One More "Newbie" Lost and Needing Direction

Hi All:

I will apologize right up front here for having to post this, because I know that all of the answers to the questions I have are found within this forum (which is one of the BEST forums of it’s type that I have viewed---for an example of a really AWFUL one, take a look at Dell’s------the Dell corporate folks lurk in the background, jumping in when issues and problems are easy, but if you have a major issue with one of their products they are no where to be found and all the forum ends up being is a place to vent, with no solutions!!), but I am somewhat lost and confused and before I hit a “proceed” button and lose my life which is stored on this computer, I decided I would post on here and see if I can get some clarity.

Here's my situation. I have a Dell XPS m1710 laptop running Windows XP Home WITH MEDIA DIRECT. I have a 100 GB hard drive that is full, and I want to replace it with a 320 GB Samsung model 320JI. I also purchased a USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Cable Adapter, and have checked to make sure I can see this new drive with the cable adapter.

I also have a screen shot of my Device Manager Computer Management screen which illustrates how this current drive is partitioned (this was set by Dell and came to me this way---I haven’t adjusted it), but the only way I could figure out to get that here was to insert it in a MS Word file, so hopefully that can be read from this post (geezzzz, I am really feeling like an idiot, and in some circles I am considered to be semi-computer savvy---have them fooled, don't I---LOL).

I have an external 250 GB MyBook hard drive that I have been using to back up on, and am planning (unless you all tell me different) to restore from this drive to the new drive

I have TI v11, and I have downloaded the latest build (8101). I have created a bootable rescue disk using this build, and have checked it and I can boot from it. I can also see all my drives when using this disk, including my external MyBook HD, and my new HD that I want to replace with.

I created a full backup of my hard drive with this latest version of TI 11, and have validated it (it said everything is OK).

OK, now where do I go and what do I do? I have read the many posts about restoring Dell’s with MediaDirect and how that can be a problem, and I read posts about how it can be difficult to partition a new HD when restoring from a Dell, so before I go any further, I want to make sure I have a clear “roadmap” (as I said, my life is virtually on this notebook, and while I have a full backup on my external drive, I’d just as soon not have to resort to that because I messed this up).

Like I said, I know the answers to these questions are in this forum, but maybe I’m just too thick headed or something, but I’m still confused and unsure.

THANK YOU in advance for any help any and all of you can provide!!!!

B.R.R.—Casper, WY

 

Sounds like you just need that final push in the right direction, you have all the preparation covered.

I don't see the screenshot with the partition structure on the 100GB drive. At this point the two main options are really do you want to restore one partition at a time, or the whole drive all at once. The procedure is essentially the same, you just select different options from the menu along the way.

Not sure what kind of disk partitioning tools you might have, or what you'd like to do with partitioning the new disk, so I won't try to guess.

Put the 320GB drive in the laptop, insert the boot disk, select recover, find the .tib file you want on your external drive. Then select either the entire disk from the list of drive options, or just the desired partition. There will be a delay while Acronis goes out and does something (checks the image for corruption maybe?) so don't worry if it takes a minute or two to come back to the next selection. If you only select a single partition then it will show you the partitions on the new disk you have to choose from, pick one. If you select the entire disk, and MBR/sector 0, you'll recover and partition the 320GB drive to look just like the 100GB drive, and will have 220GB of unallocated space. If you've already partitioned the 320GB the way you want, and have a new partition allocated for each of the other old partitions, just do them one by one. The new partitions only have to be as large or larger than the used data size in the old partitions, they don't have to be exactly the same size as the old ones.

The remaining steps are trivial things that I don't remember completely, but they're self-explanatory, and you'll get to one menu that asks if you want to copy another partition or not. I like to keep it simple so I always select 'no' and do one operation at a time, but you can queue up multiple restore operations if you like. Then eventually you'll get to a menu where you click 'proceed' and off it goes. The restore is usually slower than the backup, so figure maybe twice as long as it took to do the backup for the restore to finish.

Good luck, its not really all that complicated, but the first time is a bit intimidating until you see it actually work.

 

wy0,

You have done your homework. If you restore a whole HD image in the conventional fashion and restore the MBR you could be in big trouble. It depends on whether you have MediaDirect 2 or not. If you have MediaDirect 2, the MBR and Track 0 must NOT be restored to the new HD. If you clone the old HD to the new HD you must either zero LBA-3 or replace the Dell MBR with a standard MBR before cloning. I'd be interested to see a screen-shot of your Disk Management before commenting further.

 

Interesting. I have no idea what Media Direct is and don't have time to do a search right now, but could you explain to me what happens if he simply copies the entire disk over to the larger HD? Seems like the MBR would be exactly the same as it was before, so what goes wrong?

 

dwalby,

There is a long thread here..

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

with the MBR explanation here...

