Replacing HDD

Yes, another one of those questions.

I've spent some time reading through previous posts on this topic here and I'd just like a little clarification... or maybe even just a nudge towards the one thread or threads which apply to my situation. I'd greatly appreciate it.

I have both TI8 and TI10. No problems whatsoever getting basic backups and restores to work.

I just bought a bigger/faster HDD. My old one is still fine and partitioned into a 25gb C-drive and a 125gb D-drive. The new drive will take the place of the old drive and the old drive will become secondary storage in the same machine. I want the new drive to have a 50gb C-drive partition and the rest to a D-drive.

How do I migrate the old 25gb C partition to the new 50gb C partition? I presume I can then simply "move" the contents of the old D-drive to the new D-drive.

Thank you. Appreciate it!

 

This is my first post. I had just successfully cloned a new/bigger HDD to replace my old (and presumably dying) system HDD. I used ATI-7, and it was a breeze!

You need "cloning". Based on your description, you have a 150GB old drive. So if you new HDD is 300GB, your wish is fulfilled immediately - as cloning does it proportionately in automatic mode. If you new HDD is much bigger, I guess you are not that particular that C: must be twice your former capacity, but you can adjust if you so wish. The manual tells you all in great details. I rely entirely on the manual to learn about this cloning process.

Happy cloning!

 

Well, they didn't teach this at P.S. 37 in Springfield Gardens, heck we barely knew what were Hollerith punched cards back in those daze.

You can always just restore images and then use a program such as Partition Magic to resize the logical drives, set as NTFS and choose cluster size.

 

You should also be able to restore your partitions proportionally if you CLONE the old drive to the new.

 

Acronis designed the Clone functionality specifically for the purpose of migrating the entire contents of a old small disk to a new big disk. So you could most certainly use the Clone option to achieve what you want. IMPORTANT: Always select "Keep Data" on the source disk.

You could also use the Backup/Restore process using the "Image" method for the System partition and either the "Image" or "Files & Folders" method for the data partition.

If you used the Backup/Restore option then you would proceed as follows: -

• Create backups of your C: and D: drives
• Validate the images
• Install the new disk (Install; Initialise; Partition; Format)
• Restore the images to the new disk
• Disconnect the old disk
• Boot from the new disk

As "Howard" has posted you can use Partition Magic (which I recommend) or of course for simple partitioning tasks you can use the tools in Windows Disk Management utility, if you don't want to spend money on partitioning software.

 

They sure didn't! I could've sworn that P.S. 37 was in Rosedale, though.

I'll have to take a look at Partition Magic. What I *really* would like to do is use a 1 month old image of the C partition I have, not have to create a brand new image of the entire (C+D) drive.

Time to read parts of the manual again...

 

In SG, a bit past the LIRR tracks not too far from Western Electric,

You are supposed to be able to restore C without affecting D.

 

So, since both my drives are SATA, I would first need to install the new drive as the "secondary" SATA and create partitions with Disk Management? Then restore images. Then swap drive locations/cables?

If I chose to go the route of cloning my existing drive could I:

1 -Install the new drive as the primary
2- Move the existing drive to the secondary cable
3- Boot from the TI CD
4- Clone the secondary (old) drive

Sorry for being dense here. I'm having trouble getting my head around the whole procedure. I've added drives before but they've all been IDE and I've never replaced the primary partition/drive.

 

I'm not familiar with SATA drives but the new drive needs to be installed as a secondary and then clone the primary to the secondary. Shutdown and disconnect the old primary drive and reboot with the new drive as primary. Then shutdown and reconnect the old primary drive as secondary.

 

Posted by Laurelton...

No. The SATA protocol dispenses with the concept of "Primary" and "Secondary" drives. The SATA chipset on your Motherboard has sufficient intelligence in the firmware to simply look for the disk that contains the OS.

There is some confusion about the terminology and you may find this helpful. The term IDE refers to "Integrated Drive Electronics" and is technology that supports both PATA and SATA protocols. Before SATA we used to refer to the technology as IDE, but this was incorrect, the correct terminology is PATA. So IDE comes in 2 flavours - the older technology PATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment) and the newer SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment).

