Cloning OS drive to newer, larger drive without hidden Dell Restore Partition

Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.

xsrossiter wrote:
I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Partiton image/cloning with your favorite imaging application.
Then, as long as the drive letters remain the same - you should see no
difference.

If you want to keep the Dell 'restore' or more likely, 'diagnostic'
partition - just image/clone the entire disk from one to the other and
expand the second partition (the OS) as needed.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Thanks for any responses, Steve.

"xsrossiter" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.

Use Acronis to clone your OS partiton only... not the entire drive. Tell it
to resize the partition on the fly to use up the entire destination drive.
(You did not have to format the new drive in order to do this ...in the
future when cloning just use a raw drive).
btb

"btb" wrote:
"xsrossiter" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.

Use Acronis to clone your OS partiton only... not the entire drive. Tell it to
resize the partition on the fly to use up the entire destination drive. (You
did not have to format the new drive in order to do this ...in the future when
cloning just use a raw drive).
btb


Careful reading of the Acronis User manual (a downloadable .pdf
from the www.Acronis.com website) seems to indicate that Acronis
cannot clone single partitions. Instead, it only seems capable of cloning
the entire hard drive - unlike Symantec's Ghost and Future Systems
Solutions' Casper. Acronis might work for the OP if Dell's "hidden"
partition is also hidden from Acronis, but I don't know if that is true.
If Acronis *can* see the "hidden" partition and it clones it, perhaps
Acronis could be used to delete that partition after cloning and to then
expand the OS's partition to include the entire hard drive. If not, you
might have to use Ghost or Casper to transfer just the OS's partition
to the new hard drive.

*TimDaniels*

On 12 Aug, 03:37, xsrossiter wrote:
I expect you have seen http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page - a live
linux CD including partimage could be used easily, such as
http://www.sysresccd.org/ or http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

On 12 Aug, 11:12, wrote:
.......[[selfsnippage about gpl software]]....

or even http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/clonezilla-live/

"xsrossiter" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.


The clone should be a duplicate of its source. That means all partitions.
Some cloning and/or imaging software will copy individual partitions, not
just the entire hard disk contents. That is not the case with the Acronis
disc wizard software.

I tried it using 2 identical SATA hard drives. The clone was not bootable.
The source hard drive, XP started, hal.dll could not be found or was damaged
per message on screen after the cloning attempt. I used the boot CD iso to
create a boot CD with disc image on it. The iso comes with the disc image
product download.

I also used disc image within XP to create images of my XP partition. The
restore result, restoring the boot CD, was not usable.

Admittedly, the software could have been botched during the download from
the seagate website. But, am not going through that mess again.

Dave

"Lil' Dave" wrote in message
...
"xsrossiter" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.


The clone should be a duplicate of its source. That means all partitions.
Some cloning and/or imaging software will copy individual partitions, not
just the entire hard disk contents. That is not the case with the Acronis
disc wizard software.

I tried it using 2 identical SATA hard drives. The clone was not
bootable. The source hard drive, XP started, hal.dll could not be found or
was damaged per message on screen after the cloning attempt. I used the
boot CD iso to create a boot CD with disc image on it. The iso comes with
the disc image product download.

I also used disc image within XP to create images of my XP partition. The
restore result, restoring the boot CD, was not usable.

Admittedly, the software could have been botched during the download from
the seagate website. But, am not going through that mess again.

Dave


I'm going to weigh in here just to get the OP to consider downloading the
trials of either CompApps Drive Wizard v3.15
http://www.compuapps.com/Download/download.htm or Casper XP
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .

Neither are likely as sexy or full of options as Acronis, but I'd bet one of
them would work as a cloning solution for all of the partitions. Both
programs are pretty small and easy to use.

Both trials can be installed and the cloned drive tested before one has to
purchase either product.

I use Drive Wizard and have for some 3 years for a bootable backup; a close
friend couldn't get it to work with his system but found that Casper XP
provided that same function (a fully bootable drive copy with all
partitions).

Stew

"S.Lewis" wrote:

"Lil' Dave" wrote:
"xsrossiter" wrote:
Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.


The clone should be a duplicate of its source. That means all partitions.
Some cloning and/or imaging software will copy individual partitions, not
just the entire hard disk contents. That is not the case with the Acronis
disc wizard software.

