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How to Image new hard drive to boot?
I have a Dimension 3000, 40GB (PATA) hard drive, XP Pro, purchased in 2005. I recently tried to image a new 320GB (PATA) hard drive to replace the 40GB. All went well with regard to the transfer of information, except the new disk won't boot. The new hard drive has been partitioned having one part less than 120GB. Image7 was used in creating the imaged hard drive. Then, another attempt was made at simply imaging to another 40GB (PATA) to determine whether this was an issue indigenous to Dell. How can I get the new hard drive to boot? Thanks.
jackshack
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November 10th, 2010 21:00
Did your image include the boot sectors of the disk? The hard drive must be marked as active before the computer can boot from it. I've never had a problem provided I cloned the drive as opposed to imaging it. You might be able to recover by using the recovery console to get to a command prompt and execute the fixmbr command, or perhaps you can execute a repair installation if you have a CD with a compatible version of your operating system.
EDIT: One other thing you can try is to perform an install of the operating system on the hard drive and once that is done, write your image to the bootable drive. If it doesn't include the boot sectors anyway those should be left undisturbed and allow your imaged drive to boot up.