I am trying to clone my hdd but it wont boot

[alanbugarin]

Hello,
I trying to upgrade my laptop hdd. the old drive is finr, a WD 230 gb, the new drive is a toshiba 1 tb. every time, no matter what program i use, i keep getting errors that won't allow me to clone the drive. I've used pcdisk clone x, norton ghost, and a few others. initially there were no partitions on the new drive, but after my first attempt there is now a 39 mb partition that i cant get rid of, its labeled as a mbr partition, several times i've completed the clone but then drive wont boot. Any ideas? PLease help.

 

[getochkn]

when say it won't let you clone, whats it's doing, what does it say? Just saying it won't doesn't give us much details into what it's not doing.

 

[cin19]

The 39 Mb partition is standard on Dells, it contains the diagnostic software that you can initialize on startup. But you can remove it by using the "Free EaseUS® Partition Master 9.2.1 Home Edition".
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

After that you can use the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software from WD company to clone the whole HDD. http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

I did this on Dell PC before.

 

[alanbugarin]

Ok so stats are:
dell studio 1537
4 gb memory
230 GB WD sata HDD
2.3 Ghz intel dual core

on first attempt to clone it appeared to clone but would not boot, had the blinking _ in the top corner.
on subsequent arrempts, i kept getting various drive errors, pc disk clone x kept saying drive wasnt empty, and norton just gave me drive errors, nothing specific, or at least that i can remember. I consulted a local repair guy for advice but he wasnt too optimistic on cloning, said i might have to just do a fresh install. Any other info you guys might need just ask, i'd rather not waste time doing a fresh install if i can clone.

going to attempt what cin19 suggests right now.

 

[alanbugarin]

OK, used easeus to remove all partitions and then used the wipe utility to wipe everything off the drive.
left the drive as unallocated.
then i used nortons ghost to clone and get the error
-error ec8f17b3: cannot complete copying of os (c:\) drive.
--cannot copy source to drive destination location.
---at end of something.
---cannot copy source drive to destination location.
----at end of something.

am i missing something?

one more thing, its a 1 tb drive but all the utilities i've uded say its only 936 gb. why's that?

 

[getochkn]

936 is probably the formatted capacity. Drives never equal exactly what they are.

I just cloned by drive a little while ago using the Easeus Backup free version and had no issues.