New Disk Deployment

Hi guys~ Since my 30GB drive is nearly full, I just bought a larger and faster 80GB drive with 8MB cache. My thoughts are to use TI's Disk Clone feature to clone my 30GB drive to my new 80GB drive (using my 30GB as a backup drive afterwards).

But before I do that, should I create a 30GB partition on my new 80GB drive or isn't that necessary (I'm sort of confused as to what becomes of the 80GB of space if I don't do that)?

Thanks for any advice, Cindy

 

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=82292

 

The above reference discusses imaging and not cloning. Was the intent to suggest that I should use TI's imaging process rather than cloning for my purpose?

In my case, would I have to 'stretch' my cloned partition? If so, how do I do that?

Thanks,
Cindy

 

You should clone the disk. You don't need to pre-allocate a partition just let the clone 'wizard' do that for you. It will let you choose the size of partition to create on the new disk. Presumably you will just let it have all the new disk but it's up to you. Try it out it's an easy and straightforward process and the wizard takes you through step by step.

 

Thank you for that explanation. If I understand you correctly, if I select the Automatic Cloning method, TI will automatically 'move' all of the contents of my 30GB drive onto my new 80GB drive creating a single 80GB partition in the process. ... Is that correct?

Btw, if it matters, my 30GB drive is NTFS.

Cindy

 

Hello Cindy,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Clone Software.

If you use the "Clone Disk" wizard in Automatic mode all the partitions on your old disk will be transferred and enlarged proportionally. In your case when you transfer from 30Gb to 80Gb, if you have a 10Gb partition, for example, it will become approximately 27Gb (10*80/30=27 approx.).

In manual mode you will be able to choose the size of each partition manually.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Ilya, your example is rather confusing. Should Cindy use the Automatic or Manual mode if she wants her new 80GB boot-drive to be just one (C) partition?

Also, I find her Windows Activation question interesting. Can you also address that?

Thanks, pv

 

They didn't answer your MS registration question.

After I cloned, I got a system message saying that since new hardware was found, that I had three days to re-register.

I was a little fearful...

So I went on line, clicked to register, the computer connected with micro$oft, and I got a message saying "Thank you for your registration."

I didn'e need a key, or registration number or anything.

I was shocked!! - Just too easy.

 

Lifer~

Did you clone from a smaller to larger drive as I'm about to do? If so, did you use the Automatic or Manual cloning method?

Advice would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
Cindy

 

Cindy,

All you need to do is clone from the old drive to the new drive. Partitioning of the new drive is done automatically. You don't have to format or partition it first.

Select automatic/proportional partitions and select delete all partitions on the DESTINATION (new) drive. Click proceed and wait until it finishes.

The computer will restart automatically when cloning is completed. Then, shut down, put the new drive in your computer and reboot. You'll be fine. My op system does not require any reactivation when I clone drives - yours probably won't either.

Mount your old drive in an external USB enclosure or wherever else you want to and format it when you hook it up so you remove the old op system. That should do it.

 

iflyprivate~ Thank you so much for that very clear description! I'm sure that some others who replied meant to tell me the same thing, but their explanations still left doubt in this 'rookies' mind. So thanks to all who tried to get me going in the right direction, but a very special thanks to you iflyprivate!

Cindy is no longer confused.

 

Cindy,

I'll chime in with my experience with TI 8.0, build 826:

I have a Dell Inspiron 4000 notebook, Win2K Pro, with an original 10 gig drive. I cloned that to a Hitachi Travelstar 40 gig drive, and did a manual partitioning with an approx. 30 gig bootable partition and 10 gig partition for file storage, etc. My plan was to just install the cloned drive and boot up; not that simple.

I finally was able to burn a Rescue CD after many trials. Determined after reading posts that the Rescue CD needs to burn to a blank UNFORMATTED disk. I had been trying to burn to a formatted disk at first.

The cloned new target disk was in a USB2.0 external enclosure. When I swapped the cloned disk to my notebook, put the original disk in the extenal enclosure, and tried to boot up, it wouldn't find the Master Boot Record. Using the rescue disk, I was able to detemine that the newly cloned disk had the partitions swapped, arbitrarily calling the D: drive the C: drive and vice-versa. The system was trying to boot from the smaller 10 gig partition with nothing on it and now named C: and the bootable partition (30 gig) was now named the D: drive!?! Obviously the boot sequence was looking for the MBR on the first Hard Drive and couldn't find it.