The other competing technology for communicating with disks is SCSI (Small Computer System Interface). SCSI has never been popular in the PC Windows environment and is most commonly found in the Apple Mac and Unix systems.

PATA technology requires a multi-channel cable (40 or 80 cables) which needs to be connected to the disks in a Master/Slave configuration. The OS (e.g. Windows) must always be installed on the Master disk. Swapping System disks in a PATA environment must therefore be done with some care so as not to get things mixed up. PATA does NOT allow non-system disks to be hot-swapped.

SATA technology provides a simple serial cable. Each disk has its own cable which is connected directly to the chipset on the Motherboard. This arrangment eliminates the Master/Slave configuration. In a SATA environment it does not matter which disk has the OS installed, the firmware in the chipset will interogate all the attached disks until it finds the one that has the OS. SATA allows non-system disks to be hot-swapped.

Does the above answer your question? If not please ask again.

 

Laurelton,

You should be able to restore from that one month old image and resize the destination partition at the same time. Then after you have booted to the new HD you could create a data partition and move your data from the old to the new HD.

Where is your image stored at present? If it's on an external HD then you don't need to have the old HD connected while you restore your image. To make things easy, have your "primary" HD connected to SATA port 0.

 

That's an excellent explanation, thanks! All the bits and pieces are starting to make sense.

So, as far as the situation at hand, does this seem like a workable plan:

-Install the new HD using the second SATA cable.
-Make sure BIOS settings recognize the new drive is there.
-Boot from old drive.
-Clone the old drive to the new using TI, adjusting 'C' and 'D' sizes as desired.
-Shutdown, disconnect the old HD and connect the new HD to the "primary" cable.
-Boot to new drive & check drive assignments.
-Shutdown and reconnect the old HD to the "secondary" cable.
-Boot & format/Re-partition the old drive.

I'll have to read a little more but I presume that if I wanted to add an "E" partition to the new drive I would have to do this after all of the above is completed? IOW, I couldn't do it during the cloning process?

Thanks again. Happy New Year.

 

No, the "C" image is on "D". "D" is on another machine on the network.

I'm more inclined now to do the procedure outlined above. I think all this is staring to penetrate the fog around my brain.

 

I know that I am being pedantic here, but in a SATA environment it is best not to use the terms "Primary" and "Secondary" - because there really is no such thing. It makes no difference which disk is connected to which cable.

A comment on your proposed procedure...

You must be logged in as an Administrator to perform these functions.

If this is a new disk that has not been installed in your system previously then Windows will start the "New Hardware Wizard". If the Wizard does not start then go to Start > Control Panel > Add Hardware.

The Microsoft recommended procedure for installing new hard disks in a Windows environment consists of 4 steps: -

• Physically install the disk
• Initialise the disk
• Partition the disk
• Format the partitions

You achieve the above as follows: -

• Login as Administrator
• Click Start > My Computer > Computer Management
• Click on Disk Management
• The new disk will be shown as “Unallocated”
• Select the new disk
• Initialise the disk
• Partition the disk
• Format the partitions

No. There is no need to reconnect the new drive. Simply disconnect the data cable from the old drive so that there is only one instance of Windows visible at the time of startup.

We have a potential problem here. Windows will sometimes get hysterical if it "sees" at the time of booting a second instance of Windows with the same Product Key. I have not found any consistency in this. Some systems will boot with no problems. Other systems will instantly blue-screen. If you have a problem at this stage then you will need to reconnect the "old" drive after you have booted into Windows from the "new" drive.

IMPORTANT_1 : Connect the power cable to the "old" drive when the system is OFF. Then you only have to reconnect the data cable (which does not have voltage on it) with the system "live".

IMPORTANT_2 : Suggest that you image the "new" drive before you reformat the old drive. Does no harm to have some insurance in the bank.

 

Thanks again for adding to my learning experience!

This is a Dell machine and I came across comments and advice on the Dell site which "encourage" users to connect the boot drive to SATA-0. Given the small amount of work involved to do this, I didn't see any harm in complying.

