How to Backup/Restore 2 drives to one larger drive

I need to migrate my Windows XP system with two 40GB drives to one 320GB drive. Both existing 40GB drives have 4 partitions each. The first partitions on each Primary Active although I don't boot from the 2nd drive now. The partiions are c, d, e, f and g, h, i, j.
My backup destination drive is a 160GB USB drive, Unpartitioned. My new Restore destination drive is a 320GB SATA in normal mode, Unpartitioned.
I Backup the 2 40GB drives to the 160GB drive using TI Boot disk.
Disconnect both 40GB drives.
Using TI boot disk I select Restore function. This function only allows selection of one drive at a time. So I select the 1st one in the list to restore ALL. Then I get the question "do I want to restore another disk?" I assumed this means and Additional Disk....is this the correct assumption? So I select the 2nd drive in the list to Restore.
Then I select the new 320GB SATA drive as the restore destination, then PROCEED...It shows 10 steps to perform. When the Restore function completes successfully there are only 4 Partitions created on the target drive and it will not boot....give "Disk Boot Failure" . I have selected this drive to boot from in the BIOS.

So what did I do wrong that causes it to only restore 4 of the 8 partitions? Of course it probably won't boot since there are obvious missing partitions.

Sorry for the long explanation. But this thing is driving me nuts. And yes, I have read the User Doc but I just cannot figure out if this product is intended to take 2 hard drives and combine them to one larger hard drive.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

 

Hello cbwright,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please notice that when you are choosing a whole drive to restore it will erase the contents of destination drive. Therefore, we would recommend you to choose partitions during the restore process (not the whole drives). Don't forget to restore MBR of the boot drive as well.
You can learn more how to use Acronis True Image from the respective User's Guide.

Please also notice that a drive can only contain 4 primary partitions, all partitions over that amount should be restored as Logical (You will be presented with an option to choose partition type during the restore process).

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

The easiest way to do this is to:

1. Restore BOTH partitons to the larger drive,
2. Make sure the partitions are adjacent
3. Use Partition Magic, or equivalent, to merge the partitions.

 

I am getting Disk Boot Failure when selecting my Newly restored SATA hard drive. I restored the MBR from Backup Disk 1 as the last of the restored partitions. I have got to be doing something basically wrong but I am not seeing any errors or messages to help figure out what??
Here's what I have done:

• Without the new sata 320GB hard drive connected.
• WinXP is running with 2 40GB hard drives partitioned as c, d, e, f and g, h, i, j.
• Connected and added USB 160GB hard drive to use for this backup operation.
• Booted from Acronis TI boot disk.
• Selected Backup; Both hard drives containing all partitions above to Acronis Secure Zone on the USB 160GB drive.
• Backup complete. Powered down PC.
• Disconnected both running 40GB hard drives.
• Powered up PC to BIOS. Enabled new 320GB SATA hard drive in BIOS.
• Booted with Acronis TI boot disk.
• Added new 320GB hard drive.
• Partitioned 320GB SATA hard drive with desired partitions c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j with file systems to match backed up partitions. (not sure if this is necessay but couldn't get restore to match correct partitions without doing this)
• Rebooted with Acronis Boot disk.
• Selected Recovery (Restore is not really stated as a selection on my screen).
• Selected to Restore each partition individually starting with c through j.
• Selected to Restore MBR and Track 0 from the Disk 1 backup image selections.
• Powered down PC. Rebooted to BIOS. Selected SATA as my Boot drive.
• Saved Bios settings.

Booted PC and got DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.
I have all three BIOS boot devices pointing to the new restored SATA drive. I'm sure it is working since I added it and restored to it. Did I miss something regarding SATA drives?

Can someone pleeeese point me to something to check or change to get this working?

Thanks a bunch for assistance.
Charles

 

I would try doing it in 2 steps.

Delete the partitions on the 320GB drive until it has the number of partition that are on your boot drive.
Restore the boot drive partitions and MBR and make sure it boots. (The number of partitions is to match the number of partitions that were on the drive the MBR was taken from. They can be different sizes as long as the contents fit.)

Until you get the bootable drive to work there is no point in taking time to get the second drive's contents moved.

When you get the above working, partition the remainder of the the drive as desired and load the partitions from the second drive. Also, observe the restriction on primary partitions.

If the above doesn't work:
Delete all the partitions on the new drive.
Boot up the XP install CD and let it run through to setting up the disk. Setup the partitions for the first disk and it will write an MBR as well. When it wants to start copying files kill the install.
Boot up the TI disk and install C, etc of the first disk. See if it boots.

This is the way I always setup a new drive even to the extent of formatting it to get confidence the new drive is working properly (the formatting itself is lost when the images are restored).

 

Thanks for your help. I used the XP CD to format the SATA drive but had to F6 to add the SATA driver so this would work. Now after doing the restore to the SATA drive it still will not Boot. So I'm thinking that there is something I don't understand about restoring an image from a parallel IDE drive to the new SATA drive. When I load this SATA Driver using F6 during XP CD setup isn't it getting wiped out when I do my restore from the parallel IDE drive? This is confusing. I need to research more but suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks again.

 

Finally got it to work. This may be obvious to others but it wasn't to me. When going from Parallel IDE drives to new larger Serial ATA drive the SATA drive must be loaded with the Sarial Drivers which must reside on the MBR of the new SATA drive. Then when restoring the backed up parallel drives to the new SATA drive you must not restore the MBR. It will prevent the SATA drive from booting since the SATA drivers will get wiped out.
I'm still looking in the Acronis "documentaton" to see where this is explained.

 

Good thread cbwright (and contributors) - thanks for documenting it all.

I expect to be moving from IDE (PATA) to SATA in the near future so am following progress with much interest.

Others on this forum are bound to have come up against this situation before if it was a PATA to SATA 'gotcha' - still the thread is relatively new.

Let us know if you find mention of it in the documentation.

Cheers.