Troubles Making HDD Clone Bootable

[Daniel Cortes]

Hello everyone,

I am using XXCLONE-Home (latest version) to clone my windows 7 HDD
(mostly empty) onto a brand new WD Caviar Black 500GB HDD. I tried
using Paragon a while back ago and could not get it bootable, now I am
having a similar problem with XXClone. I'll start by mentioning that I
am pretty much an idiot when it comes to this kind of stuff, so if
someone can provide a step-by-step as to how to do this correctly, I
would appreciate it a lot... I saw that an older post had a link to
such a guide, but that guide is no longer online.

Anyway, I am cloning windows 7 onto a fresh drive via an external USB
HDD dock. Using the full clone (/backup1) everything copies great, and
I select all three options in the "make bootable" menu after the copy
is successfully made. I have also selected the option to change the
wallpaper of the target drive. After I do all this I turn off the
computer, take out my original HDD and replace it with the copy, I
make sure the computer is set to boot from this disk and then I let it
attempt to boot into windows. Frequently, it will get as far as the
windows loading screen and then stay perpetually black. A few times
I've gotten as far as my login screen where the computer will freeze
upon me selecting my account until it eventually re-starts. I've
attempted to do windows' repair option but it could not find a
solution for the startup problem, and interestingly the computer does
load windows in safe mode (has done it once at least). The only thing
I can think to do is to create a backup of my windows partition and
restore it onto the new HDD in safe-mode.... can anyone tell me what I
am doing wrong, or what I can do to try and fix this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Daniel

[Dan Anderson]

Hi Daniel,

Some suggestions:

1.  After having run Xxclone with the three "make bootable" options selected, you might include in your email to the Xxclone forum the text contents of the two boot.ini files, indicating which boot.ini file is on your source hard drive and which is on your destination hard drive.   

2.  After having run Xxclone but and with the hard drives still attached in their original configuration (i.e before swapping the hard drives), you might determine what happens when you try to boot into your newly created (external USB) Win7 partition by means of the boot menu that appears at the start of a normal boot operation where your default boot would have been your original hard drive if you had not selected the new partition from the boot menu.

Cheers,
Dan

______________________________________________________

[Daniel Cortes]

Dan,

Thanks for your reply. I was under the impression that windows 7 no
longer has a boot.ini as it is now the bootBCD, and I am unsure of how
to access the text in these files. When I tried to boot from the USB
HDD windows did not recognize it at bootup. I next tried placing the
cloned drive in my computer's SATA connection along with the original
HDD and booted the clone. This got me into windows, where I saw the
alternate wallpaper... but the computer froze and became unresponsive
after a few seconds. After this initial attempt, any attempt to boot
from the clone drive with or without the original have been
unsuccessful at getting past the windows loading screen. I have also
tried to clone the HDD while the new drive is inside my computer as a
slave drive but when I tried this XXclone could not make the new drive
bootable, it got stuck with the progress bar full but the "cancel"
button never turned into the "exit" button. This whole situation is
very confusing.

[Dan Anderson]

Hi Daniel,

My oops regarding the boot.ini reference (i.e. applicable to XP and not Win7). 

FWIW I guess you can access the \Boot\BCD parameters using the free version of EasyBCD, but maybe that consideration can be set aside pending confirmation on whether you were able to try out that second suggestion:

2.  After having run Xxclone but and with the hard drives still attached in their original configuration (i.e before swapping the hard drives), you might determine what happens when you try to boot into your newly created (external USB) Win7 partition by means of the boot menu that appears at the start of a normal boot operation where your default boot would have been your original hard drive if you had not selected the new partition from the boot menu.

Your comments below suggest that you did try to boot up the new Win7 partition on the external USB drive (i.e. prior to swapping the drives) and that either your new partition did not appear in the source drive's \Boot\BCD menu options that are displayed on boot-up, or perhaps the new partition did appear as a boot option but when you selected that option you received an error message or something?   Maybe clarify what your experience was in that regard.

Xxclone used to require a two-step process where you first needed to get the new partition operational while the source partition was still accessible (i.e. the first step was an initial boot-up into the new partition from the source partition's boot menu, and seeing a message confirming that the cloning process completed satisfactorily), and once that was accomplished then the new partition could be swapped in and would be self-bootable on a stand-alone basis.  So, even though the Xxclone process has evolved over time, I've always tried to make sure there was first a message generated within the new partition confirming the clone operational was successful, before relying on the new partition as stand-alone bootable.  I don't know if there are Win7 considerations that make the two-step process necessary in some cases, even if it may have become unnecessary in most cases with XP.

But I have not used Xxclone in the context of external USB drives, and maybe others can identify whether you should be able to get a successful boot-up as described above, before looking at swapping drives and resolving any stand-alone boot problems. 

Thanks,
Dan
 
_________________________________________________

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: [xxclone] Re: Troubles Making HDD Clone Bootable
From: Daniel Cortes <dbco...@ucdavis.edu>
To: The Xxclone Forum <xxc...@googlegroups.com>

[DES]

You might gain some insight into how to get a Windows 7 copy to boot
by looking over what was happening before xxclone could do it? There's
more on the subject that can be searched up but these cover the gist.

http://groups.google.com/group/xxclone/browse_thread/thread/ca1e9de93c2815c2

http://groups.google.com/group/xxclone/browse_thread/thread/9bf69e9e7e276974

I have boot a copy on a USB connected drive, to find that this is
primarily a function of Windows configuration:

http://groups.google.com/group/xxclone/browse_thread/thread/5ad258ae0a5a8efc

It's just interesting to know you can have a portable copy of your
system.

