using Acronis trying to clone a dual boot hard drive

I've got a laptop running a dual boot of vista and Xp. I wanted to upgrade to a larger hard drive and still keep my dual boot set up. I am using Acronis to clone the old drive and the three partitions (hidden, vista and XP) to a larger drive. Both are Hitachi drives and I don't think there is a hardware problem. I have tried every option with Acronis including cloning in DOS (or whatever they call it these days). The cloning always seems to complete successfully, but when I put the new Hard drive in the laptop I get the "missing operating system". I know it has something to do with the bootloader, but all my research that lead me to buy Acronis made me believe I would not have this problem, as opposed to something else like Ghost.

What am I missing here?

 

Can you load the Windows disk and just do a startup repair?

 

Tried that with the XP and Vista disks, it doesn't work. Also the OS disks that boot up don't see the partitions on the drive, but I can see the partitions in other systems when I plug the hard drive in to check. Is there something I need to do differently in Acronis?

 

What was the hidden partition? In other words, is this a Dell with a Dell recovery partition?

I have had nothing but trouble with cloning Dell disks with hidden partitions with Acronis--and I am a big Acronis fan.

The only thing that has never failed me is clonzilla and my "clone box"-- an old P4 with 2 pata and 4 sata ports and a couple of 3.5 to 2.5 disc adapters. This thing has cloned everything I have ever thrown at it.

 

Its an Acer, but I have seen all the manufactuers go with the hidden partition. Can clonezilla do what I need done?

 

I don't know--never had a to clone an ACER, the problem is what do you have at your disposal? clonezilla is a pure clone tool. You boot with a cd and clone from what disk to another so you need to be able to put both drives in a single machine (no clone image to burn, store and restore with this one)

But it is free

 

missing operation system typically means a partitioning problem. Make sure the proper partition is marked as active.

 

Simply marking the partition active doesn't work on Dells, though it has worked on HPs with recovery partitions

 

The active partition thing makes sense, but I am trying to preserve the dual boot. Any instructions on how to do this?

 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Mark-a-partition-as-active

 

Tried that it doesn't work either. Should I just format each partition before I clone then copy each partition one by one?

 

I didn't think it would work, either. It never has on the Dells I've fought with.

No, just clone the entire disk as is using clonezilla, then you will have to adjust the partition sizes to utilize the entire new disk

 

Ah I have a solution, I think!

Sounds like you're having two problems - bootloader and partition rpoblem.

Did you make the partitions before loading the acronis to them?


First thing you should do, IMO, is create the partitions. Then run an install of XP then Vista (in that order) on the parittions you want them on. You shouldn't need to go through the whole install, just until the first reboot. This will get the bootloader working PROPERLY for your new hard drive.

Then, run the restore for acronis.


I have had the same problem, or so I think, when I was running windows xp and server 2008 side by side on my laptop. Tried moving to a bigger hard drive and everything went up in smoke.

 

- what do you mean "seems to"? Do you get the message from Acronis: "process completed" in plain text as part of the boot screen? If not, then Acronis hasn't done the clone properly.

 

Have you cloned, and restored, everything, including the MBR? In other words, you made a backup of the complete disk, and restored the complete disk? If the answer to these is yes, then try to restore the partitions individually, and, for now, copy them into partitions of identical size as the old one (You can resize them later). Finally, newer versions of Acronis offer the option to do "sector-by-sector" cloning. That should ensure that if you have funny partitions with hidden files on them that Acronis doesn't recognize as being part of the filesystem, you will still get an exact sector-by-sector copy of your drive. You'll end up with bigger files, but if that doesn't do the trick, then I don't know what will help...

 

I am using an older version of Acronis, so perhaps that is the issue with mine. I always thought the "clone" option was always a sector by sector clone (as opposed to the image option), but perhaps I am incorrect.

The problem the OP is having and I have had is this system has a pre-existing restore partition created by the OEM. He is not making a dual boot from scratch and then using Acronis. Acronis works flawlessly in these cases.

 

Yes, I get that message. Also this is my frst time cloning a system that has a hidden partition, so I am essentially having problems that I have never had before on any system using Acronis or Ghost.

 

so, did you try clonezilla?