Why direct cloning of windows 2000 ntfs does not work?

I used a byte by byte clone of my root disk to another bigger disk (straight dd from a linux dvd boot). When
I boot, windows comes up but I can't authenticate; it always goes back
to the logon phase. Or it asks me to change password (from a nonadmin account)
which is successful, but then repeats the logon phase.

What is so special in MBR/NTFS that might do this? Is something on the filesystem encoded with hardware?

I do have Ghost, but the version I have stinks because they removed the "clone all disk" option, it just clones volumes. The other thing that I use is the linkfolder facility in Windows, so lots of things are links to other folders on bigger disks.

2010-10-08T10:27:35Z

Yeah, thanks. When I bought Ghost, I was mulling between it and Acronis.

Same motherboard, just a larger disk. I am doing
all the cloning work on another computer, so I take the old disk out, clone it, reinstall it.

Hmm. I bet the errorlog on the new disk will tell me something, provided I can extract it.

2010-10-08T10:43:35Z

Oh, I shutdown clean. Since this is my only bootable disk, I am extra careful.

2010-10-08T10:46:44Z

Oh, acronis has free trials, so I will try that out. It appears to support better disk cloning.

Adrian2010-10-08T10:21:09Z

Favorite Answer

Try Acronis. They used to have a free 30 day trial. I've used that to clone Windows and Linux drives with no problems.

As for your clone, is it exactly the same hardware (same motherboard), just a different disk? If so, try to boot the original once more, and veriy the shutdown is clean. maybe even boot to safe mode and shut down at that point. Then clone again....

Some of the Linux clone utilites may have issues, I did when even copying Linux disks - had problems.