This, I didn't know... and confuses me. So, if I'm going to use TI to clone an image of my old drive (with larger partition sizes), I STILL need to partition and format the new drive within XP? I need to create a 'C' and 'D' partition first? Or just 'C'? I thought TI took care of all that within the cloning procedure.

It was my understanding that's why the old drive needs to be disconnected during the FIRST boot-up of the new drive. After that it was indicated that there shouldn't be a conflict.

Absolutely!!

 

I have cloned drives with TI 9 B3677 and don't recall formatting and partitioning before hand. I don't think that this is necessary for "Cloning". If you do TI will prompt you that the Destination Drive already has data on it. The suggestion to create an image backup first is right on.

 

I would go with the Dell recommendation. Dell has had an annoying history of tweaking hardware and software in a way that is only understandable to Dell engineers.

In practice I have found no consistency. Some systems seem totally unaffected. Other will instantly blue-screen. And then there are others where Windows will behave in weird and wacky ways. If you have a problem, don't assume that you have done something wrong, simply shutdown, disconnect the data cable and reboot. Reconnect the data cable after booting.


Posted by thomasjk....

Thomas is correct. I am just paranoid. I like to do things strictly according to the Microsoft guidelines. The operating system (in this case Windows) is the key component of any system. My preference is always to allow the operating system to install hardware. That way I am absolutely certain that the correct drivers; Registry entries and Device Management references have been done in a way that conforms to the requirements of the operating system.

Another advantage of first installing the disk under Windows is that you can run tests on the disk using Windows chkdsk and other disk utilities before performing the Clone. I am always more comfortable giving a disk that I know to be 100% good to ATI to work with than giving ATI a raw disk.

But for the record Thomas is correct.

 

Motherboards, port numbers and BIOS' vary but this thread throws some light on port numbering and the ability of a HD to boot.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=138062&highlight=port

In this example the SATA HD booted when connected as a single drive but it didn't boot when a non bootable HD was connected to a lesser port number.

 

Tabvla,

I thought it strange that I never had to initialize a new disk so I did some tests and found that when Windows initializes a disk it actually just writes a MBR. My approach is to partition a new HD with Partition Magic from DOS and this process automatically writes a MBR. So when the disk is first seen by Windows you aren't asked to initialize. I found this interesting.

 

Tom, Acronis TI is extremely forgiving with the cloning process. It doesn't matter if you clone into partitions or into Unallocated Space. I tried but couldn't get TI to fail with cloning.

But, if you try cloning into a partition with Ghost 9 or 10 , the HD definitely won't boot. You have to clone into Unallocated Space. In part this is because Ghost 9/10 does partition clones and not whole drive clones.

 

Don't use Ghost and don't plan to. I've never had a cloning problem with TI 9 although there have been some reports in the forums of cloning issues. My main use is full backups every night on both machines.

 

To tell the truth, I've only used the cloning process in test situations. For the real thing I prefer restoring images. I find it more flexible.

 

I've done both and either process works well for me.

 

Thanks everyone for all the additional help. You folks are great!

Could you elaborate on this? Why and how so?

 

Laurelton,

My approach simulates what needs to be done when you have a HD failure. You have to restore images as there is no old HD available for cloning. I just got used to doing it this way. When I upgrade to a bigger HD I usually change the partition structure on the new HD and it’s easier to do this before there is any data on the new HD. Different sized partitions, extra partitions. I only image the OS partition so this is the only partition that is restored using TI or other imaging software. I use data backup software (SecondCopy 7) to backup the other partitions to a second HD.

When the new HD arrives, I remove the old HD and install the new HD as a “master”, partition it from DOS using Partition Magic (I find Partition Magic an extremely useful tool), restore the C drive image which is stored on my second HD and then boot to the new HD. I then shutdown and reinstall the old HD as a “slave”, boot to Windows and it’s a simple matter of just dragging the data files and folders across from the old to the new HD using Windows Explorer. Then I delete partitions from the old HD as needed.

I’m sure you can get a similar result with cloning but this is my preference.

Get Partition Magic for “free”. Finishes Jan 2.

http://www.outpost.com/entry?site=op:mfe031406&sku=5018815