Not able to BOOT Windows XP from external USB2 Hard Drive on Latitude D600

Question

The internal HD on my D600 had defective blocks and would no longer start WinXP normally. I previously mirrored the disk onto an external disk with Symantec Save/Restore 10.0 ignoring the bad blocks, checked the mirrored external disk, which was ok.

When trying to boot Windows XP from the external USB disk (changing the boot device by F2 at boot time to the USB device), it began to load Windows, then Blue screen telling an error has occured, had to take a dump and terminated. Simply said, I could not boot from the external disk!

my intention was to boot from the healthy environment, replace the failing internal HD or repair it and restore my environment to the internal HD, so I could start working again (all on the same D600, not trying to distribute XP or whatever to multiple machines).

Now I'm left with an internal HD that cannot load Windows and an external disk with a healthy OS and disk that cannot load either! why is that?

suggestions welcome? am I missing some trick?

Thank you

jch

TDK9 · Answer

JCH, If you used Norton to 'Clone' the hard drive, then all should be fine - even with XP, as long as it goes back into the 'same machine'.  I have completed the following procedure for an absolutly perfect backup and restore of my internal desktop many times:  Note that I have not tried a USB-connected clone, since that is a bit more complicated.  Also note that any changes after cloning will not be included (I write data to CD's). A. Clone the drive (using Norton Systemworks), such that the drive will be cloned by Norton after the machine re-boots - using a temporary bootable mini-operating system (not within XP).  B. Disconnect the cloned drive immediately after the cloning process (kill the power and do not allow the system to reboot into XP).  I remove it from the case to preculde the chance of fire etc.    C. If the clone needs to be used, then simply install the clone as the master - but be certain to disconnect the old drive.  This can be done to check the integrity of the clone. D. If the old drive is not physically-damaged, then it can be re-installed as the slave and the system cloned over to it per above.   The problem you may be experiancing is: 1. Symantec 10.0 mirror 'sorta failed' (meaning the data is OK, but the disk will not boot) because it was operated within XP.  It would seem that Symantec would have figured that aspect out, but then again Windows update may have snared that feature.   or  2.  You may have powered-up and connected a mirrored/cloned XP drive to another XP system - just to inspect it.  In both cases, I believe that XP does not allow a mirror/clone (or perhaps any other XP bootable system hard drive) to co-exist.  It automatically renders the other mirror/clone drive as unbootable (it might only take a single write...and it probably does not offer any warnings).    I realize you are not trying to distribute a mirror/clone of your XP drive and are only trying to make a backup, but XP only knows that the clone must die.    I may be mistaken regarding the technical details here, but I know what works and what does not - in this specific situation for me.   Have you considered connecting the unbootable laptop hard drive in a simple-minded Win98 system via an adapter or USB shell cable and using Norton or another disk repair program to fix it?    Sorry if this message is not much help and good luck with your system recovery.

jchemmi · Answer

TDK9,   since my internal HD was dead and my D600 is still under warranty, I called a Dell technician who replaced the HD with an empty one. I formatted the HD and then used the Symantec recovery CD to boot the system. This went ok. I then used Symantec restore (from Symantec's recovery CD) to restore the image from the external USB disk onto the newly replaced internal HD. Then restarted WinXP successfully from the internal HD just restored.   My conclusion on this is  I can boot from a CD, I can boot from the internal HD, but I cannot from an external usb connected disk! I used Symantec Save/Restore latest version which includes Ghost 10.0, which itself contains the features of Ghost 2003. Reason is Ghost 2003 was version that fixed issues with usb drives! Previously I tried with DriveWizard Professional, however had exactly same problem (I imagine it must be XP then).   I may have wrongly assumed XP would start from a USB disk, even if it is an exact image of the internal drive, It does not! I am disappointed, though, that software like Symantec's or CompuApps (DriveWizard) do not clearly state this fact and sell their products to people who think they are safe with them. It's not exactly the case, more has to be done to restore a working environment.

ejn63 · Answer

No version of Windows that has shipped supports booting from USB - you can do it with Linux, DOS and other OSes, and reportely, Vista will include the option, but XP and earlier do not.

dbuk · Answer

When you cloned, you cloned everything from the IDE disk including the partition table and boot data like which physical disk and partition has boot and system (usually hdd0, partition 1). This was 'wrong' after the switch to USB, your USB disk is most unlikely to be hdd0.

I would expect the same failure if you had cloned to a SCSI drive. I forget how XP designates but in Linux terms your IDE would be 'hda' and the scsi would be 'sda' - they're different, and the OS knows what type of drive it should be looking for.

Storage, Drives & Media

Not able to BOOT Windows XP from external USB2 Hard Drive on Latitude D600

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