ATIv10 how best to copy image to smaller partition?

I'd like to run DBAN on my laptop's one and only drive which is 60gig.
Current use is 26 meg and I have images (full and differential) of it on external usb drives, one of which I'd be recovering instead of starting with xp-sp1.
I have the recovery CD which works, 'cause I used it to make some of the images with it.

I would like to reconfigure the hd to have two partitions, roughly 20-40 or 30-30 split.
I'd like to format just one partition up front.
I see that when one does cloning and things of that sort, usually to a larger drive, ATI permits adjusting partitions sizes. But while I read them, I don't really understand all of the instructions and their application. And I'm pretty sure cloning is not the appropriate approach anyway.

Besides adjusting the size lower, I may have trouble formatting because bloated OEM-type xp-home doesn't have as good formatting method as a pure XP which I might try using but it might fail because it's not all that pure because it is made for another brand of computer.

So, without going much further with this description, my question is: what can ATI v10 build 4940 do for me in this mad plan? I'd rather ATI do the hard work instead of me

 

act8192:

Does your laptop currently have more than one partition? Any recovery or service partitions? If so, take these into account when planning your reconfiguration - you may or may not want to include them.

I would start by making a full-disk backup image of the laptop hard disk. You can always just restore this if things don't work out the way you want.

Next, run DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) if that's what you really want to do. Remember that if your objective is to eliminate spyware that is present in the Windows file system then DBAN will be of no help because the spyware files will be present in your image and will just be restored when you restore the image. However, if you're trying to clean up junk in parts of the disk where files used to reside but have since been deleted then you may accomplish something with DBAN.

Formatting the disk before restoring the image is not necessary. TI will just delete any partition that you format when it restores, so don't bother.

I would next restore your Windows partition to the blank disk. Do this by selecting only the Windows partition from your full-disk image and follow the restore wizard. One of the screens will allow you to resize the restored partition. Shrink it to the desired size but make it somewhat larger than the bare minimum. Windows will run very slowly if you run out of disk space on the Windows partition. Leave the remainder of the disk unallocated.

After the image is restored, boot into Windows to test. Then use Windows Disk Management console to create and format the unallocated space. You will then have your two partitions.

P.S. The latest build of TI 10 is 4942. Download and use this if your build is really 4940.

 

Thank you so much!
Currently the laptop has just one partition. No secure zone, no service partitions, nothing, just one C thing.

Thanks for the DBAN ideas. Yeah, I need to clean up and I have an image from before some possible trouble got in, so that image is safe. Takes me back a bit but that's ok.

Define "bare minimum" size if you can, please. I thought since I'll be moving some data from the image to the future D: partition, and the total is now 25 gig, Windows should have no trouble with 30 gig for instance. I have 1gig RAM so the swap file is kinda big though. No hibernation file.

So I just want to confirm that ATI (not disk director which I don't have) will do the format right over a totally wiped drive - right? if so, that's great news for me.
I did, long ago, do few trial total restorations, but just do not remember the formatting and resizing prompts. It just worked, but was for the total thing. Point me to a chapter in the instructions if you can, please.

4940 vs 4942: I hate to fix when ATI works so well as is, and my ATI boot CD was made with 4940.

I hope i don't have to go through the MBR procedure, described here
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=186402
it's well over my head.

 

1.) Partition your new hard drive in the configuration that you want, in your case you will have to do a 30/30 split. The "use space" on the source partition is what is important. Your 26gb of data will easily fit in 30gb. If you don't have any partition software use the free "gparted livecd" it does the job.

2.) Once you have the hard drive partitioned, you can restore an "image backup" of your 26gb, when you choose the destination partition true image will give you the option to enlarge the partition to take up the entire 30gb. The only time true image will destroy a destination hard drives partition configuration is when you "clone".

I never rely on true image to partition my hard drives. Even if you do everything correctly you might still encounter problems.
1. If the source hard drive "windows xp" has seen the hard drive that it will be "restored" on, that hard drive's "partition ID signature" will be noted on the registry. This might cause "drive letter" problems.
2. Whenever I try to restore a larger partition onto a smaller partition (similar to what you want to do) I have encountered "drive letter" problems. Might or might occur to you.

