DDS 10 - Latest Build - Reboot Doesn't Commit Actions

I've just purchased DDS10 as I wanted to resize and merge some of my partitions under XP SP2.

I can do all the merging and resizing pre-reboot okay in XP. When I hit "reboot" the system simply checks and analyses the partitions while Windows boots, then the PC reboots straight back into Windows without any partition changes.

As I understand it, it should reboot into Windows native mode to continue the partition changes.

No such luck on my PC with SATA drive.... and I don't really want to have to use a boot disk (although I might try it out)

Very disappointing to be honest...

Has anyone else had these problems with nothing happening at the reboot?

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Andrew:

If this happens then DD10 is having problems with some of your hardware. To make changes to your Windows partition it is almost always better to do this from the recovery environment. Using the bootable media builder function in DD10, create a bootable CD or USB flash drive containing both the "full" and "safe" versions of the program. Boot your PC from this CD or flash drive and try the operations from there. If "full" mode doesn't recognize your hardware then try "safe" mode.

 

Have tried "full" mode without much success - I could resize the C partition okay, but I'm still unable to merge partitions. In the full DOS mode once clicking "next" on the final screen of the merge page it simply exits and there aren't even any tasks in the commit field.

I will retry in safe mode now and report back. Not ideal, however we'll see!

 

Andrew:

There's always more than one way to skin a cat. If you can't get the "merge" operation to work properly then describe what you're trying to do and maybe I can suggest an alternate way.

BTW -- the "full" mode of DD10 runs Linux and uses Linux drivers. This is the best mode to use if the proper drivers are available for your hardware because it allows support of IDE, SATA, RAID and USB devices.

The "safe" mode of DD10 runs DOS and will only see devices that are recognized by your BIOS. Usually USB devices will not be recognized. But safe mode will often work for cases where your hardware is not supported by the included Linux drivers.

 

Mark:

As an update - "safe" mode isn't working either. I simply get the "checking, analysing partition" prompts and then nothing - no actions to commit, nothing in the logs - very weird.

Thanks for your support, I'll try to explain what I'm trying to achieve - I have a single 750GB drive which was partitioned as follows:

C: 200GB
D: 250GB
E: 300GB

What I wanted to do was to merge the D: and E: partitions to create a larger area for storing recorded TV and video files (main use of the PC is as a media center).

So - with DDS I was (only through the Linux boot disc) able to resize the C: partition to 100GB, leaving me with the following now:

C: 100GB
D: 250GB
E: 300GB
Unallocated : 100GB

Now - I wanted to merge D: and E:, format the unallocated space and then merge that with the new partition to give me:

C: 100GB
D: 650GB

Unfortunately I've bought DDS to specifically do this task when I probably should have looked at Partition Magic.

There are many ways I can get the result I want - problem is I would have liked the product that said it could do it and that I paid for to do it...

I'll of course drop a note to Acronis support - maybe I'm missing something fundamental here.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

Andrew:

One thing that the Acronis products are not very good at is providing descriptive error messages when something goes wrong. When you merge two partitions that contain data, the data has to first be copied from the source partition to the destination partition, then the source partition is deleted and finally the destination partition is enlarged. If there isn't enough room for the copy then obviously this won't work. Perhaps that is what is happening in your case.

From here, I would just complete the job manually. What you do will depend on how much data is on your D and E partitions and where the unallocated free space is located on the drive. I will assume from your description that your partitions are arranged as [C] [D] [E] [Unallocated] and that the D and E partitions contain a lot of data files.

First resize the E: partition to include the unallocated space. You should be able to make this work from within Windows since you won't be modifying the C partition.

Next copy all data from the D partition to the E partition, assuming that it will all fit in 400 GB. If not then you may need to offload some of your data to an external drive. Then delete the D partition and leave it as unallocated free space. Finally, enlarge the E partition (which now should have the drive letter D) to incorporate all of the unallocated space leaving you with two partitions; C (100 GB) and D (650 GB). This last operation may take a while to complete if there is a lot of data on the disk.

If you don't have much data on the disk, or if you can remove the data temporarily, then just delete the E partition and then enlarge the D partition to include all available free space. You get the idea, I am sure. I always do these things manually, one step at a time, to be sure that each sub-operation is completed successfully before moving on to the next step. I don't trust the automated wizard routines to always do the correct thing; and if they bomb out you often don't know why.


Contacting Acronis support is probably a good idea. It's good for them to know the types of problems that users are facing.

I too use PM but prefer DD10 because of its built-in editor that allows viewing and editing of ext2, ext3, FAT, or NTFS files in the recovery environment. That's a very handy thing for setting up a multiboot PC containing Windows and Linux operating systems. The low-level sector editor is also very useful.

 

Hi Andrew,

Yes, I am. I have a mixture of regular IDE Hard Drives and one SATA Hard Drive internally in my computer.

And it isn't just related to DDS 10 but also Acronis True Image 10 Home version as well.

However, I am working with Acronis Support to fix the problem, but so far, no luck. My problem is: hdb: error waiting on DMA when trying to use the Bootable Rescue Media CD in Full Version mode.

My motherboard supports SATA 1.5 not 3.0.