Since I could run Acronis TI 8.0 through the Rescue Disk, I solved the problem by Re-Cloning my drive with the external USB2.0, original 10 gig drive as the primary drive, cloned to my now installed internal 40 gig drive as the target. I still used the manual cloning process to manage the partitions, making one 30 gig priimary and one 10 gig secondary partition on the target drive and let TI do its thing. The system booted up without a problem then.

Fortunately, during the original cloning, I left all the data on the original disk. That is the default option, but TI 8.0 gives the option of deleting the original drive data during the cloning process!

Hope this is helpful information.

 

Oh, one other thing. You didn't say if you were using a desktop or notebook. Obviously a desktop may have room for another drive in the bay attached as a slave on the same ribbon connector. That simplifies things if that is your case. The new drive would be connected as a slave, boot up, clone the old drive to new, shut down, swap the drives and reboot. Make sure the jumpers on both drives are correct (master & slave), or set the both to cable select (simpler). The position on the cable determines which is seen as master and which is the slave.

Happy cloning.

 

When cloning, I have never seen the re-lettering you describe. Of course, I am always careful to select the topmost checkbox when selecting the disk so the entire disk is cloned including the master boot record.

If you fail to select that top checkbox you might see the problems you describe. I also have all Dell's and a Toshiba with no problems on booting from the cloned disk.

I usually use the TI8 rescue CD for cloning rather than setting up through Windows. TI8 cloning under Windows requires a reboot so you have to redo everything anyway.

Also, using the rescue CD reduces the likelihood of the "disk not found" error.

 

I did the original cloning through TI and thought I followed your and MiniMax's as well as the TI tech support suggestions. Don't know why the drive letters changed the way they did but I ran diskmgmt.msc per MiniMax's earlier post and found the small partition was the primary C drive and the larger partition, (the one I let TI create as bootable), was the D drive.

Like I said earlier, I thought the easier solution would be to re-clone the drive from the original in the external drive enclosure and everything seems to be working fine now.

One thing though, I am getting some drift occasionally in my mouse pointer, and some temporary freezing or non-response. It self-corrects after a few moments and works fine then. There seems to be a conflict with something, don't know if it is related to the cloning process. Seems like I read another post regarding mouse problems after either cloning or imaging. I still have the old drive connected via USB2.0 and external enclosure with the original Win2K Pro configuration and all my files on it. While I can see the drive, now my H drive, I don't think the main drive is accessing it periodically. I'm about to run Spybot, Adaware and another Norton Antivirus scan to rule out problems there.

Thanks for the reply.

 

tigrphan~ Thanks for your input. I'm doing this on a Dell Dimension 4550 desktop. I've opened its clam-shell case before, so I don't expect much difficulty installing my new drive as a Slave on the same cable with existing C-drive. I've already set the jumper accordingly... I sure hope I don't have the problem you experienced!

iflyprivate~ I was planning on doing this by simply running TI8 in Windows. Do you think it's better/safer to do the cloning using the Rescue Bootuo Disk?

I'm planning on cloning the drive this evening. After which, I will reverse the drives (and jumpers), making the 80GB a Master and the 30GB a Slave. I'm not going to format my 30GB until I'm satisfied with the integrity of my new Master drive. Then I will format the old 30GB drive and use it strictly for my image backups.

If anything else comes to mind, please let me know before this evening!

Cindy

 

Cindy,

I like to boot from the rescue CD and set up the cloning from there. If for any reason you have a problem using the rescue CD, try cloning from within Windows instead - you'll just have to reboot and reset up the clone procedure again when you do.

When the cloning is completed and Acronis restarts your computer, shut down right away and REMOVE the original drive from your case. Set your new drive jumpers and then reboot on the new drive alone so you can check everything out and so the computer cannot access the original drive or its op system.

Later, you can reinstall the old drive but get rid of the operating system once you boot up. I like to use Acronis Disk setup for that. Do not choose to set up partitions, just prepare to "add a drive" with no partitions. Do partitioning through Disk Management in Windows and you'll have no crazy drive re-lettering of partitions.

 

Just wanted to report back that my new drive cloned perfecto!

Thanks again to a very helpful group (I'm even going to register)!

Cindy

 

Cindy,

Glad to hear the new disk cloned without a hitch, and you didn't experience the bumps I did. Since I got mine straightened out, it's running smoothly. Still haven't taken the original off the old drive, but plan to within the next few weeks. Still a bit gunshy!