Cloned HD has unallocated space remaining -- have tried many things

I’m trying to clone my desktop’s boot drive into a new, larger drive and can’t get it to recognize the new drive’s extra space. I first tried this using Apricorn’s cloning software, which I had previously used successfully to clone my laptop’s boot drive into a new, larger drive. But when I tried it on my desktop, my system saw the new cloned drive as being the same size as my original boot drive; the remaining space was unallocated. I tried several methods to extend the partition into the remaining space (diskpart.exe, Hitachi Feature Tool), but none worked.

Someone in a Dell forum said they’d had better luck using ATI to take an image of the whole boot drive and then restore it to the new drive, instead of cloning. So I DL’d the trial version of ATI Home and tried this, but got the same result.

Next I saw a post here describing how to manually get ATI to resize partitions during a restore. But when I selected the main partition of my boot drive to restore, ATI gave a Partition Error message, saying the file record was corrupted and the partition size couldn’t be changed. I had run CHKDSK on my boot drive before taking the image, but I repeated the whole procedure again -- ran CHKDSK (it found some file index errors), took the image, but when I selected the main partition to restore, I got the same Partition Error message again.

I don’t know what else to try. I’ve read about the problem caused by MediaDirect and Dell’s HPA, but (1) this is a desktop Dell (XPS Gen II), and my understanding is the problem only applies to laptops, and (2) I’ve never seen anything called MediaDirect on this PC. Can anyone suggest any other alternatives I might try to clone my 120GB boot drive into my new 500 GB HD and not have the system see it as only having 120 GB? Or things I could troubleshoot to narrow down the problem?

 

If you're running Vista, did you try to Extend the partition with Disk Management?

Have you tried the Secure Zone "trick" to assign the unallocated space to the Windows partition? With the Trial version of TI, you'll probably have to create and remove the SZ in Windows (assuming it will let you). I don't know if it will let you do it from the Rescue CD.

 

Yes, the Rescue CD (at least in ver 9, build 3677) will let you do the "trick" too.

 

I meant I didn't know if the TRIAL VERSION Rescue CD would let you do the SZ trick.

 

Ah, yes .. could be a problem.

 

Success!! I was able to do the Secure Zone trick from Windows (had cloned my boot drive but wasn’t booting from it yet). Didn’t even need to create a Rescue CD. I was a little concerned when the Manage Acronis Secure Zone wizard gave an error after removing the zone (“resize impossible”), but then I looked at the drive in Windows and it was seeing all 500 GB (less the expected overhead). Then I hooked up the drive in the boot position and confirmed that I could boot from it. I’m about to repeat the whole thing (want to capture a fresh image of my boot drive).

Thanks much, MudCrab & DwnNdrty! I’ve invested untold hours in this and am relieved to have finally found a solution. I was unaware of this trick and much appreciate you pointing me to it. I’d just about resigned myself to being stuck with a small boot drive.

 

You should still make the Rescue CD from the paid version of TI and make sure you know how to use it.