Booting From a Copied Image of a Hard Drive

2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
I used DriveImage XML Version 2.02 to copy an image of a 74.5 gigabyte hard drive to a 232 gigabyte hard drive. The image was copied but when I tried to use the new hard drive to boot to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 it won't work.

I placed the hard drive in the correct boot priority but it won't start the Windows Vista operating system. When I look at the hard drive that I copied the image to all the data is there. Any ideas why I can't boot from the 232 gigabyte hard drive?
 
Assuming the drive was copied correctly. You also need to set the drive to active for the drive to be bootable.
 
lawson_jl said:
Assuming the drive was copied correctly, you also need to set the drive to active for the drive to be bootable.
Click to expand...

One thing I am going to check is the jumper settings though I assume they are already set as master instead of slave.
What actions would I need to take in order for the drive to be active?
 
There are more then a few ways to do it. The way I do it is to boot the PC with GParted and set the partition as active in the options. Most drive cloning programs have an option to set partitions as active or otherwise. You could also use FDISK (if you wanna go old school) or The Recovery Console.
 
I used Windows Disk Management to set the partition on the 232 gigabyte hard drive as active. Now, whenever I attempt to boot to this drive it is saying it can't because the following startup file is corrupted:

File:\Windows\System32\Winload.exe

DriveImage XML Version 2.02 messed up and corrupted some of the copied files on the new hard drive I am guessing. Do I need to copy the entire image all over again?
 
Depending on how your bcd storage has been configured, it is important that the disk signature (mbr) is maintained and that your partition starts at the same place (sector number), unless you want to reconfigure it.

-- YES, Windows can be very misleading with its error messages sometimes.
 
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Well I used Norton Ghost Version 14 and copied an entire image of my hard drive to another hard drive and it works. DriveImage XML Version 2.02 is not good to ghost images with in my opinion.
 
Boot the Vista installation disk and do a startup repair. That often corrects winload.exe issues. It should rewrite the MBR.
 
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