I LOST 60 gb in a CLONE AS IS HELP!

i have a 100 gb notebook hd.
i cloned this to my brandnew 160gb notebook harddrive - NOW MY new harddrive is ONLY 100 GB!!!
I've tried reformating it - and it still says only 99gb !!! HELP! where did it go?
i thought that it would leave the other 60 gb as unallocated space.

please please someone help.

thanks
ami

 

dins93,

Is it a Dell notebook? Which model? Does it have MediaDirect?

 

See if this thread or one it might lead you to will help you out.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401

 

i have a sinking feeling when you ask if i have a dell.... yes, dell, E1505 - yes it has media direct - but i never use it.
i checked the links given, but there were so many links inside of links - i don't know where to go?

i just want to get my 160 gb hard drive back to 160 gb

i'm a geek wanna be - but i feel this is way over my head

 

dins93,

You guessed it. You are in trouble. The link provided by seekforever is where I was leading. As you need your 160 GB back you have to do some hard work.

The summary is...

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=2#26

So do Zero LBA-3 with Roadkil's Sector Editor and get back to us and we'll talk you through the second part.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=2#27

Of interest is https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=178521 but we haven't heard back from the poster.

 

I just realized that you can't boot into Windows to run Roadkil's Sector Editor from the new HD. OK make a Magic Boot Disk and let us know when you are ready.

 

Here's a suggestion, if you've got an external hard drive, that is simpler. But you will lose your Dell Restore, Dell Utilities, and MediaDirect.

We also have a Dell Inspiron 6400 (Canadian version of the 1505) with MediaDirect. After going through many of the noted links in the past we came up with this method for disaster recovery, which seems to have found acceptance on this forum. It has worked for others too. Be warned: we've not actually done this yet but this is what I will do in the future when we move from our 100 GB hdd to 160 GB hdd.

1. Make an image (not a clone) of your of your entire original disk to an external hard drive.
2. Shut down and insert your new larger hard drive.
3. Boot from the TI CD and select Recovery
4. Restore only your c: partition - no other partitions nor the MBR & track 0.
5. Along the way you can select to resize the partition and you may have the option here to resize up to the full size.
6. When done reboot into Windows.

TI will create a generic MBR with this process. You will lose all the extras mentioned above, which may or may not be an issue for you.

If you can't get the full disk size back with this method, once you're done the restore you can activate the Acronis Secure Zone and then right away remove it again. When removing you can attach the remaining disk space to your c: partition.

Good luck.

 

okay, bit confused. i'm downloading both files as i type - i don't have windows stuff on the "new" hard drive anymore b/c i reformatted hoping for a miracle to get my 160 gb back. the new drive is a 160gb western digital sata drive and i do have it as an external drive,

i have my dell original drive doing chkdisk right now - do i need that computer? can i do this through my desk top w/o messing up the drives on this?

so while you hopefully get back to me, i will burn the iso via nero as described in the directions here

 

You need to zero LBA-3 otherwise the HPA will be re-created. But leave that for the moment. Everything will be done from the laptop so have your 160 GB HD installed. We can't do any harm as there is no OS on the HD. So have a practice with Magic Boot Disk. Boot to the CD and

Note, this is just a practice but did it go to plan?

The4Bs has good advice but it's used much later.

 

Okay, bummer, i just started making an image to put on the *new* hard drive -
should i cancel it? it still has 36 mins left....
i'd be happy just to get my 160 gb back

 

okay, i did as described, and it showed that my hard drive was the 160 - but now when i make it usb external , it is not showing?

 

oh, but i have 57 gb of un allocated space YIPPIE

 

Great. Now we have to zero LBA-3 before you lose that space. The moment you try and boot the HD (which is difficult without an OS, I know) the HPA will return.

As you can't use Roadkil here is an alternative way of zeroing LBA-3.

From http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

download MBRWork 1.07b

Burn MBRWork.exe to a blank CD.

Boot to your Magic Boot Disk again and at C:\MHDD you will type Z: and press Enter. You should now see Z:\>

Remove the Magic Boot CD and insert the CD containing MBRWork.exe

Type mbrwork and press Enter. The program should open. Choose Option 3 (Reset EMBR area to zero) Press Enter and answer the frightening questions. When it's done remove the CD and power off the computer.This zeroes LBA-1 to LBA-62.

