Major problem Imaging a linux hard drive

Ive imaged a linux hard drive from one drive to the other using the dd command

from HDA to HDB

When I boot from the new hard drive I dont get hda being recognised but it does recognise hdb and the trouble is the linux installation has been installed to run from hda so im getting the following error when I boot

VFS: Cannot open root device "308" or 03:08
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount fs on 03:08

Can anyone please help

Whatever drive is the master is /dev/hda. Set the newly imaged drive up as the master drive and you SHOULD be set.

This should involve setting jumpers on your HDD. Set your second drive (the old one) as the slave.

Thanks for your help but this doesnt help at all. Im getting past the device detection stage. Its booting up linux thats the problem

While Hero didn't explain his solution in depth, it is sound advice. His advice is based on the fact that your master device on the first IDE controller is going to be /dev/hda to Linux & the slave on IDE1 is going to be /dev/hdb. If the drive you want it to boot from is configured as a slave, it won't work because Linux is looking for /dev/hda.