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    Duplicated my old drive to a new drive but it's not bootable

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by danskim, Oct 17, 2008.

  1. danskim

    danskim Notebook Geek

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    I recently got a good deal on a 320gb 7200rpm drive. I didn't want to have to install everything again, so I decided to use a program to duplicate the contents of my old drive to my new one.

    I plugged both drives into my desktop.
    I tried Partition Magic, but that didn't seem to work well. I found a freeware program called DriveImage XML. It was pretty fast, and on my desktop I can see that indeed the drive was identical.

    I plugged the new drive into my laptop, but it does not boot. An error comes up saying there is no operating system.

    Does anyone know how to fix this?
    If not, is there another program that does the same thing but keeps the bootability in tact?
     
    danskim, Oct 17, 2008
    #1
  2. danskim

    danskim Notebook Geek

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    Ok, well I found another program, Paragon Drive Copy, that explicitly says it creates a bootable copy of a drive, so I'll try that.
     
    danskim, Oct 17, 2008
    #2
  3. FrankTabletuser

    FrankTabletuser Notebook Evangelist

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    Have you set your partition which contains the OS as the active partition? Else it does not boot from the partition. You can use partition magic for for this.
     
    FrankTabletuser, Oct 17, 2008
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  4. jcovelli

    jcovelli Notebook Deity

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    YOU CAN'T BOOT FROM AN IMAGE

    you have to make a bit for bit exact CLONE of the disk for it to be bootable.

    Acronis True Image is another good program for this.

    also make sure to defragment and do a disk scan/fix before you make the clone
     
    jcovelli, Oct 17, 2008
    #4
  5. Ruub

    Ruub Notebook Enthusiast

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    I can recommend Self Image. It's free and did a great job cloning my drive.
     
    Ruub, Oct 18, 2008
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  6. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    The trial versions of Acronis True Image or Casper should be OK for one-off cloning.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Oct 19, 2008
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  7. PhoenixFx

    PhoenixFx Notebook Virtuoso

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    If you already have all the files transferred to the new hard disk, then try repairing the MBR (think that should work, but can't guarantee.. ). Boot with the Windows installation disk and then select Startup repair for Windows Vista OR login to the recovery console and type fixmbr or fixboot for Windows XP.
     
    PhoenixFx, Oct 19, 2008
    #7