ran the app and manually configured the partitions so that the R&R partition was the same size as the old HDD and the NTFS partition filled the rest of the space. After several minutes and a V-E-R-Y long first boot/login, everything is working great! Subsequent reboots were "normal" (needed to load new driver for new HDD, rebuild paging file, etc. for first boot, I suspect)

IF my Symantec utility bundle ever arrives in the mail, I might just give it a try, but frankly, I'm impressed with the Acronis utility and how much I could do with it. I didn't try the Terabyte utility, but from the web site, it looks just as good. My only dilemma now is to decide which to use long term.

Next project: figure out which of these seemingly thousands of Lenovo add-ons to get rid of to shorten my boot/login time, but that's another topic that appears to have made its way through this forum so I have some reading to do.

Thanks again for the help!!!