How do I prep HD to clone Dell I900 Notebook HD..

I want to clone my Dell I900 notebook 60GB hard drive onto an 80GB and then swap them out but do not understand how to deal with these two smaller non-NTFS partitions. My receiving hard drive to create the clone is a 80GB WD Scorpio 5400 currently formatted into two NTFS partitions 20GB and 60GB. Do I just make it into one partition or do I also have to prep it for these other two partitions to successfully clone the Toshiba and keep all functionality? (Including Symantec PC Restore and Media Direct in the 4.642GB partition)
Since my 80GB is now all NTFS can I successfully clone the tiny (7.277MB) FAT 16 partition?
Please Advise
Meta

This is the Acronis True Image Home 9 operation list for creating a full backup archive.
It lists three partitions.

1: FAT16 partition of 7.277MB
2: NTFS partition of 51.19 GB
3: FAT32 partition of 4.642 GB

Create Full Backup Archive
From: Disk 1

Operation 1 of 4
Saving partition structure
Hard disk:1

Operation 2 of 4
Creating partition image
Hard disk:1
Drive letter:-
Type:0xDE (EISA configuration)
File system:FAT16
Volume label:
Size:54.88 MB

Operation 3 of 4
Creating partition image
Hard disk:1
Drive letter:C:
File system:NTFS
Volume label:
Size:51.19 GB

Operation 4 of 4
Creating partition image
Hard disk:1
Drive letter:-
Type:0xDB (Concurrent DOS, CTOS)
File system:FAT32
Volume label:
Size:4.642 GB

 

Hi Meta,
Provided you have an image of the whole of your old drive and have prepaired an Acronis Rescue CD all you have to do is remove you old drive and replace it with the 80GB one. Now boot from the recovery CD and restore to the new HD. No Pre-Prep is necessary as the contents of the new drive including partitioning is over written to exactly what was on the old drive.
When you reboot from the new drive Windows will ask for a second reboot and you are done apart from bringing into use 20GB of unallocated space. From what you say I am guessing that you have some tools to do this. If not post back and a solution that takes about 3 minutes will be provided.

Xpilot

 

Followup: How to Keep backup HD current with Main HD

My objective is the extra security of a duplicate notebook hard drive that I can update once a month so that if my original fails, I can switch out the drives or install on a replacement duplicate notebook. I cannot trust backups I need to be able to install them on separate drive and test them. (During the month I will make daily data backups on flash drives.) But since I have a 60GB and an 80GB and want full use of both I need to clarify how to keep both drives current by “cloning” or by “backups.” As recommended, the first time I will clone the original 60GB onto the 80GB which then will become the main drive and I then have the 60GB as my duplicate. The reason for the clone is to create identical partitions. (See original thread.) The next question is how to keep the 60GB duplicate current (monthly) with the 80GB main. It seems that once I have the partitions right on both drives I have no further need of cloning. Then I can make a separate 20GB Dartition on the 80GB so I can never exceed the spare 60GB’s size. Then make a monthly full backup of the 80GB C: drive (60GB) onto the spare 60GB drive and test it by installing it briefly. Please advise if that is efficient or suggest other methods.
Thanks Meta

 

Re: Followup: How to Keep backup HD current with Main HD

Hello Meta,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that using "Clone Disk" tool of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home you create the exact copy of the original hard drive. Acronis True Image copy all the data, including all partitions, folders and files, to a newer disk, making it bootable if the original disk was bootable. Also during the clone procedure you can resize the partitions on the destanation drive to fit the bigger size of the new drive. So there will be only one difference between these disks – partitions on the newer disk will be larger. Everything else, including the installed operating systems, data, disk labels, settings, software and everything else on the disk, will remain the same.

Please also note that you do not need to "prepare" the new drive before cloning, all existing partitions on this drive will be deleted during cloning and all their data will be replaced with the data from the old drive.

Please note that we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives right after the disk cloning process has been finished, since keeping both original and cloned hard drives connected might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

Please note that in this case you will need to perform clone procedure once again. You can also use backup approach: create for example monthly backups of the entire hard drive and if your system fails you will just need to boot from Acronis True Image Rescue Media and restore the system. When booted from the bootable media you are able to access any connected hard disks as well as a wide variety of IDE, SCSI, FireWire (IEEE-1394), USB (1.0, 1.1, 2.0) and PC card (PCMCIA) interfaces and devices, including CD-ROM, CD-R(RW), DVD, magneto-optical drives, network, Iomega Zip and Jaz. So you can store your image files there.

Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches in more detail.

Moreover, there are several advantages of creating an image over the disk cloning procedure such as: you can create an image without rebooting your PC, image creation can be scheduled for the particular point in time, Acronis True Image allows you to create incremental and differential images, image archive contains only the actual data and so it has a smaller size, images are ordinary files and so they can be stored on any type of the supported media, etc. However, the final choice is always up to your needs.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov