Restore on larger hard disk changed disk size

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by PatrickR, Mar 3, 2007.

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  1. thatsmychin

    thatsmychin Registered Member

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    Dan and Delta-p, you are god-like. It took me a bit to digest what was going on, I learned a few new phrases...but I am so thankful for Goodell's site and the conversation here that I had to register and give a big thanks.
     
  2. 630mUser

    630mUser Registered Member

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    I registered solely to share my story and to THANK YOU guys for all of your help.

    As a computer hobbyist, I was fairly confident that I could upgrade my wife's hard drive on her Dell 630m from 40G to 160G. I ordered the drive and used EZ Gig II to perform the clone. Here's a quick rundown of what followed (a familiar story):

    • Blue Screen
    • Tried to format hard drive, but only 36G shows.
    • Tried many methods, no help.
    • Must be a faulty hard drive, sent it back for an exchange
    • Got new drive, tried again
    • Same thing!
    • WTF?
    • Found this amazing thread! Read about halfway through and thought my problems were solved!
    • Hitachi tool -- Failed.
    • WTF!?!?
    • Tried PTS -- Failed
    • WTF!!!?
    • Came back and read Post #77 (Kamiraa)
    • Of course, I have a Seagate HD
    • Restored capacity with HDAT2 (whew)
    • Used MBR autowrite (http://www.acronis.com/files/support/mbrautowrite_en.iso) on original drive before starting to clone
    • Tried again
    • EUREKA! It's done.

    Thanks again, particularly GroverH, Brian K, and Kamiraa. And GOOGLE.
    :)
     
  3. jmch783

    jmch783 Guest

    First of all MANY MANY MANY thanks to all the posters on this thread. I joined because I was having this same exact problem upgrading my Dell XPS 60gb hard drive to a samsung 160gb HD. I just want to say thank you though because it took me a few days to even find anything remotely close to what was described so well in this thread! Thanks again!
     
  4. Aragond

    Aragond Registered Member

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    Like 630mUser before me, I've (sorry to say to the owners) joined JUST so I can tell y'all "thanks" :thumb: :thumb: :thumb: , that I suffered this problem for seven %@*&! months, that I'll never buy anything from Dell again, and that youse guys saved my 300GB disk that I thought would ever more be a 93GB. Truly, I say to you, Dell have entered my sh!t list.

    Firstly, there is the struggle of finding a forum that actually addresses this problem. I have scoured the 'net for months and this was only one of two forums that even talked about it. The first pointed me to Goodells -- all hail Goodell!! -- and it to here. There are millions of pages that use the words "Disk" and "trunctation" but none are talking about what we're talking about.

    I used Paragon's Disk Copy** (errh'm!!) to clone my 100 billion byte (GB=2^30... always has, always will. Eat it h/w companies!!!) Dell disk to my new 300GB, only to find I'd destroyed the disk. All I wanted to do was use the DSR without destroying my master disk, but that's a different seven-month adventure.

    ** A product, might I add, that doesn't fail to fail, also. Soooooo hard to get good help in this world.

    Once I found Goodells, I tried his suggestions: HDAT sat there eternally searching for devices, the Hitachi tool doesn't work off USB devices, and then failed to restore my disk, but MHDD (hooray for Russian hackers for once) was easy, simple and worked first go. No issues.

    I'll only copy partitions from now on. I'll abandon MediaDirect. And I'll never buy Dell again. But, I am ever grateful for you folks having this forum here, still up and taking posts of thanks for we not-entirely-n00bs who've been felled by Dell's spit-n-silly-putty solutions, and you can be certain my website will link here ever more. :D

    Thank you, all, again.
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2009
  5. ricomann

    ricomann Registered Member

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    hi folks,

    got an error in a Dell utility that runs at startup. called the one time boot menu or something like that, under the diagnostics... anyway, it says an immobile sector of the hard drive is kaput, so I've purchased a replacement for my factory 80gb, it's a SATA300 Seagate 250GB hard drive 5400rpm.

    All the postings i've seen on here refer to folks who are cloning the hard drive and going with a larger drive than original. While I am going for the bigger drive I have no plans to clone the drive. There are two reasons for this...

