$Bill said:
I have a new Seagate SATA 320 GB drive that I want to replace my Seagate
PATA 120 GB drive with. After I clone the 120 to the 320, I want to use
the 120 as a second drive (maybe reformat and drop it down to 4 partitions
at most).
I want to increase the size of each current partition to ~60 GB and
decrease
the number of partitions from 6 to 5.
Old 120 GB: New 320 GB (after cloning and making prime):
C: 18.62 GB ----------> C: 58.59 GB
D: 18.62 -------------> D: 58.59
E: 18.62 -------------> E: 58.59
F: 18.62 -------------> F: 58.59
G: 18.62 -------------> G: 63.71
H: 18.68 ---------------^ (copy H to G after cloning)
I have Seagate's Disk Wizard, but I can't seem to find a path through
it to do other than cloning equal partitions from the old drives.
I tried Disk Management tool to partition the new drive and that seems
fine (haven't formatted it yet or assigned letters). What's the best
way to clone the first 5 partitions from the old to new disc (I can
handle the extra old partition with a manual explorer copy later) ?
So please tell me which tool to use and specific order of tasks to
accomplish the cloning (including making bigger partitions and dropping
one partition). Also is there anything special I need to do regarding
making the new drive bootable and renaming the old partitions on the
120 to different letters so I can use it as a secondary drive.
Can I do this from a running XP Pro system or do I need to clone from
a standalone OS/CD like Seagate's Disk Wizard ?
Will registry fix itself (adjust partition sizes etc) when the new disc
is made prime (made into the boot drive) ?
And is there anything I need to do (tricks) to make the new disc prime
so XP adjusts flawlessly to the new drive (how to change drive letters
while still running in Windows so switching boot drives will work) ?
TIA
Bill:
Assuming the responses you've rec'd to date haven't resolved your
objective...
And without going further into the whys & wherefores of your
multi-partitioning scheme and just assume you have good & sufficient reasons
for organizing your HDD the way you describe...
But before getting to the operation involving transferring the contents of
your 120 GB HDD to your 320 GB HDD...
You've indicated that while you have six partitions on your 120 GB HDD your
objective is to have five partitions on your 320 GB HDD - combining the
present 5 & 6 partitions into a single partition. Probably the most simplest
& practical way to accomplish this is to initially merge the *present* 5 & 6
partitions prior to your data transferring operations. Unfortunately XP does
not have the capability to accomplish that. You'll need a third-party
partition-management type of program such as Partition Magic to accomplish
this. There are other similar type of programs available - some of them free
or have trial versions available. We use PM exclusively so I'm not really
familiar with those other programs - hopefully someone will comment on them
and, of course, you can Google for them.
Let me say at the outset that it has been a long while since I used the
Seagate DiscWizard program so I trust the information I'm providing you
about using that program is correct insofar as it relates to your situation.
If I have provided you with incorrect or incomplete info I trust someone
coming upon this thread will correct any such info should that be necessary.
The problem (if it *is* a problem) you'll run into using the Seagate
DiscWizard software (it's a derivative of the Acronis True Image program as
I recall) as a *disk-cloning* program is that it's designed as an
"all-or-nothing" proposition in terms of creating a disk-to-disk clone. That
is to say that you can clone the contents of your 120 GB HDD to your new 320
GB HDD, however, the partitions created on that latter "destination" drive
will be proportionally identical (percentage-wise) to the disk-space
occupied by the partitions on your "source" drive - the 120 GB HDD.
So that in your case assuming you've merged the 5th & 6th partitions of your
source drive as suggested above, the resulting clone created by the Seagate
program on your 320 GB destination HDD will reflect five partitions each
about 20% of the available 310 GB disk space of that drive (give or take a
few GBs - the 5th partition will be sized slightly larger than the preceding
four partitions based upon the disk space you've allotted to that final
partition). If that's acceptable to you - fine.
