Restore under Free Macrium - To a different HDD?

The mbr is fine.

Try running macrium boot corrector on the 2tb without the 750gb attached - see if that does the job - just out of interest.

SIW2 said:

The mbr is fine.

Try running macrium boot corrector on the 2tb without the 750gb attached - see if that does the job - just out of interest.

(See addition material in my last post)

Re; your comment, OK, I will do that - I'll disconnect the 750 keep the 2 TB attached, and run m boot corrector from the rescue disk.

That said, when you wrote "The mbr is fine", did you mean that I should not replace the 2 TB's mbr with the image of that of the 750 GB?

There is no macrium boot corrector on the rescue disc, so I've reattached the 2TB via usb dock, and will see if I can run macrium boot corrector on it from there . . .

I don't see any such tool in the free Macrium as-installed on "OS C", either . . .?

Additional Note:

I made two images of the mbr from the 2TB - one before I resized its OS partition and one after I resized it. Both are the same size: 11,052 kb.

I made two images of the mbr from the 750GB - one before and one after the resize of its OS partition. They were slightly different in size: 11,071 kb and 11,074, respectively.

Again, I am flummoxed as to why the occupied space on the two drives is different . . .oh no, I'm not! C drive has been changing, whilst its image of a couple of days ago (now installed on the 2 TB) has not! Duh!

OK. that's settled.

I still can only think to replace the mbr on the 2 TB with the last image taken of the mbr on the 750 . . .

So that's what I'll do in a bit, after waiting for someone to suggest something better . . .

Again. Many thanks.

One (?) Final (?) Additional Note:

While I successfully tested out the clone OS on the 2TB when I made it (it booted fine, etc.), I have not since.

There is one feature of the mbr as cloned onto the 2TB drive which I might mention but have not, since it seemed irrelevant. Perhaps it is not. When I cloned the 2TB several months ago, its mbr ("SYSTEM (F:)", as it shows up in its usb dock now) is sitting in a partition which is not the "standard" 100 mb, but rather 266mb.

And/However as noted earlier, the used space of the mbr on the two HDD's is different. (24.13 mb on 750, and 24.64 on the 2TB). It is this last factor which seems like it would be the culprit preventing the 750 from booting . . . (& I still think the actual partition size for the mbr on 2 TB is irrelevant.)

Trying to keep this simple ...

The mbr and the system partition are two different things, by the way.

If you had a separate system partition on the 750gb - you would need to restore that as well.

It contains the boot critical files.

One of those is the bcd store - which contains the location of the bootloader.

It needs to be updated to reflect the new location.

Macrium - and most imaging apps. will do that automatically at the end of restore.

As bcd is updated - there will be various other files created - bcd.log for example - that will probably account for the different used space on the system partition.

( Macrium Boot corrector might not be on the free one you have.)

If there is an issue booting a reimaged drive - then running startup repair from the win 7 dvd/repair disc should fix it.

Hope it helps.

SIW2 said:

* * *

Hope it helps.

It does, I think, if I'm understanding you correctly.

1. Bottom line is that I should mirror the 750 "System" onto the 2 TB, which is what I had figured I should do, but it's nice to get confirmation of that.

2. Re: my roughly equating the mbr to the files on the separate SYSTEM partition (yes there is one on both - but it's "strangely large" on the 2 TB, see above, and attached image, below), point taken.




3. I separately imaged the system partition and the os partition of the 750, pursuant to 1 (or perhaps 2) sticky thread(s) in this sub-forum.

4. Hopefully "installing" the 750's system to the 2 TB will solve the problem.

I don't have a win 7 dvd, and unless one of the tools in the HP (Pavilion) "recovery schema" allows me to make the repairs in question, I'm out of luck.

But perhaps not actually out of luck wholly - HP has IMO terrific customer support. Just recently I had an outstanding and very successful (and lengthy) CS experience with a wholly competent, knowlegeable, polite etc. tech. (I bought this like 6 mos ago, so it's still under warranty)

Now whether they would take the time to fix not their actual machine, but a BU clone drive I created from that machine . . . who knows? HP is quite impressive in this regard, though, from my experience.

Again, thanks so much. I will report back later this evening or perhaps tomorrow.

You can find win 7 installation .iso's all over the place.

Otherwise ( or as well ) , you can run off a "repair disc " in windows 7 - that is sometimes disabled by oem's - so it may not work for you.

Worth trying it - type create in start search box - click create system repair disc - and see if it lets you do it.

You can't reinstall from a system repair disc - but it does have the automated startup repair functions - fits on a cd easily.

The same startup repair functions may well be on the HP discs you have run off - probably , in fact.

If you haven't already run of the HP recovery discs - do it now.

You might need it one day.

I think HP only let you do one set.

As always, there is a workaround to do it more than once.

Well, re-installing the 750's SYSTEM partition on the 2TB didn't do the trick.

But perhaps it was a necessary step.

After that "non-fixing event", I took SIW2's advice and went and found a boot "repair" disk called Windows Live 7 Maintenance posted on one of the boards I frequent, and I am now writing this post from the OS on the 2TB drive!

It was easy-peasy: I just started the program which looked most promising on the CD; it very shortly informed me that there were errors that it could correct and should it?; I said "youbetcha, fix'er", and Here We Are.

Thanks to all for their patience and help. Very much. Now I have to get back to work, I suppose.

Oh, wait - one final question, I guess:

If I leave this 2TB drive hooked up internally, and also re-hook up the original 750 GB HDD internally, I will have two internal drives, each with an OS on it.

Question 1: That won't cause any problems will it - being that they both have OS's on them?

Question 2 is a matter of pure curiosity (assuming that the anwer to (1) is "No")

Question 2: Am I correct in assuming that if I internally mount both drives, the question of which one will in fact boot up on any particular restart depends on which SATA connection the bios sees as the "first available HDD which is installed."?

Again. Thanks so very much.