True Image 9 - makes a 40gb out of a 250gb hd

I have been using True Image for some time, but I really do not know how to fix what just happened. I tried to clone a 40gb sata laptop hd to a 120gb sata hd, but acronis changed the hd size. The BIOS recognizes the HD now to be a 40GB drive. I tried to clone it to a 250gb hd and it did the same thing. Any ideas how to fix that?

 

Cr0t,

Was it a Dell laptop with MediaDirect?

It's easy to fix but you need to do a "little" reading.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401

Any questions?

 

Hello Cr0t and Brian K,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Backup software

There is a common issue on Dell laptops, since Dell is using Host Protected Area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area) in order to hide Dell Media Direct application on your hard disk.

Host Protected Area is an hidden area of a hard drive that is not normally visible to an operating system, information about Host Protected Area (HPA) parameters is stored in a special firmware chip into a hard drive. Acronis True Image cannot copy HPA to another hard drive, but the product can copy the information about HPA size. In such cases an operating system detects wrong size of the a hard drive, so you should remove HPA from the destination hard drive in order to solve the issue.

Some additional information about HPA issues on Dell laptops can be found here:
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/hpa-issues.htm

You are also able to check the related thread at our official forum in order to solve the issue:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401

We can also recommend you to use HDAT2 freeware tool: http://www.hdat2.com
Please download a floppy and a cd image from here:
http://www.hdat2.com/download.html and create bootable media, boot your machine using media created and perform the operations described in first answer of FAQ section: http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html#q1

After removing HPA you will be able to see the genuine size of your second hard drive.

If you have any further questions concerning our software, please submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will do our best to help you as soon as possible.

Thank you

--
Eugene Bogdanov

 

Cr0t,

Any chance of some feedback that could be useful to others experiencing your problem?