Restoring to larger drive

I have a laptop with a 32gb hard drive that has been partitioned into (2) 16gb partitions. If I restore an image of that drive to a larger (160gb) drive, where will the extra space be alloted to?

Thanks

 

If you restore with resize, you can select the desired sizes for each partition.

 

I have a 2001-2 vintage computer that presently doesn't support large drives. It is a Compaq and I can not find BIOS updates to support large drives. If I install True Image can I move my disk to a new large drive (say 250GB)? Will the tool install an "overlay" to support it's full capacity. If not, can I partition the drive into 2 or several smaller partitions and move my disk to one of the partitions. Sorry if this is a dumb question, please help a novice.

My large disk drive has software to support large drives, will have have to install this software first? The problem I have is the distribution software from Compaq uses a crippled version of Partition Magic which re-formats the drive and removes the large drive support before it tries to re-install the software.

 

No, Acronis will not provide support for any drive that is not supported by the BIOS.

I haven't tried Acronis with drives supported by an overlay provided by the drive manufacturer, so I don't know it that will work with the TI Recovery CD.

 

RonD,

A possible solution to get the best out of a larger drive would be to install a new hard drive controller card if you have room in a spare slot. These come with their own BIOS which supports larger drives.
I have used Promise ultra TX2 with great success though I am sure there must be others who make them.

Xpilot

 

I have an old Promise Ultra66 card. Would that support the larger drives? How would I go about migrating to the Promise card?

 

I'm trying it right now and, I don't even have that option.

I'm using True Image Home 11. Booting from the CD.

Any suggestions where I'd find that option?

 

When you get to the screen that allows you to select what you want to restore, check only one partition and then proceed through the wizard. You'll get a screen that allows you to resize. When you get to the screen that asks if you want to restore another disk or partition you can select "Yes" (if you have more) and select another partition to restore (with resize). When you're done, select "No" on this screen and proceed to finish the wizard.

If you check the "Disk #" checkbox, then entire disk image will be restored and you won't have any resize options.

 

Thanks. As a first-time user I never would have figured that one out. That would have been good information to include in the Help. What a concept!!

I've noticed a few other odd things; the new drive is a 120gb drive. But TH only sees 111gb. I ran a HD utility that I had, and it saw the whole 120gb. That really stinks that it doesn't allow me to use the whole disk.
Also, when I started it the first time with the default settings of restoring the entire disk as is, it said the "time remaining" was 7 minutes. When I select one partition at a time, it is now saying it's going to take an hour and a half. Why the huge difference? (although it is down to 58 minutes, after running for 5 minutes).

Also; one of the partitions listed that I could restore was the MBR. But if I pick that, it wants me to give it an MBR from another drive? Huh! And, does the order that I restore them matter? It was asking me "where" to restore them to.

I with the included Help was a little more complete. But I guess they do that to "encourage" people to buy the premium support.

Thanks

 

JohnB352,
Being new to Acronis, check out my guides. Links below.
Also, check out this pdf on "Partition Restore with Resizing".
It was written for a spcific resizing of a disk but the general procedure would be the same in most situations.
http://grover.tabinc.com/gh-temp/gh-acronis-part-resize.pdf

 

Thanks for the links. Very good info. Wish I had that to begin with.

The restore that I ran completed successfully, and Windows ran fine. When I looked at the drives in Windows Explorer, everything looked as it should.

But, when I looked at Disk Management, it didn't look right. DM showed this 120gb drive as a 208gb drive, with lots of unused space. I was very tempted to try and create a partition in the unused space, to see if it was accessible, but decided this was just too good to be true, and that it would probably hose everything. And I have to conclude that this anomaly with my new drive was caused by TI.

I agree with what a couple other posters have said; that this product doesn't seem ready for prime time. One person said "my backup software should be the most reliable software on my computer. But it isn't". Exactly!

 

Can you post a screen capture of your Disk Management illustration.

 

Unfortunately, I can't. It was on someone else's computer, that I gave back to them.

I'm curious "why" that would make a difference. Just for the record, all it showed was the usual bar, with at least 4 partitions on it (maybe 5, I forget). But trust me, it was a strange site indeed. I've been in IT for a long time, and I have never seen that happen.

 

This is normal if the drive has "mixed" Primary and Logical partitions on it. You can create the same "problem" using DD or any other partitioning software that allows you to create partitions in that manner. Microsoft is more "strict" in the way it looks at the drives and doesn't get it right. It ends up doubling the space for the mixed partitions and shows each as used and unallocated. As a result, you end up with a larger drive size being displayed. This information is incorrect.

This was a good choice. Disk management may not even let you work on the partitions and unallocated space, but if it did it would probably corrupt the drive. In situations like this, it's best to use the partitioning software you used to setup your partitions (like DD) and avoid using Disk Management. There is nothing wrong with the drive or the partitions and they will work normally.