Upgrading to larger drive on Dell notebook

I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook computer with a 60 GB drive. The drive has 4 partitions and I want to replace it with a 100 GB drive. I don't care about migrating any of the partitions, except for the primary drive C. I have TI Home version 9.0(build 3,677). I have tried multiple approaches, but the only thing that I can do is to create a mirror of the previous drive(containing 4 partitions). I don't see any opportunity to resize the C drive during the process. The unaccounted for space doesn't show in Windows Disk Manager, nor in TI, if I re-enter the program. If I only restore the C-drive to my new disk, how does it get a matched MBR installed? Also, I'm using a USB drive to store my image file during this process. Any ideas to try?

Dave

 

1) Create an image of your entire drive, including all partitions, by selecting the checkbox for the entire disk, and save it to an external USB drive.
2) Using TI's Add New Disk feature, wipe the internal 100G drive and do not create any partitions in the unallocated space. The entire 100G should be unallocated.
3) Restore the image from your USB drive by first restoring only the C partition. You will have the option to resize that partition before you click to restore it. Resize it to fill the entire 100G.
4) Restore the MBR from the image.
5) Reboot from the internal drive and you should have a single partition filling all available space. If you have to, you can use your Windows CD to fix the MBR if it has any problems booting the first time.

If I were doing this, I'd restore the 40-50MB Dell Diagnostic partition as well as the C partition. If you decide to, restore it first to the very beginning of the drive. Then go ahead with the C partition and MBR as above.

Good luck.

 

I'm on board with the entire process, except for using the WinXP CD to correct/repair/create the MBR for the new drive. How do you do that without reinstalling the OS over my previous C-Drive?

 

You probably won't have to but, if you do, you'll use the CD to boot and step carefully through the prompts to repair the mbr and not reinstall the OS. Piece of cake. Besides, if you do screw it up you'll still be able to re-restore as many times as you need to.

 

When restoring from the image you get these options:

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/2042/screenshot029tp2.jpg

In Bobdats Step 3 you click on the box next to C: partition.

In Step 4 you click the box next to MBR and Track 0.

Edit:
I see now that your problem was with Step 5. Sorry.

 

I've followed your directions very closely, but each time i get to the C-drive restoration, TI only lets me restore to a partition of the same as the original. Somehow, the full available space is not displayed, eventhough I just reformatted it using my Western Digital Lifegard Tools CD. Any more thoughts?

 

You should be seeing the following screen. I just tried it both from within Windows and using the boot Rescue disk.

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/229/screenshot038ry4.jpg

 

The drive capacity is now at 54 GB, the size of the original C-Drive. The drive slider shows the total capacity available of 54, with additional space available to use. The only way that I can get the full space back is to use Western Digital tools to nuke the drive to full size. I'm ready to skip the diagnostic partition, and accept restoring the original C-Drive only to my disk. I have used the Data Lifeguard tools to format the full capacity and will now try to restore to it.

 

Should you end up with unallocated space use the following method to retrieve this space.

 

Before you do anything else, launch TI and select Add New Disk. Step through the screens and choose to delete all partitions on your target 100G drive. You'll see a checkbox to create a new partition in the new available space. Choose NOT to create a new partition. When complete, this procedure should leave you with a BARE drive, all 100G unallocated.

Then, go through the steps to restore the image, only selecting the individual partition(s) and last, the mbr. When you select to restore individual partitions you'll see the resizing screens that DLD posted.

 

Sorry to take up everyone's time, but all roads have led to 54GB usable. I can use the disk manufacturer's utilitlites and confirm the presence of 100 GB, TI keeps knocking it back to 54.48 GB. I may try a call to TI tech support(even though it may cost) or might consider other paths, like Norton Ghost. After about 20 hours and a dozen attempts, I'm needing to get this behind me!

 

Have you stepped through the Add New Disk functions as suggested above?
After doing so, are you saying that TI reports your drive has 54G of UNALLOCATED space and that's it?

 

I hope you don't mind an alternative approach. We all have our own way to do it. I assume you have partitioning software so briefly..

Using TI, write an image of your Dell diagnostic partition and an image of your C drive to the external HD.

Install your new HD in the laptop and create four partitions just like your old HD but you can make them any size you like. Partitioning creates a generic MBR for you.

Restore the two images and you can let WinXP fill its partition. You can restore the MBR too but it's not essential.

Boot to Windows.

 

Thanks everyone for all your help! Here is what I did that ended up working...First, I used the Seagate disk utilities that came with the drive to create a single, 100 GB NTFS drive. It also installed a dynamic disk overlay that briefly flashes during the boot process, but seems not to effect any functionality of my system. Second, I booted using my TI Rescue CD, chose restoration and first selected my MBR from the backup. I continued to the 50 MB Dell disk utilites partition. This partition was a FAT16 format and only allowed my to select it as active. It was created at the beginning of the 100 GB partition and currently functions as a Dell utility partition. I next selected to restore the original 54 GB C-drive and allocated about 95 GB of the new drive for this purpose. I was able to select it also as the active/primary partition(it seamed to then change the utility partition to now be primary. Finally, I used the remaining space after C-drive to be simply another primary partition. The drive now has a utility partition, a C-Drive partition, and another miscellaneous use partition. These 3 mimic the original set on the replaced drive. Everything seems to be working great! I hope this might prove useful for someone in the future.

