1 Topic by frank99

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Topic: Cloning HDD

Has anyone cloned a WinXP partition on a laptop using GParted?

I have a 100Gb drive with a 45Gb partition containing WinXP which I would like to clone to a 60Gb drive.  My reason for doing so is to free up the 100Gb drive and use it as a backup drive for my main 100Gb drive which has PCLinuxOS on it.  I am dropping Windows completely, but need to do some work with Pinnacle Video editing suite which will not run on Linux.

I have in fact tried to do a "Move/Copy" as shown in the User Manual, but while the operation seems to complete normally and the 60Gb drive shows it has an exact copy of the contents of the WinXP partition, the drive will not boot.  Everything in the boot.ini file is correct. The drive will run up, the Windows splash screen (black background) comes up normally, then the striped blue screen appears, but instead of the word "WELCOME", it has the same WinXP logo as the initial splash screen.  And that is where everything halts. 

One thing I am not sure about is that in the manual, the instructions would appear to be written around a desktop pc, with a master/slave configuration (hda/hdb).  With the laptop, the second drive has to be a USB drive, and the configuration is hda/sda. 

Any thoughts, comments appreciated.

2 Reply by class413

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Re: Cloning HDD

Have you read the documentation? You can't reboot immediately after copying, because the booting windows can' bear windows in the second drive.

I think you must put the new drive in the place of the old one. As the new drive obviously has no boot code on the MBR, you have perhaps to run the xp cd in recovery-console mode to install the MBR code with the command fixmbr.

There is another issue I don't know if it can give any issues: xp puts on the MBR an identification code that is stored in the registry, to identify the various media to the volume letters: C:, D: etc.


Another tool to clone partitions and disks is clonezilla, a livecd that you can find in the "Gparted-Clonezilla" liveCD (about 130MB big ISO file).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by frank99

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Re: Cloning HDD

Been right through the documentation.

Yes, I made sure I did not reboot while both drives were in the machine.  I removed the original and installed the clone, and yes, I did run FIXMBR from the recovery console but that made no difference.

What has me puzzled is that both drives are identical in size - down to the last byte, so I assume that there should be no issue with it booting.

I will have a look at Clonezilla.

Thanks

4 Reply by class413

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Re: Cloning HDD

Here is the link to the Clonezilla main page.
http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/
It can work not only on partitions but on an entire disk too.

(As it is related to the live media rather than the installed version, I move the entire topic to the Live media section).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

5 Reply by frank99

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Re: Cloning HDD

Hi - thanks

I have downloaded Clonezilla, compiled the Live CD from the .iso and booted my computer from the CD.

Cloned the WinXP partition okay, but unfortunately I get the same result as I got from GParted when I try to run the cloned drive in my computer.

In both cases, the WinXP splash screen (black background) comes up, and then the next screen which usually has the word "WELCOME" on it (background is three blue bands) comes up but instead of "WELCOME" it also shows the Windows XP logo.  There the computer stops and will do nothing.

I have booted using the WinXP CD and run the Recovery Console and run FIXMBR but this does not have any effect.

If I install this drive as an external USB (comes up as "E", my dvdrom is "D") drive and look at its contents, everything appears to be there. Under "E:\Windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries" I can run msconfig.exe, and the contents of the boot.ini file are identical to the contents of the .ini file on my C drive.

I am puzzled.

6 Reply by class413

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Re: Cloning HDD

It seems that two identical windows installations on the same computer will confuse it.

Are you sure that you cloned the hard disk, not just the partition?

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

7 Reply by frank99

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Re: Cloning HDD

class413 - you wrote

"It seems that two identical windows installations on the same computer will confuse it."

I have always tried booting from the cloned drive after removing the original drive physically from the computer.  Being a laptop, there is only one hdd socket.

"Are you sure that you cloned the hard disk, not just the partition?"

Only the partition, which is one of the options avaiable in Clonezilla.

My "spare" hard drive is only 60Gb, my main drive is 100Gb.  I have in fact tried cloning drive to drive as well as partition to partition but get the same results.

Can you confirm that I should be looking at drive to drive, and if both drives need to be the same size.

8 Reply by class413

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Re: Cloning HDD

I have a [b]100Gb drive[b] with a 45Gb partition containing WinXP which I would like to clone to a [b]60Gb drive[b].  My reason for doing so is to free up the 100Gb drive and use it as a [b]backup drive[b] for my [b]main 100Gb drive[b] which has PCLinuxOS on it.