    1. reason 1 -to eliminate any hidden viruses and other junk on the computer in the way of spyware and that sort of thing...
    2. reason 2 - after "upgrading" to Vista the computer runs slower and seems to use significantly more resources, so I was thinking of just loading all I can with XP, updating it to bring it current with all security updates and voila....

    If I go this route, will there be any issue with the new, larger hard drive only being recognized as the same size as the prior hard drive?

    Should i do any fancy schmanzy stuff with partitions or should I just let it do it's normal thing and move on?

    Thank you,
    Rich
     
  6. dell_laptoper

    dell_laptoper Registered Member

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    Seems alot of people aren't finding much info. on upgrading their dell laptops with larger hard drives... I found a thread that has a step by step how-to upgrade, for some dell laptops. It's for XP installed Inspirons such as E1505, E1705, 6400, 9400 that had MD2 (media direct 2) and HPA installed. It may help out some of the people reading this thread.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=176163
     
  7. jchavez903

    jchavez903 Registered Member

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    Location:
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    I don't post very often, but I am kind of desperate. I have read the first couple of pages of this thread and then jumped to here. Inferioron 5150 with a 160 GB drive in it. It was cloned awhile back from a 30gig...long story...anyway at this point I am passing the thing on and wanted to clean it up. Ran the dell xp reinstall disk for a scratch install. Shows only 131 gig with some change. Disk manager shows 127 allocated plus 21 gig unallocated. Ran a load and go floppy diag that checks for 48 BIT LBA and this is what it gives me...

    IDEINFO Version 1.0
    Copyright (c) 2003 FryeWare
    All Rights Reserved
    http://www.48bitlba.com
    http://www.fryeware.com

    Secondary - Master:
    Drive Model....................: ST9160821A
    Drive Serial Number............: 5MA1RM0H
    Drive Type.....................: Fixed
    Cylinders......................: 16383
    Heads..........................: 16
    Sectors........................: 63
    Drive Features.................:
    48-bit LBA...................: Yes
    LBA..........................: Yes
    DMA..........................: Yes
    IORDY........................: Yes
    PIO Modes....................: 3 4
    ATA/ATAPI Specs..............: 2 3 4 5 6
    Ultra DMA Modes..............: 0 1 2 3 4 5
    Current Ultra DMA Mode.......: Mode 5
    Device Drive Size..............: 160041893888 bytes [160.0 GB]
    BIOS Drive Size................: 137438953472 bytes [137.4 GB]


    BIOS Support 48-bit LBA........: No
    REASON: BIOS does not report correct size for 48-bit LBA device.

    I could sware that at my origal cloning (can't remember which util I used) it was 160 gb. Had to rebuild it since, due to an unfortunate accident, and didn't really pay attention....I am so conffuuuuused.
     
  8. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    jchavez903,

    The BIOS and Windows use different drivers to report HD size. The real mode drivers in the BIOS report your HD as 137 GB and the protected mode drivers in WinXP report the HD size as 160 GB.

    Because of the BIOS limitation you can only use 137 GB of that HD. In Windows, 137 GB is reported as 127 GiB. ("Disk manager shows 127 allocated")

    http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/binary_v_decimal_measurement.htm

    Do you have the latest BIOS?
     
  9. mer123

    mer123 Registered Member

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    Like 630mUser, I registered here on Wilders just to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone on this board for helping me fix the problem.

    Like many others, I made the mistake of cloning the drive before knowing about this Dell problem (I have an Insiprion E1705 with MediaDirect). Yeah, not too smart and I won't make that mistake again when changing my system in any meaningful way...

    Anyway, I tried all the solutions suggest here to fix my cloned drive and restore its original size but none seemed to work.

    So, I decided start from scratch and re-clone the new drive. First, I zeroed the LBA-3 on the old drive using Roadkill Sector Editor. After that, using Acronis True Image 11 , the cloning process was very smooth and I now I have a fully functional 500GB drive that works and shows true size!!

    Needless to say, like the others on this boards, I'm furious with Dell for putting such a moronic design feature in their computers and will NEVER buy another Dell product again as result.

