Acronis WD Edition for Sony Vaio SZ120 w/ XP - Cloned WD Drive trouble booting?

I just purchased a Scorpio Black 500GB (WD5000BEKT) in hopes to replace my current Seagate HDD in my Sony Vaio SZ120 running XP.

The existing Seagate HDD is sounding funny and I suspect it’s going to malfunction sooner or later, but it is in perfect working condition still.

I used the Acronis WD Edition that I downloaded from WD Support and Cloned my C: onto the new WD5000BEKT in a USB Enclosure.  The task carried out without any problem and it seems all the files have been cloned without a hitch.

To test out the validity of the Clone, I Enabled USB HDD boot in my BIOS and made sure it’s in priority for booting upon Startup. 

When it started to boot, I would get as far as the Windows XP logo coming on the screen and the loading bar progressing but then all of a sudden a VERY QUICK flash of a ‘Blue Screen’ would come up (milli-seconds) and the system restarts and will eventually get back into ‘Windows did not start up properly…’ Screen.

If I choose to ‘Start Windows Normally’ or ‘Start in Safe Mode’ the same cycle will occur with a very quick glimpse of the ‘Blue Screen’ and restarts.

Any idea why this may be happening?  Ultimately, if the WD5000BEKT with the Clone booted properly without a hitch I would swap it in to internal and replace my Seagate HDD.

Thanks for the help!

  • Lyon

Well Acronis WD is known not to clone that well unless you do it directly, that means connecting both drives inside a regular desktop case (internally) to allow a clean copy with no intermediates…