ATI2009 Restore and Partitions resizing Question

Hi,

I did an offline full disk backup to my HDD (Dual-boot XP and Vista64).

It can be restored successfully, but i can't resize the partitions.

Is there a way to resize the partitions and still get everything to work ok ?


Thanks

 

anyone ?

 

LiamRS:

When you start the restore wizard, do not select the entire disk. Rather, select only one of your partitions from the backup image file. Proceed through the steps of the wizard and you will eventually see a resize dialog that will let you choose the size of the destination partition. Keep doing this until you have selected and resized each of your partitions. Then proceed with the restore.

 

But then i can't restore the MBR and my Dual-boot system won't come up...

I want to keep my Dual-boot OS (XP & Vista 64bit), and resize their partition.

 

Why not? The MBR is one of the choices you can make while selecting partitions individually. The key here is to do them one at a time, not by selecting the entire disk. If you select the entire disk then the wizard will not show you the partition resize screen.

**BTW - restoring the MBR is unnecessary anyway. If your system is booting now then you don't need to restore the MBR again.

 

So if i understand you correct, I can restore (on a new HDD) let say the XP partition first with resizing it and afterwards the Vista partition with resizing too and it should work ok ? I don't need the original MBR info ?

 

Normally, it will. However, on some systems, Windows can have problems with drive letter reassignments (especially when more that one partition is being changed -- as you would be doing).

How is your system setup?

Are you using the Windows boot manager (Vista's, for example) or another boot manager?

Are both XP and Vista booting from the same partition?

When you boot into each Windows, does the partition for the Windows booted show up as C:? For example: You boot into XP and the XP partitition is C:. You boot into Vista and the Vista partition is C:.

If you're restoring to a new drive, then I'd restore the MBR.

---

Edited to change restore method to TI 2009 (previous instructions were for TI 11 and earlier).
In TI 2009, you have to select the partitions you want to restore at the beginning of the restoration process. Each partition can then be resized in its part of the wizard. In some cases, it may be easier to restore the partitions one at at time in the order you need and then restore the MBR/Track 0 (if needed) instead of doing them as a group.

 

For Windows operating systems, no. TI will create a generic MBR on a blank disk that will work fine for booting Windows. Exceptions are as follows:

1. If you're using BitLocker with Vista then you should restore the Vista MBR from your original backup (Vista's MBR code is modified slightly from older Windows operating systems to allow a drive encrypted with BitLocker to boot). If you're not using BitLocker then TI's generic MBR will boot Vista fine.
2. If you're using a third-party boot manager (GRUB, BING, etc.) then you will need to restore the MBR to preserve the boot manager.

For generic Windows, no MBR restoration is needed. Then again, you can restore it if you want; it won't hurt anything.

Perhaps you're thinking of how to preserve your dual-boot information - that information is NOT in the MBR; it's in the active partition, in your case probably in the XP partition if you've done a standard dual-boot install "the Microsoft Way".

MudCrab's concerns about drive letter reassignments are something you need to be concerned with when restoring a dual-boot configuration. If you are changing the starting sector of the Vista partition (by resizing your XP partition assuming it comes first) then the ID of the Vista partition will change. When you boot into Vista, Windows may assign it a different drive letter. This didn't happen to you when you restored the entire disk since you didn't move any partitions around. If you can avoid it, don't resize the XP partition so that the Vista partition starts in the same location and this issue won't jump up and bite you. If you need to resize the XP partition, one of us can help you avoid difficulties if you can give us the details requested in MudCrab's last post.

 

I'm using the Vista boot manager, I installed the XP first on one partition (C and then the Vista in another partition (D. When i boot from XP or Vista it always indicates the letter C: .

Will i have the drive letter reassignments problem, if I'll restore the XP partition and then the Vista partition ?


Thanks again for your help

 

Not with XP - that will go OK. You may with Vista if you resize the XP partition before restoring Vista, thus moving the starting sector of the Vista partition. If you don't resize the XP partition then you won't have any problems with drive letters changing.

Do you need to resize the XP partition? If so, there are ways to work around this problem.

 

Mark,

I think Vista will still have a problem if the Disk Signature is different on the new drive because the "partition ID" will be different.

I don't know if TI 2009 will let you restore the Disk Signature when you just restore a partition. If not, then I suppose you could do an Entire Disk Image restore with the option selected and then do the restore again for the Vista partition and resize it.

If both partitions need to be resized, then Vista's drive letters will need to be fixed. This can be done from Vista, from a standard Vista DVD or (I think) even XP.

 

I'm have a very similar setup and am trying to upgrade my dual boot drive to a larger drive. I'll follow some of the suggestions and keep you all informed.

 

Paul:

I think LiamRS has already done a test restore of the entire disk, so could he then do the following?

1. Create a new image from the new disk (which will now have its Disk Signature established)
2. Restore the XP partition (with resize if needed)
3. Restore the Vista partition with resize
4. Boot first into XP, which will choose C: for the active (XP) partition and D: for the Vista partition (as viewed by XP)
5. Boot next into Vista. Vista will see an existing drive letter reservation in its registry for XP as D: (since the starting sector of the XP partition was not moved and the Disk Signature was not changed) and it will then try to reassign its own drive letter (since its starting sector was moved). The next unused letter will be C:, so it will come out correctly.

Should work, shouldn't it? If it doesn't then he can always start XP and fix the Vista registry from there.

 

OK, I did use the "Clone as-is" w/no partition size changes and it works fine. I didn't want the "proportional clone" as it would allocate too much space to the existing partions. "Manual selection", of course, gave reboot problems.
ONE BIG KEY - is that after trying incorrect options, one must first reformat the drive (or is it delete the bad partitions) by selecting the "Add New Drive" option - or Acronis will just use the "old" partition seclection after it does its reboot - and ignore the statement that it says it will wipe out the previous format first - just doesn't happen no matter what the graphic display shows.
Finally, I am able to use Windows Disk Management to extend the Vista partition since there is space after it. If I need more space in the WinXP partition, I will simply move "My Documents" to a new logical drive. OK, dun-deal!

 

Yes, I think that should work. However, I have not tested how TI 2009 works. Because Acronis added Restore disk signature feature to the Entire Disk Image restore, if this option is not selected, does TI create a new signature? If it does, then you'd need to make sure this option is checked when the first Entire Disk Image restore is done.

Note the wording posted by Acronis Support:

I know that previous versions of TI could do Entire Disk Image restores and retain the drive letters and partition offsets okay.

 

Adobe use disk signatures in Photoshop Elements Organiser to keep track of photos in its catalog

If the signature is different then possibly the catalog would not be able to find the photographs it has created thumbnails for so if you have a lot of photos linked to Organiser and are planning to change the disk signature check with them first

 

This is from the updated TI 2009 manual, section 6.3.4:

It sounds like you can select this option when you are just restoring the MBR/Track 0 and only only when doing an Entire Disk Image restore. Haven't tried it yet, though.

 

Paul:

Very interesting options that are sure to confuse people. I'm going to have to read that over a couple of times to fully appreciate all of the ramifications. Thanks for digging that up.

 

This was written on another posting. It may be a duplication of what MudCrab has already written.

What is 'Restore Disk Signature' in Partition Restore Wizard?

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=226572

You should select the "Restore Disk Signature" option if you recover the archive of the entire hard drive to a new hard
drive. Acronis program changes the signature by default during the recovery, this can lead to a discrepancy in functionality of several programs. For example, Acronis True Image creates scheduled tasks in accordance with the hard disk signature. If you restore the same disk signature, you don't need to re-create or edit the tasks created previously.