Acronis Clone Problem

I am working from a Laptop and I wanted to clone my old hard C:/(40gb) & D:/(20gb) to a new hard drive of 100gb...i was cloning the new hard drive from a USB enclosure...when i take the new hard drive out and put it in my laptop it will not boot. When i connect it through the enclosure it says that there is only 54GB of space and i cannot access it and whenever i tried to open it, it says that i need to reformat it...i tried to look at it through partition magic and it says that the drive is bad...idk what happened

can anyone help w/ locating my space on the drive that was lost? or what may have went wrong...

 

MrKewl,

Which brand laptop are you using?

In the BIOS, what is the reported size of the new HD? 100 GB or 54 GB.

In Disk Management, (new HD in enclosure) what is the reported size of the new HD? 100 GB or 54 GB.

 

I have dell inspiron E1505 running window MCE which i think it based off of pro...

I don't know how to find it in BIOS and in Disk Management it says both Hard Drives (the one in my laptop and the one in the enclosure) are 54.48 gb

 

MrKewl,

I'm afraid you are in for a lot of hard work. This thread describes what has happened and how to fix it. I'll let you study it and get back to me when you have questions.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=195589

 

MrKewl, welcome to the club.

Much will appear difficult but take your time and follow directions closely.

You'll no longer have Media Direct and the Media Direct button will end up being another start button, but I seldom used it anyway. Later you may be able to assign another duty.

The worst is swapping HD's in and out. By the time you're finished you'll have a much better understanding.

Brian K's been extremely helpful and got me straightened away..

 

ok i am really confused right now and i have no clue where to atleast start. I tried starting by using the Roadkil Sector Editor but i'm not sure what i was supposed to do...I thought i was supposed to boot from the CD, but it did not do that and when i opened to look at the numbers both the Physical 1 and 0 both have the same second number...

i think i just need a starting point and some description...

 

I understand how you feel.

The first thing to do is to make sure it never happens again.

I assume your old HD is in the laptop.

http://www.acronis.com/files/support/mbrautowrite_en.iso

Download the .ISO and burn it (as an image, not as data) to a CD.
Boot to the CD. You will see "Press any key to rewrite MBR". Press a key and you will be instructed to "Press ENTER to reboot" so remove the CD and press ENTER.

I use ImgBurn to burn the .ISO but if you use Nero, it's Recorder, Burn image.

This replaces the Dell boot code with generic boot code and this will no longer produce a HPA.

Next, you have to get your new HD back to normal. You have to zero LBA-3 and also remove the HPA. Install the new HD in your laptop.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=2#27

If it doesn't boot to Windows leave the HD in place and get back to us.

Questions?

 

My mistake. You have to zero LBA-3 of the new HD while it is in the enclosure. So do this immediately after you have run the boot code CD.

 

ok so when i try to use boot magic...it goes all the way up to the point where it says MHDD> and i'm supposed to type in RHPA and I do so, but it doesn't do anything...i just notice at the top middle BUSY becomes highlighted in green...

 

Did you do this?

If so and it doesn't work, try the Hitachi feature tool.

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

There are instructions "somewhere" in that thread.

 

Here..

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=3#56

 

ok...took a break yesterday from all of this...but thanks for all ur help

I did that Hitachi Feature Tool and set my new HD to the Max which it said was 100 GB...so i thought all was good, but now i went into disk management and it says that my new HD is 93.16 GB...is that correct or should it be at a perfect 100 GB...

 

Excellent job, MrKewl.

A 100 GB HD is really 100/1.024^3 which is 93.1 GB. The HPA has gone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

Does the OS on that HD boot?

How much unallocated space do you see in Disk Management?

What are your plans for the partitions?

 

Thanks a lot for your help, i really appreciate it

No the OS does not boot...when i put it into my laptop it says invalid partition table...and in Disk Management it says it's all unallocated space. I think it's because i didn't know what went wrong so I deleted the whole thing in disk management before i started all of this hoping to get my space back...lol...does that mean i'll have to do the whole clone over again?

and my plan would be to be able to get a bootable clone of this hard drive onto my new one...

 

All understood.

I'd install the new HD in the laptop.

Have your old HD in the USB enclosure (a reverse clone). We know the old HD doesn't have a Dell MBR so cloning is safe. Boot to the Acronis TI CD and perform the clone. Disconnect the USB HD before booting to the new HD for the first time.

Success?

 

You Are Amazing!...lol...thank you sooo much!

i didn't think to do a reverse clone, but it definitely worked...i now have a perfect copy of my old hard drive!

 

I'm really pleased.

The more I think about reverse clones the better I like the idea as the target disk is seen in its proper geometry at the time the clone (or image) is being restored. I'm not sure if it makes much difference with Dells but it's essential for IBM, HP and Compaq laptops which have 240 head geometry.

Time for a beer.

 

Brian:

Do you know the historical reasons for choosing a 240-head geometry? My IBM laptop is like that and I know that IBM has stuck with that geometry for many years. Why?

 

Mark,

No, but here is part of the history

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm