I was migrating from Momentus 5400.6 320GB ST9320325AS to a new Momentus XT Hybrid 750GB ST750LX003 using Seagate DiskWizard (which is basically an Acronis software). Because DiskWizard was unable to directly copy old hdd to a new Momentus XT which was connected via USB (and my notebook has only one ATA slot inside), I had to create an image of partitions first, swap the old drive to the new one, boot from flash-usb (made using DiskWizard) and restore the image.
The problem.
Unable to boot from the new Momentus XT hdd, an error message appears:
"A disk read error occurred Press ctrl-alt-del to restart"
The cause.
The Acronis utility failed to perform backup and restore correctly.
The issue was in the VBR (partition boot record - the first sector of a partition), but not in the MBR or the bootloader (bootmgr, Windows Boot Manager, in case of Win7). More specifically, the value of Hidden Sectors in the BIOS Parameters Block (BPB) in the VBR was incorrect. Acronis wrote 0, whereas the correct value was non-zero in my case.
Surprisingly, Windows utilities (such as bootsect.exe, bcdedit, bcdboot and automatic restore utility) were didn't manage to find and fix that.
The solution.
The correct value of Hidden Sectors must be written. The number of Hidden Sectors is simply the partition offset related to the beginning of the drive. This is the same number as the starting sector of the partition in the corresponding partion record in the MBR. This can be done manually using Hex Editor (e.g. HxD) or a disk utility (e.g. full version of Acronis DiskDirector).
More infromation:
http://superuser.com/questions/241167/windows-7-a-disk-read-error-occured-press-ctrl-alt-del-to-rest... (the answer by user JdeBP and links therein)
Of course, the simplest wast way is to wipe and reinstall everything, but it's not always an option. It took me one day to find out what the problem was and fix it. I hope, this will help someone. P.S. DiskWizard sucks
