Screwed up my hard drive (now clone)

I screwed up my desktop hard drive by marking the primary partition as active. So, I popped it out of the case and mounted my clone in its place. I stuck the drive in my USB docking station so I could work on it and use it to host a clone after I figure out how to fix it.

Here is a screenshot of my desktop hard drive and the clone. Notice incorrect status on Drive 1's System Reserve and eMachine's Status.



At this point, my plan is to wipe the drive and clone my working desktop drive to it, but I am not sure it would work. I need some input as to how to remedy the situation if wiping the drive and running cloning software to put everything back where it was is not the way to go.

Which primary partition did you mark as active? Normally all partitions are primary unless you have more than 4 per disk (which you don't) on a BIOS based PC.

On legacy BIOS (which you are running) the system reserved partition is generally marked active unless you don't have one in which case the C: volume will be marked active. What active means is that your BIOS (which loads before Windows) will try booting it.

dahermit said:

Notice incorrect status on Drive 1's System Reserve and eMachine's Status.

No, I don't see it. Look at this - this is a machine called Win-A running (no system reserved):



This is it shut down and the disk connected to another running instance of Windows.



Notice the difference? When it is running it is flagged System, Boot, Page-File, Crash Dump. When it is not running it doesn't. This is the difference you are seeing I think between your running and cloned disks.

Incidentally, you can set/unset a partition as active like this (just pick the right drive/partition or it will not boot):

Code:

PS C:\Windows\system32> diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.16299.15

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: X201

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> select partition 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> detail partition

Partition 1
Type  : 07
Hidden: No
Active: Yes
Offset in Bytes: 1048576

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 5     F   Win-A        NTFS   Partition     31 GB  Healthy

DISKPART> inactive

DiskPart marked the current partition as inactive.

DISKPART> detail partition

Partition 1
Type  : 07
Hidden: No
Active: No
Offset in Bytes: 1048576

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 5     F   Win-A        NTFS   Partition     31 GB  Healthy

DISKPART> active

DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

DISKPART> detail partition

Partition 1
Type  : 07
Hidden: No
Active: Yes
Offset in Bytes: 1048576

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 5     F   Win-A        NTFS   Partition     31 GB  Healthy

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...
PS C:\Windows\system32>

I'm assuming that Disk 0 is your clone (that you are booting from now) and Disk 1 is you original drive right?

If this is the case it looks OK and I think if you swapped the disks they would still work.

I did the procedure to change my partition from "inactive" to "active". I rebooted and let the USB Clone attempt to boot the computer. It failed with the message "Bootmgr is missing". I then ran a fresh clone to the faulty drive. It worked. It booted up and ran, so that problem is solved. I thank you for assisting me.

You are most welcome.

And yes, when you clone the drive just check you can boot from the clone. If you are able to boot from the clone, just take the clone away and store it safely. Do not meddle with it and make any changes.