Any problem you encounter that might prevent the restore drive from booting, are fixable. I don't think you need to worry about the "MBR", I never do. Any problem you might encounter in your situation will be "drive letter related" (because your restoring windows xp) or "CHS geometry" (because your restoring a laptop).

 

I like to leave at least 25% of the partition free, so 30 is about right; especially if you will move some stuff to the D partition later on.

Yes, you can restore to a totally wiped disk and ATI will take care of setting up the master boot record and partition table. If you search for some of the posts by GroverH and look in his signature you may find some of his illustrated guides helpful.

I forget what was fixed in 4942, but it was the last build released for TI 10. A lot of us here think it's the best build and version of TI to date, but if 4940 works for you then go for it.

I see jonyjoe81 beat me to the "Enter" key. Despite what he says you do not need to partition your disk before restoring a simple 1-partition Windows installation. You will not have any drive letter problems because you only have 1 partition; can't happen. Just restore the image of your C partition to the blank hard disk; it's that simple.

 

Thank you very, very much. It's all clear now.
I'm so glad I asked because it suddenly became a process I can handle. hurray to ATI, as always and to the forum as well.

 

Well, I messed up someplace. Please help.
1. I bit the bullet and installed the update to build 4942. Made a recovery CD. Made a image backup and validated it. So far so good.
2. It's in the process of changing things and what I see makes no sense.

I set it up to do the partition as 30 gig, and ATI acknowledged new free space will be 25gig (my 60g disk is seen as 55g so it makes sense to me)
I selected Disk 1, Local C but no MBR -- is that wrong?

The window I'm looking at is Disk Partition Recovery from Archive
From file: D:\...\the image .tib file on external drive
Operation 2 of 2
Restoring partition
Hard disk: 1
Drive letter C:->-
File system NTFS
Volume label: Local dDisk
Size: 55.89 -> 30.01 GB
Current operation progress - no one green marker yet
Total progress - also blank, with 1 day 15 hours remaining.

Every few minutes my harddrive flickers its LED once.
The External is running and reading non stop. I hope it's not writing. The LED indicator is such that I know there's real activity, otherwise it just sits there solid blue.

I started all this about 2 hours ago.

When the HD flickers, the time remaining changes to say, 1 day 14 hours, then back to 1 day 15 hours. Now it just moved to 1 day 16 hours. Is there an end in sight?
If not, what do I do now?
If yes, what's going on?

 

act:

That doesn't sound right. Restoring a ~30 GB partition should take about 30 minutes if your external drive is running at USB 2.0 speeds. Maybe TI's recovery environment doesn't have the right drivers for your hardware. Some of the most recent USB chipsets may not be supported in TI 10.

If there is no progress after another hour or so then you may have to stop the restore. Since one of the first things TI does when restoring is to delete the destination partition, expect to see an empty first partition on your drive if you have to force it to stop.

Here are a couple of other ideas to try:

1. Try the operation again.

2. Try with your build 4940 recovery CD.

3. Try booting your PC from the recovery CD into TI "Safe" mode. Make sure that the USB drive is attached when you boot the PC. If you're lucky and your PC BIOS supports it, you may see both the internal and external drives in safe mode. If so, repeat the restore in Safe mode. Your external drive may run at USB 1.0 speeds, however, so the restore may take a lot longer than 30 minutes. If you can't see the external disk in Safe mode then proceed to the next item.

4. Remove the external disk from its case and connect it as an internal drive. Boot from the recovery CD and try restoring from disk to disk. Be extra careful to select the correct source and destination disks when doing this.

Don't panic -- your safety net is that you have that image stored on the external disk. There will be a way to restore it.

 

Mark, thanks. Please be around to continue. Would you change any of your ideas given my below answers?

I used this drive before to experiment with recovery, so I think the hardware compatibility is there. I expected 2-4 hours due to repartitioning, not day and a half.

Ouch! How to I stop it? Cancel button? (it now reports 1 day, 13hrs to go, and 1 green bar)

The entire operation, as well as yesterday image were make from the new boot CD. By safe mode, do you mean the Acronis safe mode, the one with no mouse, no usb etc? I don't think I like that. That drive normally runs USB2. What if I try it and BIOS doesn't see the drive? BTW I should not get confused because my drives are uniquely named. I do not rely on drive letters.

