Acronis True Image-hard drive problem

Question

I used Acronis to make an exact image of my old 30GB hard drive, on a fixed external drive. I took out the 30GB drive and replaced it with a 100GB Seagate. I restored the image of the old drive with the Acronis Recovery CD, but My Computer only shows a 30GB drive. What happened to all of that extra space on the 100GB drive? Using Inspiron 8100 and XP-Home.

mandatory · Answer

The short answer:

TrueImage8 restored the 30GB image to the 100GB drive. When it restored the 30GB image it created a single 30GB partition and ignored the additional 70GB.

My suggestion:

1) Restore the 30GB image to the old 30GB drive if you already erased or altered the old 30GB drive. If you didn't change the old drive ignore step 1.

2) Clone the old 30GB drive to the new 100GB drive. No need to physically swap them. Just clone directly from the 30GB drive which I assume you have mounted in an external USB2 enclosure. Cloning lets you resize your partitions for the larger drive (see below).

3) Reboot and disconnect the old 30GB drive or reformat it with TrueImage 8's Add New Disk feature so you can use it for storage. Don't reformat it with XP's Disk Manager because it won't erase the small hidden diagnostics partition. TrueImage 8 will.

If you don't have an external USB2 enclosure for the 30GB hard drive BUY ONE NOW. I use the CompUSA 2.5" enclosure, $19.95, works great. You can't do what you want to do until you have a suitable external USB2 enclosure for your 30GB drive.

When you clone the small 30GB drive to the big 100GB drive TrueImage 8 gives you the option of either automatic proportional resizing of the three partitions or manual resizing. I like the manual feature because it doesn't waste any space on the two hidden partitions. They don't need to get any bigger than they are on the 30GB drive.

First, view the existing size of the two hidden small partitions on your 30GB drive using XP's Disk Management. Jot down the sizes. Then when you are in TrueImage 8 Clone Disk, select manual partitioning and adjust the new 100GB partition layout so you duplicate the size of the hidden partitions and use the balance of unallocated space for the new C partition.

If you don't want to mess with the manual resizing, just let TrueImage 8 do the auto resizing for you. Worst case you'll only waste a couple of GB.

Follow my suggestions and you'll be home free. I don't want to hear any more stories about how you haven't bought an external enclosure for your old 30GB drive yet and are trying to swim uphill using your external 3.5" Maxtor drive as an intermediate drive. That forces you to create and restore an image which has no provision for upsizing your C partition.

You cannot resize a 30GB image when you restore it and that's why you have cloning available in TrueImage8 because you can adjust the parttitions during the cloning process - which is what you want to do, no? And, don't be tempted to use a 3rd party partition resizer because once you do, you'll lose the Dell pc restore function that you're going through all this grief to preserve, capisce?

Message Edited by mandatory on 04-28-2005 06:35 PM

funtoupgrade · Answer

Sounds like you did not partition the new hard drive before the restore. TrueImage just makes a copy of the partition it came from. Your extra space is not misssing - it is just not partitioned. If you have a program like Partition Magic 8.0 you can increase the size of the 30GB partition without affecting the data on the drive. Or you could use the extra space to make more partitions which would become drives D:, E:, etc. This can be done with Windows.

voss · Answer

One of the Dell tech people told me that I could do all of these wonderful things with an external drive, in addition to using it for backup. And why buy an external enclosure for $20, when you have an external drive that cost $200? By the way, it's not a Maxtor, it's a Seagate.

voss · Answer

When you clone from the old 30GB to the new 100GB drive, do you need to remove the 30GB image that has been restored to the 100Gb drive, or will the cloning automaticaly remove it?

GreyMack · Answer

Just to clarify, an Inspiron 8100 is not likely to have the Dell PC Restore feature. It has been installed on systems shipped since last summer. The drive may have a small hidden partition with Dell Diagnostics on it.

The Inspiron 8100 is equipped with USB 1, but can only be equipped for USB 2 by using a PCMCIA to USB 2 adapter. A Firewire device, for which the I8100 is already equipped, may serve as well or better. Either option may be functional for most purposes, but there are instances where the Firewire option assures compatibility that the PCMCIA / USB 2 adapter does not, probably because of the additional proprietarty driver required for the converter.

You have already reported success other than resizing the C: partition, so I would expect just a few details will get the results you desire.

If you specified Drive 1 as the source when creating the original image, the MBR is included and there may have been more than one partition included in the image. This method may not allow you to resize the destination partition when the image is restored. Or maybe it does. I have not used Acronis TI, and I cannot tell for certain from the manual. Do you recall being offered that option, as shown in section 5.7 of the User's Guide, or is the recovery procedure offered by the bootable recovery media different, as you must have used to restore the image to your new drive? Now that you have Windows and Acronis TI on your new drive, you could launch TI from Windows and attempt to restore the image from the external drive once again, this time using the wizards offered by the Windows version, checking for the option to resize the destination partition, and the image will be restored once again, right over top of the original effort.

If you specified the C: partition as the source for the original image, it is likely only the only partition included in the image, and you should be able to resize the destination partition when the image is restored.

I am not familiar with the limitations of Acronis TI, but if you are restoring a partition rather than a drive, you should be able to change the destination partition size from 30GB to 100GB as shown in section 5.7 of the TI User's Manual. If you are restoring an image that was saved as a drive, this option may not be available.

There can be advantages to using multiple partitions, and you could use Windows to allocate and format the unused space as posted earlier in this thread. Also as posted earlier, Partition Magic should be able to increase the partition size without a problem. If you are intent on a single partition, try restoring the image again, but this time as a partition rather than a drive and see if the opportunity to increase the size of the destination partition is available. Worst case, (if saving the image as Drive 1 rather than as the C: partition is the limiting factor), install your old drive and save a new image on the external drive, specifying your C: partition as the source. Then install your new drive, launch TI from within Windows, and restore the new image to the new drive and make sure to follow the procedure in step 5.7 of the TI User's Guide. You don't need to remove the previous image from your new drive, and you can use it to run Windows and launch TI.

Again, I'm not experienced with TI. Those who are will hopefully post corrections.

GM

mandatory · Answer

'When you clone from the old 30GB to the new 100GB drive, do you need to remove the 30GB image that has been restored to the 100Gb drive, or will the cloning automaticaly remove it?'   Answer: No. Cloning is automatic. You do not have to prepare the destination drive either by formatting, partitioning or changing data.   GreyMack is partially correct in that there are some options a more advanced TrueImage 8 user can fathom out to do a restore first of the entire drive and then go back, delete the restored C partition and re-restore just the C partition which would allow you to resize it at that time. It may not work to preserve the Dell pc restore link however because the MBR will change with the re-restore I believe. My premise is based upon your wanting to retain that link if in fact it exists at all on your computer. I assume it does based on your earliest stated wishes in this and other threads.   In any event, we have dual discussions going here and in the Acronis forum. I won't be posting any more answers here because it's gone beyond what most Dell users would ever like to know about TrueImage 8 and imaging. If anyone wants more info or to follow this type of discussion just go to the Acronis TrueImage User Forum through www.acronis.com and check things out. Thanks. Message Edited by mandatory on 04-29-2005 09:19 AM

voss · Answer

The image on the external, that I restored, shows:

FAT16 31.35 MB Capacity 1.44 MB Used

NTFS 27.91 GB Capacity 21.01 GB Used

On the new 100GB drive, Properties shows this as Drive C, NTFS:

Capacity 27.9 GB

Used space 21.0 GB

Free Space 6.89 GB

Storage, Drives & Media

Acronis True Image-hard drive problem

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