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New Hard Drive shrunk from 320gb to 110gb, would not boot, completely frustrated

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Beginner
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I purchased a new 320gb hard drive and external USB enclosure for my dell inspiron e1705 laptop to upgrade the 120gb drive. I ran ATI version 9 on windows XP to clone the drive and the new hard drive would not boot. I then tried to wipe the new hard drive clean and reformat but it shows only 110gb available. I have cloned desktop hard drives before with ATI 9 with no problems but this problem is beyond my knowledge. I also downloaded a trial version of ATI Home 2010 which acted very strange and would not allow me to uninstall even with the cleanup utility. I finally reinstalled ATI 9 over it and it seems to be okay. Where should I start to get my new hard drive back to 320 gb and then clone the drive.

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Legend
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1. What brand is the new hard drive and is the new drive IDE or SATA?
2. First, we need to get your disk back to its full value before we can resolve any other issues.
Look at the new disk using Windows disk Management. What size does it show? A 320 will normall show as 298.xx GB. If not this size, then start the TrueImageHome CD version 9 and choose the Add disk option. Use this to remove the existing partitions from the new drive so it shows all unallocated space. (See item 7-F inside my signature index) Is the full space regained? If the answer is no, then we will need to use some other utilities to regain the space. I will do some searching for such a utility in other prior postings.

3. In the meantime, Tell us more about the procedures used in the failed cloning.
a. Was the cloning done when booted from the TI Rescue CD?
b. What type clone? Manual, automatic, etc.
c. Were you provided with the opportunity to resize the partition. Manual mode does provide this option.
d. Was the new drive installed in its intended boot position during the cloning operation.
e. During first bootup following the clone, was the new drive the only drive attached?
f. More information about cloning using Version 9 is listed in my signature index below under item 7-C. This pdf documents the procedures which provides the best chance of success when cloning using v9-10-11.

g. The disk does not have to be formatted or partitioned for use. If fact, it is best if the space is unallocated when being cloned or restored.
h. I would suggest that you run chkdsk c: /r on the old drive before any further attempts to clone.
i. If you were not successful in step 2 of regaining your space, you might download the free Partition Wizard utility and see the "Recover partition" function is of assistance. I am still trying to find the other and once you identify the brand name, the mfgr may offer such a utility.

Forum Star
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Scott:

The Dell Inspiron E1705 has Dell Media Direct so special precautions are needed when cloning. Check Grover's guide 7c, page 12.

Legend
Posts: 172
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As mentioned in my prior post above, here are 3 programs which can be easily used to modify incorrect disk parameters so the full capacity of the hard disk can be restored back to factory size settings.

For restoring factory size settings, probably the easiest program to use is

HDD Capacity Restore Tool
http://blog.atola.com/restoring-factory-hard-drive-capacity/
CRSetup.exe

Another tool with more features is the Hitachi Feature Tool
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool
CD Image or diskette or User Guide

Or, if your disk is a Seagate brand, there is Seagate SeaTools for Windows or SeaTools for Dos
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

All of the above will enable changing the LBA settings back to factory settings.

This type problem is described further in my guides listed in my signature index below. Guide item 7C, page 12; or Item 7B, page 9.--also referenced by Mark above in the preceding post. None of the above 3 programs will correct the HPA (Host Protected Area) issue but all three can return the disk back to factory size setting.

Scott,
Did you get your issue resolved?

Beginner
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Grover, thanks for the help. Not resolved yet, but I'm just reading this now. Looks I'll try the first link first since my drive isn't a Hitachi or Seagate...

Whoops, I see you were addressing a different Scott. LOL

I tried that first utility, but can't do it because it says I have to remove the drive in device manager. How do I do that with only one laptop hard drive and one USB mass storage external drive? I tried disabling the drive but, obviously, it wouldn't boot Windows unless I use a last known "good configuration" which just re-enables the drive. What now?

Beginner
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Acronis True Image 2010
I used ATI 2010 trial version to clone one HDD to another HDD using the PCs internal IDE controller. This is a WinXP Home PC. The source is an 80GB Maxtor the destination is a Western Digital 500 GB HDD. After downloading & installing ATI 2010 it wanted to update so I did and rebooted. I started the cloning process and it went as I'd expect. It took about 30 minutes or less.

After cloning, when I put the 500GB drive in as Primary/Master it took over 10 minutes to get to the login screen. The screen shows the bars going across at the Windows XP boot screen, stopping and starting often. The HDD activity light goes on for a second and is dark for long periods... signifying the HDD isn't reading or writing much as it boots. I replaced the 500GB HDD with the original 80GB HDD as Primary/Single and the same thing happens. It takes over 10 minutes to get to the login screen. When I click on the login icon to login, it never... ever gets to the desktop. I let it go overnight and the icon was still showing in the morning.

What did I do that caused this? Can it be reversed or fixed?

Legend
Posts: 172
Comments: 11125

Wrong thread. No post.