Laptop's drive is small diameter. External is big diameter. Besides, external is in an enclosure which would take a sledge-hammer and or hacksaw to take apart

Didn't panic yet. I actually have one other image on another external.

Editing: What about my initial selection - where I did not check Disk1, checked Local drive, did not check MBR. Was those choices wrong?

Edit2: when I did the last image, I did it the way I normally do - Disk1 rather than partition. Should I have selected partition only during the imaging? I'm reading helps here and this just occured to me.

 

If this drive has been used successfully for recovery before, then try to think of the variables that have changed.

If you have to stop the process then try "Cancel". If that won't work then you may have to hold the power button down until it shuts off.

If "Safe" mode will not work (no mouse and can't see the external USB drive) then it won't be of help to you so disregard that recommendation. Also, sorry that I didn't remember that this was a laptop so obviously the external disk won't fit

Your selections sound correct - restore just the Windows partition from the image, not the MBR, and not the entire disk, resizing the partition smaller to 30 GB. Just to be sure, the source was the Windows partition from your image file on the external disk and the destination was the Windows partition on the internal disk, correct?

So let's revise the list of things to try:

1. If things are proceeding, albeit slowly, just let it run its course. It may take a lot longer than it should have but this may be the easiest course of action.

2. Figure out what is different between now and your other successful restores. If only the build of TI (4942 instead of 4940) then try again with the older build or whatever worked before.

3. Try the recommendation from Acronis Support in the "sticky" Please Read Before you Post when booting into TI full mode:

 

No, having a full-disk image is fine. But you will be restoring only the Windows partition from this full-disk image.

 

Thanks, Mark.
I will kill it. It's still one green bar and 1 day, 15hrs to go. And the local drive is still not doing anything.
One question, that acpi switch - I saw that when I was buying ATI. Never needed it. Why would I need it now?

Crazy idea - is there any possibility that ATI is actually creating some sort of image on external to be dumped to local drive later?? Nah, it can't be, it would have been in the book.

 

WHooopeee! Mark, 4940 CD - Home (not safe) mode, 1hr 9min to go. And laptop HD is very busy indeed. So if 4942 CD was good to make and validate a backup, why would it now fail? Should I redo that CD later? Acronis says with every upgrade you have to make a new CD ... and you know the rest.

Scared me there for a minute on external being C, for obvious reasons. And like you said, the entire laptop drive this time was 'unalocated'.

One thing - I never got to the options that the manual implies are there, regarding "additional settings" such as retain original file dates and security flags. The only option was to revalidate (I skipped that). Comments?

 

act:

That sounds more like it.

It's hard to determine whether the attempted restore with 4942 was a fluke, or difficulties with your CD, or difficulties with the build itself. I would probably redo the v4942 boot CD once you get things working.

I think those options you are referring to are only for files and folder restores and don't apply when restoring a partition image. Hopefully the restore will work OK this time. Let us know.

 

I knew ATI wouldn't let me down

Response delay due to kitchen duties etc.
It's all done. 30.01 Local disk, and 25.88 unallocated. NOD updated itself, Windows seems to be running ok even though at this point there is only 5g free. ProcessExplorer seem 0.77% utlization, no different than before, not much difference anywhere at this point.

File dates preserved, as you said they will.

Now I have to figure out exactly what'll go to 25 and I have to format it in Computer Management, right? Last time I saw partitions was I think on Windows 3.1 at work.

So from now on I need to and/or can backup each partition separatly, right? That will be nice, smaller, faster backups.

Mark, thanks very much for the timely, fast, handholding you provided.

 

You've got it! That's one of the advantages that the cloning advocates are missing out on.

The rest should be easy. Go to control panel > Computer Management and click on Disk Management in the left pane. You should now see one partition and a bunch of unallocated space. Right-click on the unallocated space and create a new partition, format as NTFS, and choose the "D" drive letter. Then you should have your two partitions C and D.

Glad to have helped out. I still marvel at the ability to take a really badly hosed up system and bring it back to life with a TI restore. When this program works like it should it is a real time saver.