I tried it using 2 identical SATA hard drives. The clone was not bootable.
The source hard drive, XP started, hal.dll could not be found or was damaged
per message on screen after the cloning attempt. I used the boot CD iso to
create a boot CD with disc image on it. The iso comes with the disc image
product download.

I also used disc image within XP to create images of my XP partition. The
restore result, restoring the boot CD, was not usable.

Admittedly, the software could have been botched during the download from the
seagate website. But, am not going through that mess again.

Dave


I'm going to weigh in here just to get the OP to consider downloading the
trials of either CompApps Drive Wizard v3.15
http://www.compuapps.com/Download/download.htm or Casper XP
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .

Neither are likely as sexy or full of options as Acronis, but I'd bet one of
them would work as a cloning solution for all of the partitions. Both programs
are pretty small and easy to use.

Both trials can be installed and the cloned drive tested before one has to
purchase either product.

I use Drive Wizard and have for some 3 years for a bootable backup; a close
friend couldn't get it to work with his system but found that Casper XP
provided that same function (a fully bootable drive copy with all partitions).

Stew


The free 30-day trial version of Casper has only one restriction:
It can clone all or individual partitions, but the clones will be the same
size as the originals - they will not be expanded to a larger size or to fill
up available space on the new hard drive. See
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/ .

*TimDaniels*

"Timothy Daniels" wrote in message
...
"S.Lewis" wrote:

"Lil' Dave" wrote:
"xsrossiter" wrote:
Hi,

I have a Dell Dimension 8300 that I bought with 2 x 200 GB drives and
currently am running XP SP2. After first upgrading the data drive to a
500 GB Seagate I would now like to do the same for the OS drive. My
question is, Seagate provides DiscWizard software designed by Acronis,
that will clone the original OS disc to the new drive, but will the
hidden Restore Partition from the original disc pose some sort of
problem in the cloning process?

I would rather do without the restore information unless it will
produce spurious system errors for loss of the information that was
maintained in the hidden partition. If this will be the case then I
would rather recreate the hidden partition and be at peace with my
computer.

How would I prepare the new disk for this situation? I have already
formatted the entire disk as NTFS but then realized that the cloning
operation might not work if it is trying to put information from a
hidden FAT 32 partition onto a destination NTFS partition.

Is there a problem here or does Acronis make a bit-by-bit image of
what is on the origin disc and then simply format the remainder of the
destination disc in NTFS effectively cloning the original, complete
with 39 MB Restore Partition, as well as making available the extra
space on the new drive?

Thanks for any responses, Steve.


The clone should be a duplicate of its source. That means all
partitions. Some cloning and/or imaging software will copy individual
partitions, not just the entire hard disk contents. That is not the
case with the Acronis disc wizard software.

I tried it using 2 identical SATA hard drives. The clone was not
bootable. The source hard drive, XP started, hal.dll could not be found
or was damaged per message on screen after the cloning attempt. I used
the boot CD iso to create a boot CD with disc image on it. The iso
comes with the disc image product download.

I also used disc image within XP to create images of my XP partition.
The restore result, restoring the boot CD, was not usable.

Admittedly, the software could have been botched during the download
from the seagate website. But, am not going through that mess again.

Dave


I'm going to weigh in here just to get the OP to consider downloading the
trials of either CompApps Drive Wizard v3.15
http://www.compuapps.com/Download/download.htm or Casper XP
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .

Neither are likely as sexy or full of options as Acronis, but I'd bet one
of them would work as a cloning solution for all of the partitions. Both
programs are pretty small and easy to use.

Both trials can be installed and the cloned drive tested before one has
to purchase either product.

I use Drive Wizard and have for some 3 years for a bootable backup; a
close friend couldn't get it to work with his system but found that
Casper XP provided that same function (a fully bootable drive copy with
all partitions).

Stew


The free 30-day trial version of Casper has only one restriction:
It can clone all or individual partitions, but the clones will be the same
size as the originals - they will not be expanded to a larger size or to
fill
up available space on the new hard drive. See
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/ .

*TimDaniels*



Thanks, Tim. I believe you w/o referencing the link.

DriveWizard does resize partitions, expanding them to fill larger partitions
if one chooses to do so. It's a 3-4 click process.

Stew