Cloning E1705 with Acronis Migrate Easy

Use Acronis True Image, which is the right tool for the job -- it will work fine.

Thanks ejn63, I hope you are wright, but Acronis and Seagate also said that Acronis Migrate Easy would do the job. I just don't want to wind up with the same results as before.
Has anyone actually done this on a E1705 with Media Direct installed?

That, or run it under Windows - it works both ways.

---

@dg1261 wrote:

Under normal circumstances, Acronis should work fine. But it's not normal when you have MediaDirect 2 installed in a HPA. See this thread for a recent discussion of the problem:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=956382#post956382

This is why your 120GB HDD suddenly looks like the same size as the old 60GB HDD. It's also probably the cause of the blue screen--the "new" XP partition is maybe extending beyond the 60GB boundary, but the HDD itself has subsequently been constricted to 60GB, and XP is choking on the mismatch.

Don't blame Acronis or Seagate--they're giving you their best answers, but they didn't know Dell did something funny with a few systems (only Inspirons with MD2) that's messing them up.

---

dg1261, I've read the 26 posts in this link http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=956382#post956382 and the 21 posts in the link that they refer to and only got more confused. I don't seem to be able to compile all this into a solution of: 1)How to return the hard drive back to its correct size that was changed when cloned? 2)How to clone the original drive onto a new drive without causing this problem? I see that this is a unique problem to Dell laptops with MediaDirect and that I am not the only person that has had this same problem.

The trick is to zero LBA-3 before you make the clone. As I interpret your earlier post, you're getting a new 120GB to replace the first 120GB (that got chopped to appear as though it only has 60GB), right?

See post #27 in that Acronis thread. (Note that the graphic in post #32 is meant to replace the graphic in #27). With your original HDD installed, use secedit.exe to zero LBA-3, as described in post #27. Ignore the parts about Magic Boot Disk.

Now do your "Migrate Easy". That should do it.

The part about Magic Boot Disk is only necessary if your new 120GB HDD has already been chopped to 60GB. But if you're getting a replacement 120Gb that's still showing up as 120GB, you don't need MBD.

dg1261, Yes I am waiting for Seagate to send me a new 120GB HDD. I will see if I can come up with a procedure that will work by putting together the bits a pieces from the Acronis discussion you referenced. Thanks for the help so far and I hope you will be available if I need further assistance when I get ready to install the new HDD.

It's not really as hard as it looks. The problem is the extra code Dell started adding in Sector 3, so you need to get rid of it. That code is what is responsible for making the new disk think it's the same size as the old disk.

If you get rid of it beforehand, then it won't get swept up in the cloning process onto the new disk. If you do the cloning first, then you've got to eliminate the culprit code from the new disk after the fact, and that's a bit more difficult. Most of those convoluted instructions in that Acronis thread were concerning how to recover after the fact.

I'm not an Acronis user, so your best assistance will probably come from that Acronis forum. Some of the regular posters over there are familiar with both TI and Dells, and can walk you through it.

dg1261, Thanks a lot for your help. I'll check out the Acronis forum before I attempt to clone the 120GB drive when I get it from Seagate.