Error installing new hard drive

I cloned my 60GB HD using Seagate DiscWizard (limited Acronis TI) to a new Hitachi HD in a USB enclosure and when it was done DiscWizard said it was successful, to swap cables. I then swapped HD's added the new one to my laptop and rebooted only to be faced with an error message (blue screen) to check for viruses, something about new HD's, for safety sake will not boot to Windows etc.

After several attempts I swapped the HD's again and was able to boot with my old HD. I attached the new Hitachi with USB and tried to explore and got a pop up that F: drive wasn't formatted would I like to format now. Clicked no.

Frankly, I don't know what could be the problem, this is the first time I've tried this.

Any suggestions?

Added:

OK, besides not being able to boot, clicking format it looks like the drive shrunk. The drive can't be formatted.


An answer to that phenomena is found on this thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=184990

It still doesn't help with why it wouldn't boot.

I don't really care if I have Media Direct or not. If I can regain the lost space, could I do a clean install with the XP CD?

Again, any help would be appreciated.

Since I'm using my old drive, ideally, I'd like to restore the new drive (format which it won't allow) in the USB enclosure. I'll then reinstall XP on this drive and try to clone the new drive again.

 

OK, I was able test the new disk in C drive (OK) but still unable to boot, formated and error checked the disk in USB F drive, however, it's still half of what it supposed to be.

Any ideas of how to get the space back?

 

I'd start by looking closely at the problematic Hitachi HD. It couldn't have shrunk (unless an elephant stepped on it). And I doubt that its "physical" capacity has been cut in h/w (I have never tried this, but I know it can be done via jumper settings or via some obscure ATA commands). Software like MHDD can control this. But I very much doubt this is your problem. Maybe you just ended up with more than one partition or a single partition that doesn't take the entire available disk space? Any partitioning tool (even the venerable fdisk) should be able to shed light on this.

I can't say I understood the "drive can't be formatted" statement. How? Using what tools? With what error message? Etc.

If you were using Vista, cloning/ghosting would be problematic (but very much doable), but I got the impression you are using XP, so I won't even mention the Vista/Ghost problem.

Hope something of the above helps. Post more details and an update on what the drive contents (partition(s)) looks like. Good luck and merry Xmas!

 

According to another post, indeed, the drive shrunk somehow thanks to Dell's Media Direct. I noticed if I click cleanup the contents in the recycle bin most likely contain the clone of my present drive. Anyway to get that back? Whre's the recycle bin for the F drive?

Here's what the disks look like.... only 53.4 GB shown of a 120 GB disk!

ADDED:

I put the Hitachi back into the C drive and booted into the Hitachi Feature Tool on CD which allowed me to reset the disk to 120GB. Took it out, put it back into the enclosure, plugged it in. Right clicked my computer, manage, disk management has it at 120 GB. Right click properties there, it shows 54GB like in the 1st attachment.

Huh?