I understand that there are 2 100GB drives and 1 60GB.

To clone an entire drive, the "target" drive must be at least as big as the "source" drive, but I think this may be not the issue. I had in mind the Master boot sector and especially the first part (446 bytes) that contains the boot code. There are some other parts, like the partition table and the disk signature. The partition table is written by Gparted or Clonezilla according to the partitions that are created on the target drive. 

Besides the fixmbr command, there is another command to fix the main boot code in the partition boot sector (fixboot).
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu … x?mfr=true
Check the disk for errors, too. wink

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

9 Reply by frank99

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Re: Cloning HDD

Hi.  Yes, the drive sizes you mention are correct.  I have tried both the FIXMBR and the FIXBOOT options, but I think you may be right in that the problem is most likely in the partition table and/or disk signature areas rather than in what I am actuallty cloning/copying. 

I have access to a desktop pc and am going to see what happens with two identical size drives.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that GParted will allow the "copying" of a PARTITION but not a complete drive.  If this is right, then to copy a Linux HDD for example means that each partition has to be copied, one at a time to an equivalent sized prepared partition on the target disk.  Or can you select more than one partition at a time?

10 Reply by class413

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Re: Cloning HDD

There is a "Optional Disk signature" part in the master boot record (4 bytes) that is used by the O.S. to identify the medium and is stored in the windows registry too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

Gparted works with partitions. You can copy all of them but not the MBR (although you can do it from the linux terminal; details in the above link, under "Backing up/restoring the MBR" ). I think you can copy more partitions at time, but I prefer to be very conservative and do 1 action at the time only. It's longer but it seems more secure to me.

Clonezilla can copy an entire disk, as well as Linux can from the terminal. Clonezilla is much faster because it copies only used disk blocks for the filesystems in understands and supports.

The difference between Linux and windows is how each OS uses its partitions. Linux seems clearer and easier than windows to fix things after.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

11 Reply by Ysaric

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Re: Cloning HDD

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I've found someone who is having the same problem I am!!  It has been very difficult trying to do Google searches for anything that includes the term "blue screen" and come up with anything other than a million links to people having BSOD problems.

Can you please tell me whether you resolved this issue and, if so, how?

I bought a new hard drive and used Gparted to copy my C: to the new hard drive.  Now I have the same symptom when Windows boots--it looks as if it boots fine until it would otherwise have gone to the user selection screen.  Instead it fades to a screen that looks a lot like the user selection screen, but only with the Windows XP name and logo on the right side.

I have been under the operating assumption that this is some form of anti-piracy measure, and my plan tonight (absent finding an alternative solution today) was going to be to try to re-install XP (Pro) from my original CD right over the top of my existing installation.  As a last resort I will wipe the new drive and install from scratch, but there are so many other things I am crazy-busy with right now (such as moving), it's just not a good time to spend time doing a C: wipe and reinstalling everything.

Thanks much for any help!

12 Reply by class413

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Re: Cloning HDD

I think there is the option to repair the existing installation booting from the installation cd.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

13 Reply by Ysaric

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Re: Cloning HDD

Since I still have the original HDD, I am going to wipe the copy I made with GParted and do a clone, assuming I can find a decent free cloning program.

14 Reply by frank99

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Re: Cloning HDD

Hi Ysaric,

Just caught up on your post on the way to France for a holiday.

I have not as yet found a way to recover the cloned hard drive, but am still looking for a way.

That BSOD you mention,  is actually (I think) the screen which appears when XP is shutting down

If you manage o get it working, please post

LOL

15 Reply by Ysaric

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Re: Cloning HDD

Yah, it's definitely not a BSOD, it's almost like the account selection screen but with the Windows XP name and logo on the right hand side, and darker blue bands on the top and bottom 1/4ths of the screen.

And I did fix it.  I downloaded The Ultimate Boot CD and used one of its many awesome utilities (including several cloning utilities) to clone the old drive to the new drive.  That in and of itself did not fix the problem, because then Windows gave me an error that the drive was not bootable, so I went back into GParted and saw that the cloning process had not set a boot flag on the drive, so I used GParted to set the boot flag.  After I cloned the old drive to the new drive using The Ultimate Boot CD, then set the boot flag in GParted, everything booted normally.  I didn't realize how noisy that old drive was until it was out of the system.  Like going from an econobox to a BMW.  My large cooling fans make noise, but it's still a lot quieter smile

And that's how I fixed it.  HAve fun in France.