    But enough about those dummies--thanks again Wilders for saving the day :D
     
  10. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Strange, as you were able to restore an image to that HD and use the full size of the HD, you must have already removed the HPA. Weren't you able to resize the OS partition to remove the unallocated space on the HD?
     
  11. mer123

    mer123 Registered Member

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    I'm not sure what happened when I tried to fix the problem using the already cloned new drive. I'm hardly a computer expert but I've been working with PC's since the DOS days, so no 'newbie' either.

    I followed the instructions exactly as you suggested, Brian, and (confirming that I had zeroed out LBA-3 and using MHDD, followed by reboot). Yet, when I checked the disk size in XP under My Computer after rebooting, it continued to show the old disk size (80GB). I tried doing it several times but it never worked.

    Since I had just bought the new hard drive, I wasn't losing anything by re-cloning it and the re-clone went flawlessly since the old drive was already zeroed out.

    But you are correct that the new disk did seem to be fixed in one important way: when I went to re-clone nb the new drive, it did show the correct size (500GB) whereas before it was stuck on the old drive size.

    Not sure if I did something wrong or if there is something about my system that prevented the fix you figured out from working.

    Either way, thanks again for the help.

    Now if I could just get back the 8 hours of my life that Dell stole from me...

    :(
     
  12. mer123

    mer123 Registered Member

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    Brian, just re-read your post and realized I may not have answered your question

    Sorry for my ignorance on this, but when I ran MHDD was I in fact re-sizing the OS partition as you described or is that an extra step that I failed to do, which would explain why the solution didn't work??
     
  13. squarepegger

    squarepegger Registered Member

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    I've been reading this thread for a while and all it does is make my head spin. I know what I hope to accomplish, but if I read much more of this thread, I'll end up in the psych ward. Surely there must be straightforward answers to a few questions I have.

    I've got a Dell Inspiron 6400 with a 60 GB drive that is reporting "Error Code: 0F00:0244 Msg Block xxxxxxxx: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected." It still works, but I'm not gonna wait for it to fail. The 60 GB drive has a DE partition (Utility-Dell Diagnostics), an XP Pro SP3 partition that I created where the XP Home installation from the factory used to be, a Dell Restore Partition (CTRL-F11, you know), and a Dell MediaDirect v.2 HPA.

    I've got a Seagate Momentus 5400.4 120GB drive to replace the failing drive and I've got Acronis True Image Home 2009, plus Seagate's DiscWizard, which is pretty much True Image but only works when it finds a Seagate drive. Oh, and I've got a XP Pro SP3 slipstreamed bootable DVD that I made.

    Now I don't want the MediaDirect partition or the Dell Restore partion on my new drive. I tried MediaDirect v.2 and don't know why anyone would want to use it when they can just bring their laptop out of hibernation instead and have much better media software available.

    Since I've got an XP Pro system going, I'm not interested in regressing to XP Home in the Restore partition. I did make some DVD backups of the Dell System Restore partition 'cause DVDs are cheap. I used True Image and Nero BackItUp.

    While it's true that I don't need the Diagnostic partition 'cause I've got the same software on a bootable CD, it'd be nice to have in case I ever started having problems while I was traveling with my laptop and didn't have the Diagnostic CD with me. It was Dell Diagnostics that alerted me to the fact that my HD was going to fail.

    The big thing I've done so far is make an image backup onto an external USB HD of the Diagnostic partion and the XP Pro partition. I've made a bootable CD version of True Image and checked that it sees the external USB HD drive when I boot from the CD.

    Finally, here's what I fantasize ending up with on the new drive: the little DE partition, my XP Pro partion expanded out to 100 GB or so, and a 20 GB sandbox partion where I can install some version of Linux to play with in the future.

    So I've got questions:

    • Should I use "image restore" or "add new drive" in True Image to get my backed up image onto my new drive, with the DE partition, an XP partion of 100 GB and a 20 GB empty partition?
    • Am I OK putting my old MBR onto the new drive? I didn't back up the HPA into the image on the external USB HD .tib file.
    • If I don't use the old Dell non-standard MBR that's in the backup image, I'm guessing that True Image creates a standard MBR. Question: after the CMOS diagnostics run, can they boot the DE Diagnostic partition if there's a standard MBR on the new disk?
    • Can I create my desired 20 GB empty partition for some future Linux using True Image?
    Well, that's more than enough. This post is already too long. Many thanks in advance to everyone who replies.
     