 

Mark, it asks whether I want to do a primary or extended partition.
I have no intention of dual boot, different operating systems, none of that. Just for storage, data, miscelaneous stuff, maybe Outlook mails, not yet sure. I suspect Extended is the answer but while MS defines things, it really isn't helping me.

Since my last post I've been reading helps from MS over the control panel, but it's all clear as mud

 

A primary partition will be fine.

 

I did Primary and now redistributing stuff from place to place.

Once again, thank you very, very much for the help

 

Congratulations to you both. This is a good example of what can be recovered in the hands of a skilled computer surgeon like K0lo. You're lucky his time commitments allowed him to assist!

Since your disk structure has changed (now 2 partitions), one of the first backups you will want to do is a full disk backup of all partitions.

Should you have a disk failure or simply want to upgrade to a larger drive, you get best results with the least problems if you have a full disk backup which includes all partitions. From that full disk backup, you can also restore any of your partitions individually--should there be a need.

Once you have this full backup in storage, then you can additionally create archives of individual partitions and restore the individual partitions; ....but single partition backups are not usually used when upgrading/replacing a system disk.

This is not an either/or situation. This is a combination of both. Do your full on some type of scheduled basis and then work in your backups for individual partitions. Restart the cycle again in whatever time frame is appropriate for you. It's a matter of personal preference but occasionally include a full backup in your procedures. Having a full disk backup just provides more options--should you have problems.

The registry is so integrated with all that we do, I keep my "Program Files" folder still on my system drive.
I have "MyDocuments" and all its sub-folders (plus my email) on one of my data drives (D) for easier archiving.

Personally, I rarely do backups of individual partitions.

 

k0lo is a surgeon par excellence. Right on the money. And yes, I am very lucky.

Before I forget, when I started with ATI I read your writings and among many good advices, I took your advice to name every drive. Brilliant and invaluable

Future:
I did plan to do a whole disk image for the reasons you stated, but not that often if I can avoid it.
One partition will be busier than others, and I plan to image that one more often. SO I think we're on the same page.
Scheduled backups never fitted my life, to tell the truth, especially that it's a laptop, and when it's on it's 'cause I use it, otherwise it's off.

I normally backup when I see the need before/after some changes of consequence. But I'd like to do more often, which is one reason to resize few things, especially some unchanging, but needed, content slated for that unallocated space.

Slightly off topic:
Just to add to the confusion, I didn't like what I built. I decided to make 3 partitions while things were still in transit.
So I had to offload a bunch of stuff from C: to make it smaller, back that up (used 4942 CD), and repeat yesterday's exercise.
Nothing like good practice
Curiously, 4942 CD rescue disk boots but failed again (a new one), 4940 worked. Something I'll have to puzzle out.

So now I have 25, 20 and 15 unallocated. That adds up to 60, believe me, just MS version of math

25g is the system partition with ProgramFiles, and anything else that runs, but may not be in ProgramFIles, plus of course Windows and the normal system contents.
MyDocuments, pics, music is on another partition by now.

It's been an interesting exercise.

 

That was a worthwhile experiment because you've now ruled out two of the three reasons for the initial failure; a one-time fluke or a bad CD. That leaves only an incompatibility between your laptop's hardware and the Linux recovery environment on build 4942. The simplest course of action is to just continue using build 4940 with the laptop since it works for you.

I think one of the hardest parts about partitioning a disk is deciding on the layout (he says as he sits here puzzling over how to carve up a new 8 GB USB flash drive intended for multibooting). My laptop has a 60 GB drive like yours and space is at a premium. I've repartitioned it dozens of times trying to end up with the "ideal" layout. There isn't one, by the way. But you're close to what I ended up with; 25 GB for Windows, 20 GB for data, and the rest divided up for Linux (boot, root, swap, home, and Acronis partitions of 0.1, 8, 1, 2, and 0.1 GB). Numbers are rounded off since a 60 GB disk is really 55.89 GiB.

On a desktop machine that only runs Windows I've gradually gravitated to three partitions; one for Windows, one for data, and a third for things that I don't want to back up regularly. This seems to work well for me.

I don't know about this surgeon stuff - I'm glad that my "patients" are inanimate objects because I've managed to kill a few now and then.