Cloning & File System

[tigrphan]

I'm a newbie to cloning and this forum.

I've already purchased the full True Image 8.0, but haven't installed it yet. I'm running Windows 2000 Pro on a Dell Inspiron 4000 notebook with a 10 gig hard drive.
I have bought a Hitachi 40 gig, 5400 rpm drive which I want to use as the primary drive.

In reading the posts in this forum, I'm now concerned about a smooth transition. I simply want to clone my 10 gig to the 40 gig, install the 40 gig back in the notebook and use the 10 gig as a USB2.0 external drive for additional storage.

Should I have concerns? This is my only / main computer for work, can't afford to be without it for days at a time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

One last question, can I clone the 10 gig drive as FAT32 to a single partition 40 gig NTFS drive, or do I need to keep them both FAT32?

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions.

[AlexF]

I'm also a newbie... I would like to extend the above question - is it possible to clone an existing (Win2K) partition onto another partition on another disk (containing more partitions)? Would Windows boot from its new location without problems?

[Acronis Support]

Hello tigrphan and AlexF,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

When you clone disk or restore image the target disk (or partition) is deleted first. So there is no NTFS partition any more cause it is replaced with the FAT32 partition.

Please note that Acronis True Image can clone only disk to disk. You cannot clone a disk to a single partition on another one.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[Dodsy]

I have a similar issue where I want to clone my 26Gb FAT32 drive to my new 115Gb hard drive. How will TrueImage allocate partitions etc to the 115Gb drive under FAT32 File system? Will it segment the drive into 3 or 4 drive letters or will it expand FAT32 partition to 115Gb?

[Acronis Support]

Hello Dodsy,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

When you clone the disk you may choose two ways of cloning: automatic (proportional) and manual. In the first case the space will be distributed proportionally among the partitions. In the second case you can distribute the new disk space manually, this mode allows you to manage partitions in the way you need, but we recommend this way only for professionals.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

[Dodsy]

Thanks for the reply. So under the automatic option, will there be one partition of 115Gig? I wasn't sure if the FAT32 file system could handle that

[Acronis Support]

Hello Dodsy,

Yes, it will be one partition of 115Gb. Please note that you cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system, but the FAT32 file system supports drives up to 2 terabytes.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

[tigrphan]

I'm a bit confused. If FAT32 won't format a volume larger than 32gigabytes, how does cloning work with a larger drive. Will my 10 gig drive, cloned to the new (target) 40 gig drive, show up as a volume that is only 32 gigs in size? Or only 10 gigs? Can I format the target drive as two partitions, a 10 gig and 30 gig FAT32? Please respond at your earliest convenience as I am anxious to complete this swap.

[beenthereb4]

-{ Quote: "I'm a bit confused. If FAT32 won't format a volume larger than 32gigabytes, how does cloning work with a larger drive." }-

This is a little misinterpretation, it should say:

XP won't format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes, but can read and work with larger volumes just fine. Therefore, when True Image creates a 40 Gig volume through the cloning process, you'll be fine.

[Acronis Support]

Hello tigrphan,

Beenthereb4 is absolutely right. You will clone your 10 GB drive to the new 40 GB drive without problems. And your cloned drive will have 40 GB in size with FAT32 file system.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

[tigrphan]

O.K. By the way, as I mentioned in my original post, I'm running MS Windows2K Pro. One of the previous replies mentioned XP. Would that make any difference? Thanks for your help.

[Acronis Support]

Hello tigrphan,

Please read the article: "Limitations of FAT32 File System" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q184006/). If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

[tigrphan]

Thank you for the reference to the MS article on FAT32 limitations.

I guess the correct question to ask is: Does cloning a drive using TruImage 8.0 use a formatting procedure on the target drive? If so, and if Windows 2K Pro won't format a volume larger than 32 gigs, what will happen during the cloning process? It appears that I will lose 8 gigs of volume on my 40 gig drive. Will it allow me to create two FAT32 volumes, say 10 gig and 30 gig on a 40 gig target drive, and then clone my existing 10 gig drive to one of the volumes? Or does the formatting of the drive occur prior to cloning.

Maybe I'm missing something in what actually happens during the cloning process.

Thanks for your patience and support.

[MiniMax]

> Does cloning a drive using TruImage 8.0 use a formatting procedure on the target drive?

Yes.

> If so, and if Windows 2K Pro won't format a volume larger than 32 gigs, what will happen during the cloning process?

The inferior formatting built into Win2K is not used. TI does the formatting all by itself.

> It appears that I will lose 8 gigs of volume on my 40 gig drive.

No. The superioir formatting routines in TI will gladly create a 40 GB FAT32 partition.

> Will it allow me to create two FAT32 volumes, say 10 gig and 30 gig on a 40 gig target drive,

Yes.

> and then clone my existing 10 gig drive to one of the volumes?

Yes.

> Or does the formatting of the drive occur prior to cloning.

Not prior. As part of.