DES

[Daniel C]

DES and Dan,

Thanks for your comments so far. I am one step further towards my goal of making my new HDD self-bootable. I re-cloned it using my external dock, but this time hooked up via eSATA to my PC. After I made it bootable and set up a test boot I rebooted into the original drive and could see the option to boot into my copy (I think my PC just didnt like the USB connection, but its fine with the eSATA connection). I booted into my copy from here and it works fine (I'm on it right now). The problem now is that when I try to switch my old HDD for the new copy it still does not boot (says that BCD is incorrect or missing). I also tried switching the two drives (so that the original is external and the clone is inside the PC and this also does not work whether I try to boot from the clone itself or test-boot the clone from the original. In this situation it gets as far as the windows welcome screen and then goes into perpetual black screen. For now I am glad to have gotten the new drive at least indirectly bootable, but my ultimate goal is to have it be independently bootable and to be inside my PC, not hooked up to it via an eSATA dock... do you guys know what I am still missing? Dan, you mentioned the old system of XXclone required you to boot into the new clone from the original in order to make it self-bootable, is there something else that I need to do in order for this process to be complete? Thanks a lot guys!

Daniel

[DES]

I wonder if your original system has one of those friggin restore
partitions up front? Those Hidden restore partitions create what can
only be politely called a Non-standard configuration. If so, the only
reasonable solution is to Restore the BCD Store on the clone via a
Windows Installation or Repair disk. Once corrected that should be
Excluded from further clone updates.

In XP at least, an xxclone Test Boot starts on the original disk and
passes the boot sequence to the clone. Significantly, it uses the
original disk boot.ini and NT Loader, NTLDR. This type operation could
explain you getting a test boot but no joy on disk swapping. The clone
BCD being a copy of the original, but the physical partition layout
not being duplicated.

If one actually wanted to keep said partition the clone disk could be
first imaged from the original. Clonezilla will get that done nicely.
But personally I could never find a reason to want to restore the
factory original system!

DES

[Dan Anderson]

Hi Daniel,

Some additional considerations:

1.  Confirming booted into new partition.  That's good that you are able to at least indirectly boot into the new partition.  I assume that when you booted into the new partition you saw a pop up message that the Xxclone process completed successfully?  You should see that, as well as seeing the xxclone wallpaper that you selected, either of which confirms that you did not actually boot into your original source while thinking it was the clone (I've been fooled by that in the past).

2.  Delay time for initial boot up, and error messages.  On your attempt to do a stand-alone boot of the new drive I think you are saying that it "gets as far as the windows welcome screen and then goes into perpetual black screen".  I noticed that in Win7 it took as long as 10 minutes the first time that my clone booted up, although I think that was for the initial boot-up rather than the subsequent stand-alone boot up.  In any case, maybe make sure that you wait at least 15 minutes to see if the blank screen resolve itself (it should not have a similar delay on subsequent bootups).  It doesn't sound as though you had any error messages during the stand-along attempt with your new drive physically replacing your original drive (your reference to a "BCD missing" error message seemed to be in the context of bios reference changes rather than physically swapping the files, and maybe the BCD missing error message is related to the use of an e-Sata dock ... suggesting that your PC is a laptop containing a single drive?  ... also see #5 below).  

3.  Partition structure and "active" primary partition, in addition to "make bootable" options.  Another consideration is that in order for your new drive to be stand-alone bootable (after physically swapping it in place of your original hard drive) one thing that I think is necessary is that your new partition should have been set up as an "active" primary partition.  The "active" primary partition requirement does not so much apply to the location of the Win 7 operating system but the location of the \boot\BCD file (although I assume they are both in that same new partition).  That would supposedly be similar to XP's boot.ini file (and two other related files) having to be located an "active" primary partition, whether or not the XP operating system you were booting into was in that same primary partition or located in a primary partition on another hard drive or even located in a logical partition.  Is your partition structure otherwise fairly straight-forward (e.g. a single primary partition filling up each of your two hard drives)?  

For partition management and ensuring that the primary partition is "active" I use EaseUS and used to use Partition Magic, but the option to specify it as an active primary partition should have been an option in whatever software was used to set up the partition structure on the new drive.  I don't think it is something that can be done by the three "make bootable" options that you selected from the Xxclone menu.

4.  Not dynamic drive.  There can be problems as well if the initial setup of the new drive created a "dynamic" disk with volumes rather than partitions, but if that was the case I don't think your initial indirect boot-up would have worked okay.

5.  \boot\BCD files.  Further to the error message noted in 2 above regarding "BCD missing", I wonder whether installing the free version of EasyBCD in your original source partition would allow you to check out the status of the \boot\BCD parameters in your destination partition, and ensure that those parameters were directing you to the appropriate partition.

Cheers,
Dan

___________________________________________________________

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: [xxclone] Re: Troubles Making HDD Clone Bootable

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Xxclone Forum" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/xxclone/-/ybFJAxkSOeYJ.
To post to this group, send email to xxc...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to xxclone+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/xxclone?hl=en.