I'm not aware of any way you can manipulate the partitions on the
destination HDD using the Seagate program as a *disk-cloning* program. At
least based on the last time I used it which was some time ago. However,
since I haven't used the program in some time it's possible that
partition-modifying capability has been added to the program. Perhaps a
current user can comment on that.
However, you can use the Seagate program as a *disk-imaging* program. So
that you could create a disk image of each of the partitions on your source
HDD and store the resulting disk images ("archives") somewhere on your
source HDD assuming the disk has sufficient available disk space for that
storage. So that each "disk image" would be a single file containing (in
effect) the total contents of a single partition. (The disk imaging process
compresses the data in a wide variance - anywhere from 10% - 60% as I
recall; it depends upon the type of data involved). Of course, if you had an
external HDD - say a USB external HDD - you could store the images on that
drive. You cannot store the disk images on the drive you intend to restore,
i.e., the 320 GB HDD.
So the Seagate DiscWizard disk-imaging process may be a viable solution to
meeting your objectives since there would be no need to use any third-party
disk-merging program as described above. Actually, the more I think about it
the more I think that's the way to go in your particular case.
Here's what you could do...
1. First, using XP's Disk Management utility on your 120 GB HDD you would
partition/format your 320 GB HDD along the lines you've indicated, i.e.,
setting up the five partitions.
2. Using Seagate's "image backup" capability, backup (create a disk image)
of each of the first five partitions on your source HDD - the 120 GB HDD.
Hopefully you would have sufficient disk space available on the source drive
to accommodate each one of the partition's backup files (remember it will be
a compressed file).
If you had sufficient available disk space on your first (C
partition you
could store each backup file (image) of each partition there. Or you could
use available disk space on your other partitions to store the images.
3. So you'll have five disk image files (I know Acronis calls them
"archives" - don't know if Seagate uses the same terminology) comprising the
first five partitions of your source HDD.
4. You'll use the program's "image restore" process to (in effect) copy the
contents of each of those five partitions to the five partitions you've
created on your 320 GB HDD.
5. After doing so, you can simply copy the contents of your sixth partition
(the H: partition) on the source drive to the fifth partition on your 320 GB
HDD.
Based on some older notes I have when I used the Seagate DiscWizard, here
are some tips...
a. During the image restore process...
Select the "Active" option for the disk image that contains your OS - your
boot system - the C: drive.
You can select the "Primary" option for the second & third disk images that
will contain the second & third partition data.
The "Logical" option will be selected by default for your fourth & fifth
options.
b. During the image restore process select the "No" option indicating you do
not want to assign a drive letter to the restored partition. The system-boot
partition on your destination HDD will automatically receive the C: drive
letter assignment. And through Disk Management you can change the drive
letter assignments for the other four partitions after the image recovery
process has been completed.
c. Toward the end of the each partition's image recovery process you're
asked whether you would like to restore another partition. Select the "No"
option even if you haven't finished restoring all the partitions. We found
it better to complete the process for each partition and then begin anew for
each succeeding partition.
As an aside...
The program we use for disk-cloning purposes (it does not have disk-imaging
capability) is the Casper 4 program. That program *does* have the capability
of *cloning* data on a partition-to-partition basis. So that there is no
need for the disk-imaging & recovery process referred to above. However,
given your example, there still would exist a need for a third-party program
in order to merge the two partitions that you desire.
As to your query about making the new 320 GB HDD "prime" (apparently you
mean bootable/functional, right?) there's really nothing very special to do
other than connecting that SATA HDD to the motherboard's first SATA
connector (it will be designated either SATA0 or SATA1). I assume you'll
retain your 120 GB PATA HDD as a secondary HDD. Check the BIOS boot priority
order to ensure that the SATA HDD will be first in HDD boot order before the
PATA HDD. No registry modification is necessary.
Later you can manipulate the partitions on that secondary HDD but again you
will need to use a third-party partitioning tool to do so without losing
data. On the other hand if you plan to simply format the drive (losing all
its data of course), then you can use Disk Management for
partitioning/formatting along the lines you want.
Anna
:
ROG120