Newbie with a couple basic questions

I just read through the TI 11.0 manual. Maybe it confused me more, and I just just plow ahead. But, stumbled on this forum and everyone seems so knowledgeable I figure I'd take a stab at a post before I do.

I have a Lenovo desktop with a 500GB drive. Lenovo ships with a 30GB C drive that has the (Vista Home Premium) OS on it, a D drive with around 450GB on it, and a hidden service partition with 20GB on it. The intent is to allow one button restore of C from the hidden service partition. But, no matter how hard I try, C keeps getting filled up. I really don't need/want the service partition or the built in back up feature, since I have T1 that I use to back up to an external 500GB USB drive.

So - I have a new internal 500 GB hard disk. I want to make it into two partitions - a 100GB C drive and a 400GB D drive.

I don't think I want to clone my existing drive to the new one, because I don't want to create the old service partition. BUT....

1) Can I clone just just the old C & D partitions? or...

2) If I do that, can I use the manual mode to change the size of the partitions on the destination drive? or....

3) Should I just partition the new drive with the partition sizes I want and restore the C & D partitions to it?

4) Is it better to do it while Vista is running, or should I boot from the Rescue Media? lastly...

5) When I restore the old C partition to the C partition on the new drive, with the new drive be bootable under Vista, or do I need to do anything else?

 

I would remove the old 500GB drive and install the new one in its place. Then, boot to the TI CD and restore the C: (Vista partition) as Active and then restore the D: partition (keep it the same as it was, either Primary or Logical). Resize the partitions as desired as part of the restore process.

The new drive should be bootable after the restore.

 

Tnx. This would be ideal. Going out to get a drive tonight!

 

And remember with True Image, the feature you want to use is Backup (same as Imaging) not Clone.

 

Yeah, and you gotta make a backup first before you can do a restore, and you need a place to put the backup.

I would suggest making a backup of the C and D partitions from the Windows version of TI. Put it on the D partition since it has plenty of room. Then follow MudCrab's instructions in post #2.

 

Wouldn't this mean the original drive would have to remain in the computer to do the restore? I would recommend the backup image be saved to the external USB drive (as stated in Post #1) and then the original drive can be removed and is not at risk during the restore to the new drive. Internal to internal would be faster, though.

 

Paul:

I was suggesting making a backup of the current internal disk and storing the backup on the D partition of the same disk before connecting the new, second disk. In summary:

1. Start with current setup containing original 500 GB internal hard disk with partitions as set up by Lenovo
2. Create a backup of only the C and D partitions with TI and save the backup to the D partition
3. Shut down
4. Remove internal disk and install blank, new hard disk in its place
5. Install old internal disk to an external USB hard drive enclosure
6. Boot from TI CD
7. Restore C and D partitions to the blank internal hard disk, resizing as necessary
8. When done, shut down and disconnect external disk
9. Reboot with only the new internal hard disk connected.

Did I miss something?

 

Yes I do have the external. I like the idea of removing the old drive when I go to do the restore.

I also have Acronis Disk Director. But, am I correct in understanding that T1 will also create the partitions on the new drive?

 

OK, then I did miss something. I thought you only had the 500 GB internal drive and that you were going to purchase a new 500 GB drive. I missed that you also had an external drive. Since you do, obviously you can put the backup image on the external. Sorry for the confusion.

That is correct. You can restore to a completely blank hard disk and TI will create the partitions and the Master Boot Record.

 

The thing to remember when re-partitioning the main disk is that in order to restore the C partition image to the C partition, your free space size must be at least equivalent to the uncompressed size of the used space on C. Putting it another way freee space on C must be more than 50% in order to restore the C image back to C.

 

Thanks, folks. Looks like I'm good to go, I'll let you know tomorrow!

 

It's a beautiful thing!!!!

Wow.... for all the things that go wrong in life in general and with computers specifically, it's nice when something goes perfectly!

An hour or so, and a couple beers later, I've gotten rid of that g-d awfull Lenovo partitioning, installed a new drive, restored it perfectly to what it was.

Thanks for all your help, folks.

I'll be lurking around this forum now........... Ken