Problems with Hard Drive Cloning

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steveyWN

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#136526 30-Nov-2013 01:05

Hi all.....I have 2 HD's in my desktop PC. One is 500 gigs and the other is 1 TB. The 500 gig drive is my primary partition with Windows 7 OS, and lots of other stuff on it. That drive is almost full, so I wanted to clone it to the 1 TB drive, swap the SATA cables over and make the cloned drive my new primary partition. I used the AOMEI Backupper utility. Two problems ensued. Firstly, now the 1 TB drive (the clone) is reading as if it's only 500 gigs, and the second issue is that the "used space" on the clone is almost 80 gigs less than the original. How is that possible if it's a clone? Regarding the smaller total space on the clone, I'm guessing I must have had a setting wrong when I started it. Anyways, I just want to fix it now, but not sure how. So to summarise, I want to restore the 1 TB drive to it's full capacity, and I want to clone the smaller drive to it, without losing almost 80 gigs in the process. Where did that 80 gigs go and what was it? Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance for your contribution.....Steve.

dusty42

117 posts

Master Geek

#943356 30-Nov-2013 12:10

Pop into disk management and extend the volume of the partition to match the 1tb of space on the drive.

Here's a nice how to which shows you how the disk management tools work - http://www.7tutorials.com/how-manage-your-disks-using-disk-management-utility

robjg63

4096 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#943404 30-Nov-2013 13:56

Dont know about the AOMEI software, but most hard drive manufacturers have downloadable tools that let you clone from an existing disk onto a new disk.

Have used the seatools (one of the disks has to be a seagate disk). Seem to recall it was pretty easy to use.

Though I expect the previous post will sort out your problem.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

Hammerer

2476 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#943435 30-Nov-2013 16:36

steveyWN: Hi all.....I have 2 HD's in my desktop PC. One is 500 gigs and the other is 1 TB. The 500 gig drive is my primary partition with Windows 7 OS, and lots of other stuff on it. That drive is almost full, so I wanted to clone it to the 1 TB drive, swap the SATA cables over and make the cloned drive my new primary partition. I used the AOMEI Backupper utility. Two problems ensued. Firstly, now the 1 TB drive (the clone) is reading as if it's only 500 gigs, and the second issue is that the "used space" on the clone is almost 80 gigs less than the original. How is that possible if it's a clone? Regarding the smaller total space on the clone, I'm guessing I must have had a setting wrong when I started it. Anyways, I just want to fix it now, but not sure how. So to summarise, I want to restore the 1 TB drive to it's full capacity, and I want to clone the smaller drive to it, without losing almost 80 gigs in the process. Where did that 80 gigs go and what was it? Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance for your contribution.....Steve.

You can clone a hard disk drive including it's boot sectors and partitions or you can clone one partition which functions as a drive. You appear to have done the latter and cloned the primary partition or drive C:. It is 500GB on the first HDD so ithe clone will be 500GB on the larger second HDD.

I use partition managers like GPartEd rather than using cloning software. Windows has DiskPart and it might also allow you to copy whole drives although I can't remember using that function with it. Partition managers are also on many rescue disks, e.g. GPartEd is on Sysem Rescue Disk.

steveyWN

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#943763 1-Dec-2013 18:03

Thanks for your comments and help Dusty, Rob and Hammer. Dusty those Win7 tutorials you mentioned are really good. What I did in the end, was take Robs advice and use Acronis True Image WD edition, since my 2 HDD's are both Western Digitals. The cloning has worked perfectly, and now the old D drive is now my new C drive which is exactly the result I was looking for. However now I can't see the old drive at all. Not in Disk Manager or anywhere else. I swapped the 2 SATA cables over as per the instructions from Acronis before booting up again, but the old drive isn't anywhere to be seen. Any ideas? Thanks for your help and patience..... Steve

Hammerer

2476 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#943795 1-Dec-2013 18:59

Check that the second hard disk drive (HDD) is visible in the PC BIOS/Setup. If it is then it is not the cable or hardware and you can try My drive does not appear in Windows Explorer. Other options are to check it with a disk/partition manager or disk recovery software.

If the HDD is not visible in the PC BIOS/Setup then check the hardware:

Did you leave the cables connected to the same connectors on the motherboard, ie only swapped them between the HDDs? If you didn't then it is possible that you've connected the cable to a connector that has not been enabled in the PC BIOS/setup. Many PCs have the ability to disable SATA connections.
You could have a connection problem that could be fixed by disconnecting the second cable then reconnecting it to the connectors.
If the cable itself has a problem then you could confirm this by swapping the two cables. If the main HDD no longer works then you should replace the cable.

Batman

Mad Scientist
29760 posts

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Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#943823 1-Dec-2013 20:20

doesn't sound like you cloned the hard drive if what you said is true.

try this demo http://www.paragon-software.com/downloads/home/

timmmay

20575 posts

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#943832 1-Dec-2013 20:53

Extending the partition is probably key. No idea why it's smaller.

I started a thread on cloning recently, here. I've ended up with Macrium Reflect, it works very well.

Equinox IT

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nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#943837 1-Dec-2013 21:10

GPart and Clonezilla - both linux based, gui live CDs. do a great job for me. also R Studios have a disk imaging, copying tool

shane

steveyWN

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#943873 2-Dec-2013 00:12

Hammerer you were absolutely right. No, it wasn't visible in BIOS either. So I powered down and checked the SATA connections on both drives, also their connection to Mobo. Actually they all seemed fine, but obviously one wasn't. When I powered up again there it was......in BIOS and also in Windows. Thank you so much for your time.......and others who have posted here. Thanks again..... Steve