  14. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    OK. Simple answer. Restore your two images but don't restore the MBR. Acronis TI will create a generic MBR. Then you can create your other partition.

    I'm not sure but I think you will still be able to boot the diagnostic partition. It doesn't rely on the Dell MBR.

    Your post is very clear. Nice research.
     
  15. The4Bs

    The4Bs Registered Member

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    We have a Inspiron 6400 with Media Direct in the HPA. We also upgraded to a larger hdd and used TI 10 to do so. You can read about our experience and recommendations in this post. If you read up a few posts you can see some of the things we tried that didn't work. Hope this helps.
     
  16. WoodyW

    WoodyW Registered Member

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    I am generally new to forums (only ever been on one forum and only since last December) – completely new to this one. It is awesome to find such generous/helping people as those on this forum.

    I started this post as a draft a few days ago. It has taken awhile to compose and now squarepegger has posted with similar fantasies as mine. So this may seem redundant to you wizen, battle tested experts. But not to me!

    Here I sit with my Dell E1705 and scared close to death o_O about upgrading the HDD. Sure glad I found this thread before I started, but now not too sure I want to start.

    My situation is this:
    S1: I am one of the fortunate :'( ones to have purchased a Dell computer with Media Direct in a HPA. To be specific it is an E1705 purchased in June of ’06. It has one HDD (100Gb) with three partitions I can observe via Disk Management. I believe they are the one for Dell Utilities (DE), one for OS (XP) and programs (C:\), one for DSR. Then there is the dreaded HPA for MD. I believe that’s the max partitions?

    S2: What I want is an increased size HDD (500GB) with partition one (50MB) with Dell Utilities – why I’m not sure; partition two (50GB) with OS (XP) & programs; and, partition three (balance of HDD ~ 449.5GB) with data only (docs, aerial map imagery, pics, etc.). As you can see I am no longer interested in messing around with “Media Direct” or “ctrl+f11” DSR BS, because I want a data partition. I’ll forego MD and use imaging backups in order to get the three or four partitions I want. Who would want to restore a partition back to an original three year old setup – useless in my opinion?

    S3: I intend to purchase a 500GB, 7200 RPM HDD and a USB connected external case for internal HDDs

    S4: I already have a 500GB external USB connected HDD

    So after reading, rereading, rereading, and printing and rereading this and other threads (GroverH’s Guides) and forums (Dan Goodell’s and NBF threads), here is what I want to do:

    1) Backup (probably use Seagate’s DiscWizard – Seagate’s take on TI) the entire drive as is to my existing external, just in case? Not sure what can go wrong with trying to re-install on the existing HDD, if things do go wrong, but it seems like a safety net at this point.

    2) Follow Brian K’s post #110, but according to GroverH’s Guide it seems that I should be backing up & restoring. So I think I will follow Brian K up to the clone part. Then go to backing up and restoring (DiscWizard) the Dell Utilities partition (DE) and the OS partition (c:\). I’ll do this via the 500GB external drive. Then swap out the old HDD for the new 500GB internal and restore (letting DiscWizard create a generic MBR) both DE & OS partitions onto the new HDD while in the E1705?

    3) Then I’ll make a Data partition and transfer all the Data to it.

    5) Once the Data partition has the Data I want/need (aerial and other map images) off the 500GB external drive I’ll backup the Data partition to the external drive. Then I can delete the redundant Data on the external drive. The backups for the DE and OS partition will already be done and be on the external drive.

    This seems easier than it will probably be. Anything else I should be thinking of? I’m sure I’m missing something, probably lots!

    Any advice/corrections/help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED. And THANK YOU in advance.

    Woody
     
  17. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Woody,

    Nice post. Before you start, make sure your BIOS supports HDs larger than 128 GB. It would be disappointing to find that only the first 128 GB of your 500 GB HD is usable.

    Just briefly, I'd use image /restore as GroverH outlines. Restore the Dell Utility partition as 50 MB. Same size. This gets around boot.ini issues. Don't restore the MBR at any time.

