Why Cloned Drive Doesn't Boot - Newb Question

[labon210]

I could use some clarification about using Clonzilla.

A friend is running out of hard disk space on his 80 GB drive. I advised him to upgrade to a 500 GB HDD so he won't run into the problem again. I had never used Clonzilla but heard it recommended and was glad for a chance to finally put it to use.

I tested the process at home on a laptop before using it for my friend. I was disappointed when I tried to boot into the cloned drive. It said no Operating system found. The original drive has Windows 7 installed.

I was under the impression that if a drive is cloned it should look identical to the original drive, if so, why can't I boot into it?

This seemed too easy to work so I wasn't surprised, just dissapointed. What is the easiest/most efficient way to replace a hard drive without installing the OS and all the apps?

 

[Cue]

You have to repair the MBR for it to work with a different sized hard disk.

Also did you change from IDE to SATA?
If you did, are you sure the computer is set to boot from SATA?

 

[labon210]

Both drives are IDE. Thank you for the insight I'm going to try it in a little bit.

 

[studiot]

An 80 GB drive with Windows7?

Surely not. Did your friend buy and load a copy of 7 onto an older system? In which case why can he not install onto the new drive?

Does Clonezilla do 7? I have never tried it and don't really like the sound of it.

When you copy of a partition or drive you have to decide whether to create the new partition as a logical or primary drive.
You need a primary partition for boot and then you need to set it active when you have made it.
Yes you may also need to redo the MBR if it is not the only partition on the drive you are copying, particularly if it comes from a system with a manufacturers recovery system. But I can't see this being the case with 7 on an 80G drive.

If you want a free reliable programme, try

http://www.partitionwizard.com/

It is similar to partition magic was and almost as good, but also handles Vista and & 7.

 

[MobileTechie]

Clonezilla is good. I use it all the time.

AFAIK the Active flag on NTFS works on any version of Windows.