Cloning a drive with DriveImage XML renders the clone unbootable

Question

I have a computer that I would like to completely transfer to new (better) hardware. I have an external hard drive, and I am attempting to clone the entire C: drive to it, making it bootable. The computer I"m trying to clone is 32 bit windows 7.

I downloaded DriveImage XML for this, which seems like a good tool to use for this purpose. I selected the "drive to drive" option, and chose for the C: drive to get cloned onto the external hard drive. It gives me an error along the lines of "Unable to lock DISK1 #1 (which is the number and partition of the external hard drive). I opted to ignore it, since there was little help on the web, and continued on with the rewrite.

The rest ran without a hitch, but hours later when it finished I plugged it into my 64 bit machine (windows 7 as well) and it wouldn't boot. I got your basic "Could not find bootable drive" or whatever. I'm wondering if I did something wrong, as most of the resources online give instructions to create a disk image and then extract it (which seems like it's an unnecessary step, and I'd need yet another hard drive as the middleman).

Should I try again (I'm reluctant to because it takes forever), try some other software, or do something completely different than what I'm doing?

Forgive me if this is obvious, I haven't done much messing with drives in the past.

UPDATE: I tried running a repair disc on the hard drive when trying to run it from the new machine. It looks like it did something though: Instead of no boot device recognized, the red and yellow windows 7 startup start to swirl around, and then it shuts down again. When I boot from it again it says that it failed the first time, and none of the safe mode etc. options work. Trying startup repair on the windows 7 repair disc makes it process for a while and eventually come up with a message that states it is unable to fix the issue. I am now going to reformat the external hard drive, download different disc cloning software, and try again. Any help in the meantime would be useful though!

Solution

I know you've probably moved on to other things, but I wanted to add my two cents on the issue:

I'm simply trying to backup a system drive I pulled from another computer, on my computer. It's mounted externally, so it shouldn't be a problem, right?

I was under the impression that DriveImage XML could do an exact clone - this does not appear to be the case. In fact, DriveImage does not appear to "image" your drive, rather, it will copy partitions, and only those that are not hidden.

This introduces two problems if you want to move your system drive: First, the MBR is not going to be copied (thus the new drive will automatically not be bootable), and the special "System Reserved" partition Windows 7 typically installs will not be copied either.

RunTime mentions this on their FAQ page:

Windows 7 provides all the challenges mentioned above. In addition, a Window 7 standard installation provides a boot manager that is located in a small partition preceding the Winows 7 partition. However, we found the Windows 7 installation DVD very helpful with fixing boot problems. If you do not get the drive to boot, put in the installation DVD and initiate a startup repair. Here is a comprehensive article on how to do that: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ss/windows-7-startup-repair.htm

Thus, they themselves point out that DriveImage will not backup a drive bit-for-bit.

Now, since it looks like you've run the repair and got the boot files in order, you're experiencing a crashing issue - this isn't too surprising if you're trying to boot from different hardware. Most likely, Windows is trying to find a boot-critical device/driver that is not present on the new hardware.

As someone has suggested, creating a WinPE image could do the trick. As you're moving to new hardware though, it may not be a bad idea to just install Windows 7 fresh, and then copy over the files you want.

Comments

[Ramhound]

You need to run the program again after you solve the problem of it not being able to lock the drive.

[Aaa]

@ramhound What do you mean? I never was able to solve that problem, so I opted to ignore it. Ignoring caused it to continue on with the drive-to-drive copy, and restarting the copy made it send the error again.

[Ramhound]

I suspect the problem is because your trying to boot to a USB HDD instead of an internal. I would try using the DriveImage media disk and restore the image outside of Windows. There are other programs that might do a better job, there are also free tools like Clonezilla, but the lack of details makes it hard to actually answer this question.

[Aaa]

@Ramhound I've looked for a little while, but I can't find a DriveImage media disk. I'm guessing it's a bootable DriveImage program? If that is the case, is it possible for me to load the program on a USB instead of a CD? I got this laptop secondhand and don't have access to the boot order. Can you link me to this? :)