I am trying to backup a OS/2 install on a SCSI drive of about 500MB in size onto an IDE Drive. The IDE drive is a seagate jumpered to look like an 8GB drive and I can install a new OS/2 perfectly on the drive so I know the drive is good. I used a tool I have (Solitaire turbo http://www.logicube.com/products/hd_duplication/solitaire.asp) to perform a mirror clone of the drive (bit for bit).
When booting I recieved "Missing operating system". I booted the install disks and ran "fdisk /newmbr" then "sysintx C:"
However now it will not boot past the BIOS finding the boot record on the drive.
So I am stuck here looking at "Searching for boot record from IDE-0... OK" where it would normally start OS/2 any suggestions?
Hi,
Could you please post a little more information about:
- Your hardware (CPU, chipset, approx age of machine)
- What version of OS/2 you are trying to move
- What filesystem OS/2 was installed on
- Are you using the same file system on the new drive
If the original partition was HPFS, a bit by bit copy may not work. HPFS's file system structure is not written in the "normal" fashion (for performance reasons), for instance, most of the "file list" information resides in the center of the disk/partition to cut access time in half.
A method I have found to work more reliably (other than older versions of Partition Magic that support HPFS - and maybe DFSee - if you can figure it out) is to create a boot partition on the new drive using OS/2 install disks, format it to HPFS, then (shut down machine properly and) connect the original drive, use xCopy to copy the entire contents of the old drive to the new drive (for instance, assuming the old drive becomes drive letter H: and the new drive is C:, from Drive C: you would run
(location of xCopy)\xcopy h:\* /h /o /t /s /e /r - xCopy will be on the install CD - as well as located someplace on the original drive - usually in the \OS2 directory). Don't run xCopy directly from the new drive - it will have problems copying it since the file will be locked from using it. If you cant find xCopy on the install CD, copy (using copy at an OS/2 prompt) xCopy from the original disk's OS2 directory to the new disk, then run xCopy from there.
When complete, you may - or may not - need to run sysinstx. I usually have not had to.
Also, as for jumpering the drive to be limited to 8GB, there should be no need to do so unless the machine is very old - in which case it wouldnt support the full drive size. Unjumper the drive and see what the BIOS recognizes it as. If it recognizes the full size, then with later versions of OS/2, it doesnt matter what size you make the boot partition.
With not quite later versions (original Warp 4 and earlier) you can just create a boot partition in the
beginning of the disk's free space. Using the OS/2 fDisk or LVM tools, trying to create a boot partition, you will be told if the partition is too big to boot from. If you get such a message ("boot partition must reside in the first 1024 cylinders") then remove the partition, decrease it's size and try again until you no longer get that message. I had such a problem with a SCSI setup and found I could create a 7.2GB partition... the total disk size is 280GB. On
IDE with newer versions of Warp (WSeB, eCS), such should not be an issue.
I'd suggest you post a little bit more information about your setup (see questions above) before you try the suggestions above though, as some may not apply to your setup (and others I have not mentioned may).
As a side note, I
always install a Boot Manager partition at the beginning of freespace - even with only one OS on the system. I find it nice, as (even with xWorkplace's xshutdown program) I can force the machine to restart using the setboot command that is a part of the BootManager installation process/components (
setboot /b - which invariably will reboot the machine even in cases where a normal shutdown would result in a WPS hang or some other issue). You can configure the BootManager timeout to "just boot" instead of the default 30 second menu wait, making no difference in the boot process - but adding the functionality of being able to reboot the machine very easily using scripts or anything else that can call an external exe.
If you decide to install Boot Manager, it must be the first thing you install, and it should usually reside at the beginning of freespace - followed by the boot partition at the beginning of the remaining freespace. It will usually take up 1-8MB (it only uses 1MB, but the actual allocated space will vary depending on how the disk physically maps partition sizes).
-Robert
Hey man thanks for the response, I wish I would've checked this forum sooner rather than an entire day at work I just came back to post how I fixed it.
It turns out technology was the problem! (Alot funnier if you are from canada and have seen the heritage PSAs)
FDISK to partition the disk
format the drive
fdisk /newmbr
SYSINSTX C:
XCOPY /H /O /T /S /E /R /V x:\* y:\ (where x:\ is source and y:\ is destination)
CPU was 133mhz, god only knows how old with 128mb ram
it was OS/2 Warp v3
FAT was installed on both drives
Hi!
Glad you got it fixed! Heck, I live on these forums and I do things the same way (spend hours or days trying to resolve something - AND THEN post a question here) ;)
Let us know if there's anything else you need help with!
-Robert
Quote from: rhorgan on 2008.03.13, 21:18:03
Hey man thanks for the response, I wish I would've checked this forum sooner rather than an entire day at work I just came back to post how I fixed it.
It turns out technology was the problem! (Alot funnier if you are from canada and have seen the heritage PSAs)
FDISK to partition the disk
format the drive
fdisk /newmbr
SYSINSTX C:
XCOPY /H /O /T /S /E /R /V x:\* y:\ (where x:\ is source and y:\ is destination)
CPU was 133mhz, god only knows how old with 128mb ram
it was OS/2 Warp v3
FAT was installed on both drives
I have encountered a problem once again. I have used this method to copy two hard drives, but now I found one I am unable to copy.
Quote from: rhorgan on 2008.03.13, 21:18:03FDISK to partition the disk
format the drive
fdisk /newmbr
SYSINSTX C:
XCOPY /H /O /T /S /E /R /V x:\* y:\ (where x:\ is source and y:\ is destination)
The computer I'm copying to has AMIBIOS 1.04, same as a computer that has worked in the past with identical settings.
Both computers are from the same manufacturer and an 80 gig HDD jumpered with limit capacity and only show up as 4gig
Computer is probably about 133mhz. The reason I'm cloning the computer is because it is now experiencing problems on boot and think the HDD may be failing. These problems being it gets to the OS/2 GUI desktop screen and locks up.
However when attempting to boot off the new HDD I recieve error SYS2025 followed by SYS2027 and as per the user guide I have for warp V3 it is related to a disk read error. However the new HDD was partitioned and formatted inside this computer and had the other files copied over to it fine using the xcopy command listed above.
I attempted running chkdsk /f on disk without luck. Is there anyway I could make it boot with a boot manager or someway to repair the booting process?
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.