Your HD is now ready to accept an image but don't restore the MBR or Track 0.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=2#29

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=161730#19

Any questions?

 

1st, this should be posted as a sticky
2nd - sigh - i got ahead of myself and i did partition magic to partion my drive fully, and i have now started to image my old hard drive c: to the new drive -so, when i put this new hard drive in, it won't work ? b/c i didn't do the above step?
it is now nearly 2 am - i gotta go to bed - and i'm a sahm that homeschools and gotta do school in a few hours - (so much for being a teacher and reading all the directions eh? )
i will download this next new exciting download - though i have a question:
1. how does changing the drive to z work for only having one cd rom to go from magic to MBRWork.exe
2. i currently have both old and new drive on my desktop as external drives - is there anythign i can do externally? (those little screws to put the drive in and out are a PAIN- haha)
thank you so much so so so much for all this help and patience!!!! and thanks for saving me the $ from calling acronis tech

 

Magic Boot Disk loads CD-ROM drivers and allows you to change the drive letter and use another CD. You will see this when you boot the Magic Boot Disk. It's a clever way of using mbrwork without putting it on a bootable CD.

With imaging, the ideal is to have the important drive inside the computer. That's why cloning to an external HD doesn't always work.

The 160 GB HD MUST be inside the computer for Magic Boot Disk.

PS I'm in GMT +10 so I'll be asleep while you are working hard in the morning.

 

It is possible to clone a Dell laptop with MD2 but you have to zero LBA-3 from DOS before the first boot to Windows. The easiest way to migrate to a larger HD is to make an image of the old HD and restore that image to the new HD but don't tick Restore MBR and Track 0. That's what you will do.

 

Wow ... all the other posters must live on the East side of the Atlantic. I'm now just reading about this dilemma - the solution is simple, but if you've tried previous suggestions I'm not sure this still applies, but here goes:
================================
If you have already cloned your drive and just want to regain the missing space procede as follows:
1. Make the bootable True Image Rescue cd, if you have not already done so.
2. Boot with it and from its main menu choose Manage Acronis Secure Zone.
3. Create an SZ of any size less than the missing unallocated space.
4. OK back to the main menu.
5. Go right back into the Manage ASZ.
6. Choose to Delete the SZ.
7. When asked what to do with the space, accept the default to append it to the existing partition.
8. Back out to the Main Menu, Exit the process, quickly remove the CD and reboot the system (if it doesn't self reboot).
====================================

 

If I'm correct in my understanding:

Your method is for capturing unallocated space and adding it to an existing partition and works very well for that case.

In the case under discussion, the drive "size" gets modified and the BIOS or anything else literally thinks the physical drive size is the smaller size and thus there is no observable unallocated space to do your trick with.

This issue is caused by the Host Protected Area which Dell uses and it effectively causes the protected area to be unseen by nomal means.

If this is incorrect, plse correct me.

 

okay when i used the utility to zero out my LBA - they were already 0.

so now i've tried to restore only an image - and now, it says that i have a missing NTLDR .

how do i get the dell hard drive to copy over? pls help.

thanks
ami

thank you so much for all who help me get the hard drive back to 160.

maybe i should just use the 160 as my extra drive rather than the 100.

 

I personally would do that unless:
The 100 is too small and you don't have a comfortable amount of space left.

The 100 is a much slower HD than the 160.

The reason I would want the 160 as an extra drive is that I would use the extra drive for various backups and the bigger the better. My wife has a notebook with a 100GB drive in it and for her purposes it is much, much larger than required but your use may be much different than hers.

 

Strange. I've never seen that. Can you see the 160 GB HD in the BIOS?

Can you see the 160 GB HD in the BIOS?

Did you image and restore the Dell Utility partition which sits in front of the WinXP partition on the HD. If not you probably have a boot.ini issue. That's easily fixed.

seekforever, you are correct.

 

Hi all,

Some excellent info for Dell laptop owners contained in this thread and the associated embedded links.

For ease of reference I've added it to the "common True Image problem and solutions" section of the forum sticky titled Product Links, FAQs & Useful Forum Threads.

Regards

Menorcaman