How to restore an image to a larger hard drive

I have a couple of questions hopefully someone will be able to answer. I usually replace my main HDD about every 3 years or so just to be on the safe side. I have seen drives fail in as little as 2 years and last as long as 6-7 years. Every hour they spin puts more wear and tare on the moving parts. As cheap as drives are today it doesn't cost much to avoid a mechanical drive failure. It is about time to replace my main drive. It is 250GB and has 2 partitions: the main large partition and a small 200MB partition where my data is stored. I will replace it with a 500GB drive. When I restore the image (250GB) I assume it will be located at the front of the new drive and will have approx 250GB of unallocated space located behind the small partition. My first question: is it necessary to first format the new drive before restoring the image? I would like to move the small 200MB partition to the end of the drive and stretch the large approx 250GB partition to fill all the unallocated space. I will end up with a 500GB (approx) partition and a 200MB partition. Can I do this configuration as part of the image restore process in Drive Backup 10.0 or do I have to do it within Window's Disk Management utility or another partition manager program? And lastly, will the unallocated free space be automatically formatted when I stretch the large partition to fill it? Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

John

 

I would recommend running the backup of the 250GB partition and delete all the partitions on the new hard drive. The entire 500GB hard drive should now say "unallocated". Now restore to the 500GB but adjust the restored partition to the new size with 200MB remaining at the end, and repeat the process with the 200MB partition.

 

Thanks, Tommy. Sounds easy, but do I need to format the new drive first or will the backup do that? Also, when I stretch out the 250GB partition on the new drive, will it automatically format the unallocated free space that it uses?

John

 

You don't need to format it. It's better to have the drive "unallocated" before the restore. Just remember when u stretch the restored partition to the larger size to leave the 200MB for the 2nd partition.

Unless you need to absolutely rid of the data there before, there's no need to "format" it. When we restore, it overwrites the existing partition table with a new table.

 

Thanks, Tommy. You've been a big help.

John