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401#21

and Dan Goodell's recommendations here...

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/hpa-issues.htm

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm

A lot of information I know. Basically, if you have a 50 GB HD with a HPA starting at the 48 GB mark and you clone (or image restore) this HD to a 200 GB HD, the new HD will appear as if it's only 50 GB as the HPA will start at the 48 GB mark on the new HD and take up all space beyond 48 GB. The new HD will show as 50 GB in the BIOS as well as in Disk Management. It has been truncated.

 

[FONT=&quot]THANK YOU all for your posts and help so far. I'll try to answer issues/questions I have found here to the best of my abilities, but like I said, I am fairly comfortable on most computer tasks, but I am less than a novice when compared to the experts who post here regularly (and yes, I am jealous----my life would be so much easier at times if I had 1/5 the knowledge some of you folks have as relates to the workings of these machines and the programs that make them run---laffin). Anyhow, here goes:

MediaDirect says it is version 4.7.2023. I THINK it is not MediaDirect2, I have had this XPS almost 2 years, and to my knowledge I have not upgraded from what was on it when I got it the computer came preset with Dell automatic upgrades preset, but I disabled that shortly after I got it after seeing discussion on the internet that leaving Dell's automatic update on had caused major problems to some).

The new disk to install has not been partitioned yet. I was waiting to gather enough information from here to head in the right direction (new drives aren't that expensive, but I also see no reason to intentionally ruin a perfectly good one simply from my own ignorance). I think I understand I can partition it during the restore process with TI, or I can use a disk partition program ahead of time (I did download the trial version of Migrate Easy, thinking that might be easier than TI v.11 to make this transisition, but after reading some of the horror stories in that part of the forum, decided that I would just plow on ahead with TI---from what I read on here, when it is done right the result is perfect, which is what I am hoping for----but I did see that Migrate Easy has a portion of the program that apparently is specifically for partioning a HD, so I assume I could use that just for that function also?).
Finally, I'm going to insert (I hope) the screen shot of the disk management screen of my device manager, hopefully that will help in some further suggestions??

Once again thanks, my confidence is building----


[/FONT]

 

wy0,

As you can see the MediaDirect partition in Disk Management it's obviously not ver 2, which makes life easy. dwalby's instructions are appropriate.

GroverH has an excellent "New Help Guide on Upgrading to larger harddrive" in his signature. Makes it easier.

 

Holy crap, it just keeps getting harder and harder to do simple maintainance these days. And unless you spend a few hours a day on these types of forums you don't even know what problems you might accidentally create by doing what you perceive to be routine things.

So Brian K, I have a couple of questions to ask just to make sure I understand the potential options should I eventually be in this situation myself sometime.

Since you can't copy the hidden partition, if you replace the original drive at all you're not going to be able to preserve the MD functionality anyway, correct? So given that, your mission then becomes one of removing the boot code that controls MD, which actually sounds kind of simple once you know what you need to do.

If I use Disk Director to zeroize LBA-3, and replace the Dell LBA-0 MBR with a generic one, would I then be able to repartition the drive and recover the full size? I think I should be able to at that point, or would I have to do something more?

My understanding of the size shrink problem is the code in LBA-3 tells the computer where the last (hidden) partition starts, which if you've copied that information over from the original disk will prevent you from using that area for anything else. And when it executes in MD mode it will copy that partition info into partition 4 of the partition table, overwriting anything else that is there.

so if you remove the LBA-3 information, and fix the LBA-0 boot code to not even look there, you should now be free to adjust the partition table and access the full disk capacity, am I right? I think its also enough to just remove the LBA-3 code and leave the existing LBA-0 boot code, since it will never branch into the MD routine if it sees nothing in LBA-3, right?

thanks

doug

 

doug,

You have caught onto this concept much faster than I did.

Just a few quick answers. Zeroing LBA-3 OR replacing the Dell MBR (you don't need to do both) with generic code will allow you to clone the HD without messing up the new HD. But MediaDirect will not work anymore. On either HD.

If you have cloned the HD without doing the above, the new HD will be truncated to the size of the old HD. There are numerous tools to remove the HPA (mentioned in the long thread). The easiest to use is SeaTools for DOS.

But if you remove the HPA and reboot, LBA-3 recreates the HPA. So you must zero LBA-3 first and then remove the HPA. The Dell MBR can be left intact but it won't be doing anything special anymore, apart from acting like a generic MBR.

The new HD is now normal. The full size is available for partitioning, etc.

One other point. When you clone your old HD to a new HD, whether the same size HD or a larger one, the "data" in the HPA isn't copied to the new HD by the cloning app. So even though you have a HPA on the new HD, MediaDirect doesn't work.

 

Hello All ,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

Here is an article in public Acronis KB which describes how to remove HPA from the original drive http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/kb/articles/907/

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev