[wm4bama]

The moderator here did not answer my question below, but gave me the canned response to check my USB controller...etc.

Remember, HDCLONE recognized my USB HD the first time I ran it from the HDCLONE-produced CD and it cloned my C/D drive to my USB drive. I then reformatted my USB HD from FAT32 to NTFS and that's where the problem started. HDCLONE no longer recognizes my USB drive from the boot CD, but when I run HDCLONE from Windows it does recognize the USB drive.

I think somewhere in a previous post I read here (I can't relocate it) that this problem had something to do with the MBR that HDCLONE wrote in my first use and something had to be done to correct the MBR before HDCLONE would recognize the USB drive again.

My original stated problem was:

Hi,

I'm using XP Home, SP3 on a Dell Dimension B110.

I purchased the basic edition of v3.7 (2 days ago) and installed it. I successfully made a bootable CD and booted from it. I did a disk->disk mirror of my 80gb internal system HD to my external USB 1.5tb Seagate Freeagent HD and all went well.

After seeing how this process wasted most of my HD I used XP's disk management tool and reformatted the Seagate from FAT32 to NTFS,

Now when I boot the HDCLONE CD it will not recognize the USB Seagate,

If I run HDCLONE from windows it recognizes the USB Seagate OK. I can make a disk->image using this method.

What/how do I get the Seagate USB drive to be recognized when I boot from the HDCLONE CD?

It worked initially until I reformatted the Seagate.

Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[Alex]

The detection of a drive by HDClone (be it windows or the stand alone variant) has nothing to do with a MBR whatsoever. If it is a USB drive, it's simply detected as such, and all the information about it (Name, Size) are retrieved with the same method as any other USB device (USB Mice, keyboard, flash disks, ...). Only at a very late point in this process the disk's contents come into play, sc. when the partition table is read.

If you cannot see the partitions (but the drive) under HDClone, then something's wrong with the partition table. If you cannot see even the drive, then it simply is not recognized by the USB controller. Try re-plugging the drive, switching it off and on again, or plug it on after HDClone has started, going back to the start screen and clicking on next>, which triggers the drive recognization.

By pressing Ctrl+Alt+F8, you'll get a Debug Console.

On this console enter:

cat -c /logs/ehci.log

And the USB driver's log should run by, where also the information about any plugged-in drives appear. If there's a line like INVALID DEVICE DESCRIPTOR RECEIVED or something similar, then HDClone has problems talking to this specific device.

if you plug in a (fat-formatted) USB stick, you can enter

writelog.en logs

on the console to save the data to this stick, where you can mail it to us.

[wm4bama]

Alex, thank you for helping locate the source of my HDCLONE problem with not recognizing USB HD's.

I followed your instructions from above. Unplugging/replugging the USB connector for the HD and rescanning did not work. Still no recognition.

Next, I tried the ctrl-alt-F8 and got the debug console. I entered at the >prompt

>cat -c/logs/ehci.log
and the response was "File not found"

I then rebooted xp and used Windows explorer to search my C drive for any file with ehci in it.

The files found were C:\i386 usbehci.sys and
C:\windows\system32\drivers usbehci.sys


What next??

Thanks again...

[wm4bama]

Update:

After following your instructions and posting my reply above I booted back to windows xp and ran HDCLONE from windows.

After scanning for devices it recognized my USB drive. I then used the ctrl-alt-F8 and typed in the command line you gave me above.

Again the response was "File not found".

So even though it "finds" the USB drive under windows it still can't find the file ehci.log

Still it won't "find" my USB drive when running stand-alone from the CD. ???

Help.....

[Alex]

from what I see from your first message, you didn't insert a space between the -c and the /logs/ehci.log, which is required.

cat -c /logs/ehci.log

if the file is longer, you can use instead

cat -c -p /logs/ehci.log

where only one page at a time is shown.

Did you try the "writelog.en logs" command?

You won't find the logs file on any drive, since they are created in memory on the fly and you need writelog.en to write them to a physical medium.

[wm4bama]

There was a space between cat -c/logs/ehci.log and it still says "File not found".

I tried it again, before and after using the writelog.en.logs command and still could not find the file anywhere on my C drive ...does this command need a parameter added to it to tell it WHERE to write the log file(s)? The writelog.en.logs command executed without any error message but no file with ehci in it was created on the C drive.

I aslo tried the cat -c -p/logs/ehci.log command and same message "File not found".

Seems ehci.log is not there? or you have the wrong filename for the log?

Next?

[Alex]

you write

"cat -c/logs/ehci.log"

, where I specifically stated

"cat -c /logs/ehci.log"

cat tries to open the file /logs/ehci.log, and the -c is another parameter.

the same is valid for the writelog command.

writelog.en logs

should give you a selection dialog (in gray on blue background) where you can select on which USB drive to write the log files. Keep in mind that this works only under the self-booting variant, not under Windows.

[wm4bama]

Running under windows the writelog produced the logs file contaning:

W32LOGFILE

**********
hdclone.log
**********

main = 032D47F4


Tried running the writelog command when running under the booted CD and get error message "Media not found", so I assume more parameters must be used in the command line to specify where the "logs" file is to be written.

[Alex]

First startup with parameter logs

writelog.en logs


then you get a blue screen with light gray text:

"THE FOLLOWING DEVICES ARE AVAILABLE"

01: Legacy Floppy Drive
02: some USB stick
03: some other USB Stick

Use arrow keys to change, Enter to select, Esc to abort

------------------------------------


The Legacy Floppy is always available, but to write on some USB stick, you have to insert a FAT-formatted (can be either FAT 16 or FAT 32) Flash drive, and by selecting the stick and pressing Enter, the files will be written on the stick, so you can view them later in your favorite editor.

After pressing Enter, the window goes black again, and prints
Writing data to Disk
Trying name CLONE001LOG
writing ...



Anything different from that is not intended.

[wm4bama]

Sorry, I don't have a floppy or USB stick....any other options?