External Hard Disk Drive won't boot after Ghosting

[fatcatsat]

Hello,

My internal laptop hard drive is a Hitach HTS725050A9A360 and it recently started to get bad sectors. Given that my laptop is under warranty, I decided to ship it to Sony to have it replaced. Problem is, they don't restore data and their service centre is in the US and I am in the UK. So I decided to clone this drive through Norton Ghost 15 to my external 500Gb ST350083 0AS iOmega External USB drive (succesfully) and boot from the external drive until Sony sends a replacement drive.

It can boot, but then restarts shortly after 'Starting Windows' shows up and won't even boot into Safe Mode... so we have two identical installs of W7 on different drives and one fails to boot. Any idea how to get this fixed?

Dmitry

 

[TVeblen]

Hello fatcatsat. Welcome to the Forum.

I have never tried to do what you are doing, but my guess is that Windows is waking up expecting to be in one place and finds itself in another. While installing an OS on an external drive is common, cloning to an external is not the same thing.

You may be able to get it to boot by repairing the MBR on the external's install.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html?ltr=S
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2083-system-repair-disc-create.html?ltr=S

Worth a shot.

 

[fatcatsat]

Hi TVeblen,

I agree this is probably due to the difference in drive specs, and especially due to the fact that one drive is internal and the other is external.

Yep, first it failed to boot properly and I had to boot from Windows Recovery CD that I created previously. So it involved running repair option from Recovery CD shell, and apparently that fixed the boot problem. Now it says 'Starting Windows', and just as colored balls start flying to form a Windows flag, the thing just restarts and next thing I see is a message saying that Windows failed to load and would I like to try the Safe Mode instead. Which doesn't work. (I ran the Repair option again, it took almost an hour to process, and threw a message saying that no errors were found).

But the question is - most of the people perform similar procedure when they upgrade their hard drive (with an exception they they are typically both internal) - shouldn't that be a common problem?

Dmitry

 

[TVeblen]

No, what you are doing is not the same thing as cloning and replacing an internal hard drive. Booting through a USB device is different.

Have you marked the external's partition the OS is on to Active? The MBR can only be installed on an Active partition.

Did you run the Startup Repair 3 times?

 

[fatcatsat]

Hi TVeblen,

The partition is marked as Active - I can check it when I boot from my old drive and connect the USB drive. It says Healthy (Active, Primary).

Actually, the Clone process marked it and installed MBR (there are relevant options in Norton Ghost). But apparently it did it clumsily, as at first it failed to boot, saying 'Bootmgr not found, Press Ctrl-Alt-Del' - it took the first repair attempt to fix.

No I didn't run repair 3 times - will try to do it this evening.

Thanks,

Dmitry

 

[TVeblen]

The partition is marked as Active - I can check it when I boot from my old drive and connect the USB drive. It says Healthy (Active, Primary).

Yeah, to boot Windows the partition would need to be marked as System, Boot, Active, Primary Partition.

 

[madtownidiot]

The reason this is happening is because when windows is the USB drivers, it disconnects the USB ports, making it impossible to continue loading the system. The only way you'll get windows to finish booting is to disassemble your external drive enclosure and install the HDD it into your laptop. If your external is a 3.5" HDD, You'll just have to wait till you get a new one.

Strangely enough, this only happens with proprietary operating systems. Macs are locked down even more.. and can't be booted from USB at all. On the other hand, I have an external that can install linux to itself on any computer it's connected to

 

[fatcatsat]

Hi madtownidiot,

Yep, that sounds like something that is indeed happening to my computer (

The question is now, whether 52k of bad sector justify sending the drive back and staying without a pc for 2-3 weeks (I live in the UK and my laptop is on the US warranty). So far everything is working perfectly after chkdsk /r but I'm nervous.

Any opinions on that, folks?

Dmitry

 

[karlsnooks]

Dmitry,

Was the drive making any noise?

Connect drive back up to computer.

Check for noise when the surrounding environment is perfectly quiet.

Run ChkDsk /R.

View the report in Event Viewer.

If drive not noisy, then run chkdisk again tomorrow. Look at results in event viewer. Is the result the same?

You can experiece sector loss because of hard drive vibration.

Do NOT run the computer when you are moving same.

Do not put into sleep mode, throw into you backpack and take off.

Always shutdown completely before moving.

Download, install and run SPECCY. Occassionally, look at the termperatures reported and see if they are OK. Hi temps cause all kinds of problems.

Now here is supporting info and links.

[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]VIEW CHKDSK (CHECK DISK) LOG[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]​

[FONT=&quot]
The log giving the results from running Check Disk can be viewed using the Event Viewer.

WIN key | type EVENTVWR.MSC | ENTER key

Wait for the Summary of Administrative Events section in the middle pane to be populated.

In the left-pane, navigate to Windows Logs | Application

In the middle-pane, click on the word Source.
This will sort the events by Source

Scroll to find the event(s) titled WinInit and with the Event ID 1001.

Under the General tab, there is a scrollable display of the output from CHECK DISK.

You can click in that scrollable area, select all of the text with Ctrl + A and then paste your selection into NotePad, WordPad, Word or the editor of your choice.

A “copy” giving event info, time, and so forth can also be made by:
In the right-hand pane, in the Event 1001, wininit section, click on Copy, then on Copy Details as Text. Now you can paste into your favorite editor.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]-------------------------------------------------------------------------[/FONT]
Speccy - System Information - Free Download

 

[madtownidiot]

Hi madtownidiot,

Yep, that sounds like something that is indeed happening to my computer (

The question is now, whether 52k of bad sector justify sending the drive back and staying without a pc for 2-3 weeks (I live in the UK and my laptop is on the US warranty). So far everything is working perfectly after chkdsk /r but I'm nervous.

Any opinions on that, folks?

Dmitry

trust me on this, there is no way to get windows to boot from a USB external..

Your HDD is a 7200 rpm HDD, which it great for performance in a laptop, but generally prone to overheating in some systems, which is probably why you're getting so many errors.. the HDD itself should be under warranty, and replacing one is a 5 minute procedure. I would consider replacing it yourself instead of risking further damage by shipping it overseas.

 

[fatcatsat]

Thanks karlsnooks and madtownidiot,

The drive wasn't making much noise, it was more like everything was freezing for some time (and you could hear it humming slightly differently) but no significant noise, no. Chkdsk reported no additional bad clusters after I ran it in a couple of days.

I think I will just run on this drive until (if ever) situation gets out of control and if it does I will just replace it myself. A bit of out of pocket expense, but that's karma I'm afraid. Obviously, some regular backups will be needed.

What replacement would you recommend in the same price category (i.e. 50-60 pounds)?

Dmitry

 

[karlsnooks]

Dmitry,
I'm not qualified to make a recommendation for a specific hard drive, especially since I've gone over to using a SSD which is expensive.

Be sure to monitor that temp.

 

[madtownidiot]

I usually buy western digital HDDs for laptops.. haven't had many fail on me. You can get almost hdd you want online for the price you quoted.. Here's the one I would recommend.. the larger cache will make up for the slower rotation speed and will probably last a lot longer. scan.co.uk
Otherwise.. try this one: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/750GB-western-WD7500BPVT-5400RPM-8MB-SATA20-3Gb-s-25

 

[fatcatsat]

Thanks folks