So, I installed a new hard drive on my friend's computer, and used a disk cloning tool to copy the contents of his original drive (Hitachi 1TB, will be referenced from now on as /sda) to a new one (Toshiba 3TB, will be referenced from now on as /sdb). After the disk clone was done, I booted to /sdb, and it works fine, but I soon learned that I could only format 2TB of it, and no more, and had to just boot from /sda, and use /sdb as storage. (I hear that UEFI is a requirement for >2TB boot disks, and his motherboard doesn't feature it) At this point, I set the BIOS to give /sda priority over /sdb, and I boot it up. Upon booting, the OS starts installing some drivers of some sort. I believe the OS called it "Generic Volume", or something along those lines, and I was forced to reboot after they were done installing. After rebooting, I notice that /sdb is now the C: volume, even though I was supposed to have booted from /sda. Thinking that somehow the BIOS booted /sdb rather than /sda, I turn off the computer, unplug /sdb, and reboot. After the POST, Windows gives me a boot error before the Windows logo shows up. (At the bootloader) I can retrieve the specific error in a couple of minutes to reboot and read it again.
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Need some help with Windows Vista installation.
- Thread starter Joseph F
- Start date
dbwillis
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2002
- Messages
- 9,422
so it doesnt boot with SDA only connected?
You can try repairing the boot loader with only SDA installed
If you get that running again, try cloning the SDA to SDB but with a 1tb partition size, then once done, remove SDA, plug SDA sata cable into SDB and try booting up
if it does, then just use the rest of the SDB as a second drive letter
You can try repairing the boot loader with only SDA installed
If you get that running again, try cloning the SDA to SDB but with a 1tb partition size, then once done, remove SDA, plug SDA sata cable into SDB and try booting up
if it does, then just use the rest of the SDB as a second drive letter
I would like to try to repair the bootloader, but I can't find the Vista install disk. Is there any way to repair the bootloader without a Vista disk? Sorry I forgot to mention that earlier. Also, it would seem that I can't partition more than 2TB at all on /sdb. If I could partition the remaining 750GB into a separate NTFS partition, I would just do that, but when I right-click on the unallocated space in disk management, the option to format is greyed-out.
) I had to dig around a bit on the net, but I've found a solution to my problem.