    Now a question. How large is your present OS partition? If it is larger than your planned 50 GB then some work needs to be done. How much free space is in the OS partition?
     
  18. WoodyW

    WoodyW Registered Member

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    Hi Brian,
    Thanks for the super fast reply. Sorry I couldn’t respond faster. That first question was a doozie. I’m not sure if I got it answered yet, but I’m sure glad you asked. Thanks.

    Re BIOS support: I’ve gotten posts on forums that range from “absolutely not”, to “yes, no problem”, to fixes that make it work. One of the fixes is to put the OS on a partition smaller than the limit. The limit most are talking about is ~138GB. It seems this has been successful for everyone that has tried it. Another solution for a WD HDD was to use a program from WD that changes the limit somehow. Here are a couple of posts:
    Absolute yes – http://www.notebookforums.com/post2994605.html
    Partition fix – http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/237351-45-boot-large-hard-drive
    WD program fix – http://dougchinnery.blogspot.com/2008/05/dell-dimension-8400-sata-300-drives.html This is bit of an unusual source, but it came up on a google.

    What are your thoughts about this?

    Re image/restore: I have to learn to use the correct terms – image/restore it is. Thank you. I’ll be very careful about NOT restoring the MBR!

    Re OS partition size: Current size is 87.3GB binary with 26.5 unused. There is about 22GB that is going to go into the Data partition via the existing external drive before I start anything else. Think I should up the OS partition size?

    Woody
     
  19. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Woody,

    127/137 GB limit. Same limit. I wouldn't use Drive Overlay software to get around this limit. I've read of too many image/restore problems. I suggest you ask Dell if you do have the limit. You probably don't as your laptop is recent. My Dell 8600 does have the limit. I have a 60 GB HD and that is quite large enough for my purposes as I have several external HDs.

    When you move data out of your OS partition you will have about 39 GB used. That's a little high for a 50 GB partition as you are bound to add more in the future. Leave it at 87.3 GB.

    Regarding the limit. 137 GB (binary) is seen by the BIOS but Windows sees the full HD. You can create partitions beyond the 137 GB mark in Windows but these aren't seen in the BIOS and are unstable. You are setting up for data loss.

    See https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=8#183
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2009
  20. WoodyW

    WoodyW Registered Member

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    Brian K,
    Haven't forgotten your post, it's just that you ask some challenging questions for this computer challenged old codger. :)

    Can't ask Dell about any limit for HDDs on my system without paying. Based on this and other forums, not sure I'd get a straight answer anyway. So, went to the experts, helpful people like yourself on forums - went to the Dell Community forum.

    A long time forum member with a bazillion posts (similar to you) advised that "The system supports LBA48 at the BIOS level, so a 500G drive will work." Other threads in the Dell Community advised the same thing for the E1505 model. I think it's the same except for the screen size.

    Based on those inputs (and yours about probably no limit) I will move forward. Thanks for the cautionary input. I'm glad you mentioned it.

    Found another 5GB to take off the OS partition. That puts it at ~35GB. Still, I will take your advice and up the OS partition on the new drive.

    Hope you are rid of me, but knowing how challenged I am about this stuff I'll probably be back with some question I can't fathom at this point.

    Thanks for all your help and input.

    Woody
     
  21. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Woody, good luck. Feel free to ask questions.
     
  22. ducksauce

    ducksauce Registered Member

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    Guys I tried everything here and nothing is working unless I'm doing something wrong... I have a Dell E1505 with a 40GB hdd and it has 3 partitions on it and it has MediaDirect. I am trying to clone it to a WD Scorpio black 320GB hdd but I keep getting the bluescreen of death. I tried the zero sectors and the HDAT2... nothing PLEASE HELP!
     
  23. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    ducksauce,

    What size is the new HD seen in the BIOS?
    How did you perform the clone? Or did you restore an image?

    Are you willing to remove the MediaDirect function from your old HD?
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2009
  24. ducksauce

    ducksauce Registered Member

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    Thanks Brian... I finally got it to work... I had to take away the HPA first and then do the capacity thru HDAT2 and then reclone it through Acronis Home and voila finally loaded into windows... Thanks for all the help =)
     
  25. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    That's good news. Which HDAT2 method did you use?
     
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