Trouble cloning my HD

[HardyOne]

I have an XP-SP2 system that has a 500 GB drive that I would like to clone onto a 250 GB drive. The 250 drive also has to be bootable into XP. Both drives are SATA-3 drives and are set to NTFS. The 500 GB drive probably has about 100 GB of data and is split into 4 partitions and contains the operating system on the C: drive. I would like to maintain the 4 partitions in an approximate scaled-down size. The 250 drive is mounted in a removable tray that can be inserted and selected as the boot drive during boot up or it can be removed from the system quite easily. I have tried to clone the 500 to the 250 but not successfully.

I have tried to use the current version of Acronis True Image using the clone drive choice. After entering the information, it reboots into a DOS-type mode and the clone seems to go OK (4 hours). When complete, I reboot and choose the 250 as the boot drive. During boot up I get an error message that says something about the operating system not functioning.

I also tried using the Western Digital utilities (the 250 drive is a WD drive). I used the part of the program that formats the drive and does the partition, then clones the drive. It runs its course (5 hours) but ends in an error message that says something about not being able to complete.

Any ideas?

 

[he46570]

Sounds like Acronis is working, though remember you have to set the partition as active. Boot up with the 500Gb, and set it active under Disk Management. You should then be able to boot with the 100Gb drive.