Upgrading E1505 to larger hard drive using Acronis True Image 9.0

Question

My recently purchased (refurbed) E1505 came with a 30GB 5400 RPM drive which was rapidly filling up, so I decided to replace it with a new Hitachi TravelStar 80GB 7200 RPM SATA drive. I am attempting to use my Acronis True Image 9.0 to do this, but have run into a problem. I performed the following steps: 1. Installed True Image on the laptop and made an Acronis bootable restore CD. 2. Tested the bootable CD (worked fine). 3. Made a full backup of my existing laptop drive to a 160GB USB 2.0 outboard 'Backup' drive. 4. Physically removed the old 30GB drive from the laptop and installed the new 80GB drive. 5. Booted from the Acronis Recovery CD and ran a full 'restore' from the backup hard drive. No problem, the machine boots and runs great, and of course since I did an image restore, everything is EXACTLY like the original setup -- Right down to the fact that the laptop thinks the new drive is 30GB (like the old drive), and does not even 'see' the capacity of the new 80GB drive. (I verified this in SETUP, where a 30GB drive is indicated -- unfortunately, unlike early BIOS's, you can't change the parameters of the installed hard drive in SETUP on this machine) 6. So, hoping I could simply increase the size of the NTFS partition to make use of the extra capacity of the new drive, I installed Partition Magic, but it also sees the new drive as a 30GB drive, not an 80GB. I presume because that's how it's formatted, and because of the image restore, is also what's reported when it reads the relevant sectors. Now what? If I delete all the partitions on the new drive and reformat it, I can have an 80GB drive again, but as soon as I run another restore from my backup hard drive, it will load all the drive tables and info that's on the backup, and when it boots, the laptop will again think it has a 30GB drive. I'm trying to do this and maintain my existing Dell restore partitions, etc., and NOT have to reload Windows Media Edition and a zillion tons of software again, especially since Dell apparently doesn't provide new owners with a full restore disk for Window Media Edition. All I want to do is somehow resize my NTFS (Windows) partition and have the machine recognize the larger capacity. It's amazing to me that this simple drive replacement can be made so difficult because of Dell's saving a few cents by not providing their customers a restore disk. :-( Help... Thanks!

picker77 · Answer

Yep, that's exactly what I was expecting from True Image, Bacillus, but the option never showed itself. Would that show up only under 'Manual' restore, as opposed to 'Automatic'? Given no other great ideas, I guess I can just try the restore again, but since it takes well over an hour, I don't want to keep doing that.

bacillus · Answer

hmm, somewhere along the way you should have had the option to resize the install to fit your full hdd capacity.

davejohn · Answer

You can change the type, file system, and size of the restored image.  See page 38 of the manual.   Dave

picker77 · Answer

Thanks, Dave... I'll see if they have an online manual on the website. I bought my True Image 9.0 direct from Acronis as an online download, not a retail pack, so I don't have a paper manual for it. Should be in their help/support area online, though. Yesterday, I decided to call time out and start over by reformatting the new 80G Hitachi drive using Hitachi's disk management tool (available by download from the Hitachi website). It reformatted it ok, but reported that the 80G drive is now a 38G drive (!!). The Dell 1505 Setup (punch F2 on bootup) also says it sees a 38G drive, not an 80G with some unused space. While I had the restored backup loaded on the new drive, I also tried Windows' "Disk Management Program" and IT also reports I have a 38G drive instead of an 80G. I guess the restore I did from a True Image backup somehow reconfigured the new drive's onboard drive info to think it's now a 38G instead of an 80G (the backup was done from the existing 38G drive in the laptop). This is beginning to give me a headache... :-)

I still have the original 38G drive and it's backup file available, of course, but now it appears I'm in a fallback position of just trying to get back to square one with a freshly formatted 80G drive in the laptop, so I can start over. I don't know if a "low level" format is needed now, or what.. dang.

Kirock7 · Answer

I had the same problem with a new Hitachi TravelStar 100GB 7200 RPM SATA drive.
It drove me crazy... because nothing would see the remaining 20gb or so (I was upgrading from an 80gb).
Finally I received an email from Hitachi that saved the day.
Here's an excerpt from that email:

"Since your drive is being detected, just not at the correct capacity, you can try our Feature Tool utility. Feature Tool has an option to reset the capacity of the drive.

There is an ISO file for the Feature Tool software available on our download page. Please see the following link:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

The third download link is for the ISO file. This file will allow you to create a bootable CD version of the Feature Tool. For instructions on how to properly use this file, please refer to the documentation included with your CD authoring software.

Please note: We will not support the actual creation of the Feature Tool CD, as third-party software is needed to complete the process.

For help with burning an ISO file, I would recommend the following websites.

http://iso.snoekonline.com/iso.htm

http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm

Once the CD has been created, we will be able to support the Feature Tool application."

This worked for me... hope it helps you!

picker77 · Answer

Thanks for the info... I tried Feature Tool and it worked for me, too. Instead of the newest release, I just used the older version of Feature Tool that's included on the 'Ultimate Boot CD', which is one of the handiest utility collections anywhere (and it's free for download to anybody!!). Thanks.

1joelp1 · Answer

I purchased the Travelstar 100GB drive also to upgrade from my original 40GB. I used the cloning tool and it seems to have worked fine, but then it only shows my new drive as 38GB (same as it shows the old one).

I'm not having as much luck with the Hitachi 'Feature Tool' though. I boot to it, it shows my current capacity as around 38GB, with a maximum available as 100.03GB. I told it to use the maximum and save permanently, and everything seems to work fine. I reboot, and go in to Windows and the drive still shows at the smaller size. I reboot, go back to the feature tool and it shows as 38GB again. However, if I try to resize again, it tells me it can't resize and returns to the main screen of the tool. But when it returns there, it now says it is 100.03GB. So I try to reboot and Windows still shows it as smaller.

Please help!!! I've now spent about 5 hrs messing with this and am losing patience.

Storage, Drives & Media

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