SATA HDD problems

[merlin77]

Hi im trying to upgrade my current system from a 120Gb Seagate 7200.7 IDE to a 500Gb Seagate 7200.11 SATA and am encountering some difficulties. When I installed it with my Old drive still in, it instantly recognized the new one in the BIOS and windows, although windows wouldnt let me use it until i used the Seagate discwizard to reset windows to see larger drives over 137Gb.

I then used the discwizard to copy everything over from my old drive to the new one, thinking it would clone the old drive. After this i uninstalled the old drive, thinking it would just boot from the new one. But low and behold as soon as i started it up without the old drive in, it gave me an OS load error and the bios, when i checked them, said there was no drive attached. I thought the discwizard had screwed it all up, but as soon as i put the old IDE drive in, both drives were instantly recognized again, everything was fine, but it wouldnt recognize the new SATA drive as a boot drive, just as extra storage once i loaded into Windows XP from my old IDE drive.

everything looked like it had been copied properly. So what Im trying to figure out is what can i do to get this drive properly cloned (somebody recommended Acronis, which i tried and it gave me an error about an unexpected script end when i attempted to clone) and how to get this new SATA drive recognized properly so I can boot from it. If anybody has any ideas please let me know, i would really appreciate it.

Im using an AMD X2 4200 with a ASUS A8N-E, 2 gb RAm and the HD's i mentioned before.

 

[merlin77]

OK I made a succesful clone with Acronis this time, and the BIOS will recognize the new SATA drive without the old IDE drive attached, but it still gives me an "Error Loading Operating System" as it tries to boot up. Any ideas?

 

[Baez]

Did you just copy all files from the old drive to the new drive or did you actually install Windows on the new drive? Also what version of Windows are you trying to install/run? Still XP?

 

[merlin77]

It Would still be XP, but im not so much making a fresh install as mirroring my old drive onto the new one. I think I finally figured it out, so Ill post my fix for anybody else who might have this problem.

Apparently my Mainboard, which isnt that old but still a good couple of years since i got it, had some sort of problem detecting a SATA drive of such large volume with the retail BIOS and chipset drivers. So, I downloaded the newest Chipset drivers, installed them, and updated my BIOS via the handy ASUSupdate program. After This I went into the BIOS and Reset my SATA First Master from the [Auto] Access Mode to the [Large] access mode. I then went back into windows, made a new clone to the new drive (since i had gotten the new drivers since i had made my last clone). After this, went back into BIOS, reset the SATA Access Mode back to [Auto], unplugged my old IDE, and it booted right into the new HDD! Hooray!

So everything seems to be okay now in that regards. my *new* problem seems to be stabilizing everything from the cloning process, I had some trouble with the system Hanging up at the windows load screen a couple times now, which is kindof disconcerting (the HD just kept reading in spurts). Also, ive had a few odd errors, like my USB ports not working one time, although a simple restart fixed that so far. And then ive had several odd Windows error messages stating that "Run DLL as App has encountered a problem and needs to close" or something like that. Im thinking of running a system file check.

Are these kind of problems typical of a HDD clone or mirror? cause even though I really want to keep my old software, If this stuff keeps happening its really not worth It I might just reinstall XP and start fresh.

Hope my fix helps anybody else having similar problems. Also, if anybody has advice on stabilizing my system after the clone process that would be really helpful, thanks a million!