[tigrphan]

MiniMax,

Thanks for your most excellent reply. I think I'm on board now. One last question; is there any advantage to partitioning a 40 gig drive on my Dell Inspiron 4000? Or should I just use one 40 gig FAT32 partition when I clone using TI 8.0?
I thought I would be required to create two, with one smaller than the Win2K limitations for formatting, but you cleared that up.
Thanks for your assistance.

[MiniMax]

Despite the fact that TI is able to create +32 GB FAT32 partitions, and despite the fact that Win2K is able to work fine with extra large FAT32 partitions, I would personally not do it.

No one knows if I some time in the future need to use some 3rd party disk tool on that disk. Maybe that tools gets mighty confused by the strange size, and POOF!!! there goes my data :(

I think I would go with a 30/10 GB layout. Use the 30 GB as your C-drive with Win2K, your applications, and your documents, etc, etc - all the important stuff.

The 10 GB would become your D-drive, which you can use for stuff that you can live without, e.g. MP3 files, programs and files that you download, perhaps you can redirect Internet Explorer to use the D-drive for the Temporary Internet Files, cache, etc.

Or you go go with a 20/20 (or even 10/30), and use C for Win2K + programs, and D for all your data. There are many possibilites....

[tigrphan]

MiniMax,

Thanx for the help. I think the 30/10 split would be perfect. Kudos to you for the straightforward advice. Unfortunately I know just enough to be dangerous to myself. As a friend of mine was fond of saying, "I've already told you more than I know". ;D

[MiniMax]

You are welcome.

[tigrphan]

MiniMax and Acronis Support:

I just cloned my existing 10 gig hard drive using True Image 8.0, and thought I was creating an approximately 27.2 gig bootable partition to which my existing drive would be cloned and an approximately 9.9 gig partition on the target drive. The USB2.0 drive is recognized, but there only appears to be the 27.2 gig partition on a 40 gig drive. Did I do something wrong in trying to create the partitions during the cloning process?

[MiniMax]

Hi again - I don't think you did anything wrong, but since you only had one 10 GB partition on the source drive, you only got one 27 GB partition on the destionation drive, with the remaining 10 GB being un-used.

Try Start -> Run ... -> mmc "%SystemRoot%\system32\diskmgmt.msc"

and see if you can see the USB drive. Do you see a (black) 10 GB un-allocated area on the disk? Right-click it and you should be given the option to format your 10 GB into a shiny, new partition.

[tigrphan]

MiniMax, you are just too good. That worked like a charm. Now I just need to install the new drive in to my Inspiron and see if it will boot. I still haven't been able to burn a recovery disk, (been reading other posts on the forum about that, whole other issue), but the original C drive is still intact. If the 40 gig drive won't boot I can always re-instlall the original 10 gig until I reslolve the other issues.

Thanks again for your help! ;D

[tigrphan]

MiniMax, one last question. Before I install the cloned drive, should I do a check/comparison? Seems I read in another post/thread that this is a good idea. The drive sizes seem to be close, but not identical (8.76 gig used on the old drive C vs. 8.97 gig used on the cloned partition G).

[MiniMax]

I am not familiar with whole cloning business, but if you have a menu-entry for comparing two disks, then by all means do it. But I don't think it is necessary.

As for the difference i size, I can only guess. Perhaps the larger drive uses a larger cluster size, e.g. 4 KB while the old, smaller used 2 KB clusters? With larger clusters, the system can not "pack" the files as tight as before on the disk, and you loose a little disk space.

[tigrphan]

O.K. Thanks for the reply. I haven't installed the cloned drive yet, due to some other issues (haven't been able to burn a rescue disk, even in safe mode). I'm anxious to get the larger drive installed and running...hope to by this weekend.
Thanks again for all your help. ;D

[TonioRoffo]

Why don't you restore a small partition in FAT32, reboot the machine, convert to NTFS (which is faster on larger disks anyway), re-image and restore using resize?

[tigrphan]

Tonio,

Huh!?!?!? Being the newbie I am to this software and forum, I'm having trouble, although I just succeeded after many attempts, just burning a Rescue CD. (Discovered in other threads that the CD needed to be blank, UNFORMATTED disk, something I must have missed somewhere. Been trying to burn to a formatted disk all this time).

I'm simply trying to replace my almost full 10 gig drive with a new 40 gig Hitachi TravelStar. I've cloned my 10 gig drive to the new 40 gig drive via USB2.0 and an external enclosure, and it looks like everything is there. My current setup sees the 40 gig drive as G: and H: (I created a 30 gig and 10 gig partition on the new drive when cloning). I was told by Acronis, and I believe others on this forum, that the cloned (target) drive had to have the same format (FAT32) as the old (source) drive. I just haven't installed the cloned drive in my Dell yet as the primary drive, pending the burning of the Rescue Disc (see above).

Since this is my sole work computer, I don't have a lot of time to try reformatting to NTFS "on the fly" if that is what you are suggesting, in case something goes south. Then I'm dead in the water.

Thanks for the suggestion though.