 

You say "I next selected to restore the original 54 GB C-drive and allocated about 95 GB of the new drive for this purpose". I presume this was done using the screen shown in post #7 of this thread. Is there any reason why you did not choose all of the remaining space for your C-drive? Or did you want to have that final miscellaneous use partition? In other words, did you feel you had to mimic the original partitions?

Finally how is it that you were able finally to expand the C partition to 95 GB where previously you were unable to do so?

I'm not criticizing you. I just want to understand what went on.

 

Hi all,

I have just begun reading this thread and I was trying to do the same thing as fassezke. I was running into the same issue where I was restoring a disk image that I had saved to a network drive but was not able to resize the image partitions so that I could make use of the extra space on the new drive.

I believe that fassezke realized, just like I now have, that the key is the info provided by bobdat, that if you restore an entire image, you cannot resize the restored partitions. However, when you select the individual partition to restore, you can then resize the selected partition.

This is just a forehead slap. Once you get this you'll say to yourself, "Of course!" but until then it is just frustrating.

 

Just went through the same thing...very frustrating.

If you just click on the partition or partitions you want to restore you are golden. If you click the drive which highlights the partitions and a line called "MBR + 0" (Which I assume means Master Boot Record....not sure about second part) it defaults to an exact copy in the exact same size partition on the new drive....leaving the rest of the drive unallocated. If you only select the partition it gives you the option of using the whole drive. Too bad I figured that out after wasting 2 hours restoring.

 

This <previous reply> should provide additional clarification on the steps needed to restore a disk image to a larger hard drive.

Regards

 

Will that work with the last build of TI v8? My daughter just called me today and has a Dell laptop with a dead 40gb hard drive. She has an image of the drive on her USB external drive made with Version 8. She really needs to install a larger drive but I don't want to suggest it if it won't work (since I will be the one doing the restore.

 

skybob,

It will work. Not that it really matters, but does she have an image of the Dell Diagnostic partition as well? Do you have any partitioning software?

 

Hello skybob,

No, the procedure in the link above will not work for TI 8.0 (or TI 9.0 earlier than Build 3567). You need to use the one I posted in this <much earlier thread>.

Regards

 

Upgrading to a larger hard drive....using drive backup

You ain't kidding that it isn't intuitive. Especially bad when you consider this has got to be one of the most common restores from a crashed drive. Most people aren't going to restore to the exact same size drive.

Unfortunately, I skipped the MBR + Track 0 part. I now realize that means I can't boot to my USB drive...which isn't such a big deal but I wonder if I'll have any other problems. Also, can I still restore MBR + Track 0 even though I've added files to it? Or will that really screw up the drive?

Pasted your other post here.
:
:
"Assuming you are using True Image 9.0 Home Build 3567 or higher, you can resize the partitions during a restore. Unfortunately, it's not quite as intuative as it could be:

1. When you get to the screen asking which partition or whole hard drive you want to restore make sure you only tick the checkbox adjacent to a Partition rather than the Disk Number.
2. Later in the restore process you will be able to drag the partition size slider to the size you want.
3. When you are then asked whether you want to restore another partition or hard drive, select "Yes, I want to restore another partition or hard drive". You can then select another partition (if the original hard drive contained more than one) and resize that if required.
4. Repeat step #3 for all partitions in the image, finishing off by ticking the MBR & Track 0 checkbox.
5. When done, commit the combined restore via the "Proceed" button. You should then end up with a bootable system drive where the partition(s) fills all the available space on the new drive.

Sounds a bit long winded I know but it's really just a case of selecting the individual partition(s), resizing it/them accordingly and then finally including the MBR & Track 0 before committing the restore."

 

Re: Upgrading to a larger hard drive....using drive backup

Hello IamDisaster,

Provided you haven't changed the actual disk/partition geometry then there should be no problem restoring the MBR and Track 0 data retrospectively.

By the way, I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say you can't boot to your USB drive. If you meant you can't boot from your external USB HD then be aware that no current version of Windows is able to natively boot from a USB HD.

Regards

 

Re: Upgrading to a larger hard drive....using drive backup

Thanks for the answers...just a couple more dumb questions. I thought I was pretty computer literate but I'm not sure what you mean by "Provided you haven't changed the actual disk/partition geometry." Does the geometry stay the same if you put the partition on a larger hard drive?

Also, I didn't realize that Windows couldn't boot from a USB hard drive. You saved me struggling with that one down the road.

If I'm never going to boot from the hard drive do I care if it doesn't have a Master Boot Record? It still works fine as a USB drive. It is being used as a Media Center drive to store TV content. I upgraded from a 160Gb to a 320Gb drive. Backed up the 160Gb drive and attempted to restore to the 320Gb....which lead to a very long day of slowwww learning.

 

Hopefully the following two previous threads will provide some additional insight:

<MBR and Track 0>
<Reflections on Build 3567 and MBR>

Regards