Cloned HDD won't load

[petico]

I cloned my old hard drive to a new one recently as the old HDD is failing, when I try to boot from the new HDD it says ” reboot and select a proper boot device”, I can't work out how to fix this, any ideas?

 

[lantrich]

What software did you use? There is a difference between copying a hard drive and cloning one.

 

[petico]

I used macrium reflect, I followed the how to geek guide http://goo.gl/ZZlI1z

 

[jimmysmitty]

What version of Windows are you trying to clone?

 

[USAFRet]

Did the cloning operation also move the small System Reserved partition? 100 or 350MB.
This is often missed, and the usual result is what you see.

 

[jimmysmitty]

^Exactally what I am getting at. This is why I prefer Acronis...

 

[petico]

I'm confused, do you mean the partition originally on the drive, did I overwrite that? If so, I think I did

 

[petico]

And I'm cloning windows 7 and all my files

 

[USAFRet]

I'm confused, do you mean the partition originally on the drive, did I overwrite that? If so, I think I did

On the old drive, there were at least two partitions.
The C, containing Windows and all that other stuff....and a small, unlettered, partition. That contains the boot info. Without that, no boot for you.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Windows 7 has two partitions when first installed. The first is a hidden partition, meaning you wont see it in file explorer but you should see it when cloning it. It is 100MB. The other partition will be the rest of your disk.

The 100MB partition is created to hold the MBR and boot information. If that gets corrupted or deleted then Windows wont boot and fixing it is almost impossible.

You need to try and clone it again and make sure that the 100MB partition is showing up in the clone windows when selecting the drive.

 

[petico]

If I format the drive will that reinstall the boot info

 

[jimmysmitty]

No formatting just makes it ready to be written to so an OS can read/write to it.

Did you already format the original drive you were cloning from?

 

[petico]

No, the old HDD is still normal, I'm not selling it, gonna keep for backup, I meant will formatting the new hard drive reinstall all the boot into, if not , how do I get it bAck

 

[USAFRet]

No, the old HDD is still normal, I'm not selling it, gonna keep for backup, I meant will formatting the new hard drive reinstall all the boot into, if not , how do I get it bAck

Redo the whole clone thing, and verifying the small System Reserved partition is part of it.

 

[petico]

OK, I'll have to do it later as I'm out ATM but will report back later after cloning

 

[petico]

Im still confused by this, i have the new hard drive, i just formatted it then when looking on reflect it now has 100mb used (presumably the boot info), i dont understand whether i need to keep that or should i just clone over the whole thing again, presuming this will copy the boot info from the old drive to the new one aswell as all my programs

 

[USAFRet]

Im still confused by this, i have the new hard drive, i just formatted it then when looking on reflect it now has 100mb used (presumably the boot info), i dont understand whether i need to keep that or should i just clone over the whole thing again, presuming this will copy the boot info from the old drive to the new one aswell as all my programs

Redo your clone operation, ensuring that 100mb partition is included.
When done, remove the old drive and see if it boots.

 

[petico]

Should i make a partition to hold that 100mb? i cant seem to make it clone without removing the 100mb's

 

[USAFRet]

Should i make a partition to hold that 100mb? i cant seem to make it clone without removing the 100mb's

Remove it. The cloning operation should create it again, along with a partition for the C.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Should i make a partition to hold that 100mb? i cant seem to make it clone without removing the 100mb's

You want to format the new HDD and remove any partitions. The cloning utility should take care of creating the necessary partitions then copying the information from the old drive to the new drive.