Can't get 500 GB Drive to boot in E6500

Hello, all:

A friend of mine has a new Latitude E6500 and wanted to put a 500 GB drive in instead of the 160 GB it came with. So I used DriveImage XML to copy drive-to-drive the Dell-installed drive to the new 500 GB.

When I try to boot off the 500 GB drive, the machine simply stops at the Intel RAID controller screen. I tried AHCI and IIRT modes in the BIOS and resetting the BIOS to optimized, but nothing helped; I always got that same result. I have also already tried imaging the drive twice: once before the initial boot-up and once after I installed some programs. Both times, it simply stops at the Intel screen after POST. The BIOS does recognize the drive and its full capacity, BTW, and I updated to the latest BIOS, too.

Should I be doing something differently? I really don't want to have to spend the time installing XP and programs from scratch and I prefer to have him use the Dell image and have the diagnostics partition available, too.

Any thoughts?

P.S. Personally, since I have an XPS, I'm usually in that neighborhood of NBR, not here.

 

Tried using Acronis to clone your drive? I used to use DriveImage XML, but it seemed to only work sporadically. Acronis is only free for a few days, but it does the job more reliably...

 

Thanks, Commander.

I've never had trouble with DI_XML before, but maybe that's it.

So you'd install Acronis trial on the working drive and tell it to copy itself on to the external drive via USB? Can it do this without a boot CD or does it prompt you to create one?

 

You can install it on the working drive and copy to the external or you can create a boot CD. It doesn't prompt you to create one but you have that option.

 

Thank you for the information.

 

I suggest to use Acronis Disc Director for drive/partition cloning or moving - works perfect. If you need, you can try it for free but I am not sure about limitations of trial.

 

You're welcome!

 

Thanks. From their web-site: "All the operations are shown in the software interface and can be planned, but not executed – no changes to your hard drives / partitions will be done."

Seagate has their own re-branded version of, I think, TrueImage Home. It's called Seagate DiscWizard and will only work if you have a Maxtor or Seagate drive connected.

It is available at their web site: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/

Click on DiscWizard and accept the license agreement. I think I will try this as the 500 GB drive is a Seagate Drive, if I recall correctly.

 

It is true - unless you are in Windows environment, you can't do serious operations with HDD media - it could be as a command for Windows for eating itself - all serios main disk operations could be performed before booting Win GUI and some services. The better thing is to use Acronis bootable CD for disk operations - it is fast and works in pseudo-DOS environment like a charm.