Argh - Cloned HD on Wrong Partition After Upgrade

adt2 · 03 Dec 2012

Help, please!

The PC at my office is several years old, and had a 75GB hard drive. Company wouldn't spring for a bigger drive, so I brought in one of my own. Used CloneZilla to clone the 75GB drive, then swapped out the small drive for a much larger unit. Used CZ again to restore the cloned drive onto the new, larger drive.

Now, I have three entries in Disk Management: one 75GB partition with a clone of my original HD, one 300MB partition with god-knows-what on it, and then one partition with all the extra, unused space on my new disk.

Problem is, I can't join the 75GB partition with the extra space to make one large C: drive, because the partitions aren't contiguous. I know I'm not the first person to ever upgrade to a larger hard drive - which tells me I'm missing something here. I still have the original smaller drive, plus several large external drives to move things to and from. How do I get my big new drive to be one big honkin' C: drive, complete with a carbon copy of my current setup? I have access to Macrium, CloneZilla, and GParted, if that helps.

Thanks in advance for your help.

bigmck · 04 Dec 2012

It sounds like you need Partition Wizard. It allows you to create partitions as needed. Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition. I have never run into a problem using it, but be sure and BACKUP YOUR FILES before using.
Good luck,

LittleJay · 04 Dec 2012

If you haven't wiped the 75 Gb HDD, you could boot into it and install either Paragon Migrate OS to SSD, or Aomei Partition Assistant, which has a Migrate OS to SSD or HDD feature. They are both easy to use and will get the job for you. The Paragon software is $19, but Aomei is free. If you choose to use one of them, I would first use the diskpart clean command to wipe your new HDD and then reformat it.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Free Partition Manager Software for Windows 8/7/Vista/XP, 32/64 bit - AOMEI Partition Assistant Home Edition

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - System migration to Solid State Drives (SSD) - Overview

adt2 · 10 Dec 2012

Okay, I have an update but still need a little help. I used Aomei and it worked like a charm....sort of. The application was easy enough to use, and allowed me to go from a 65GB Windows partition, a 300MB "hidden" partition, and 1.5TB of unallocated space to a 1TB Windows partition, a 300MB "hidden" partition, and a 950GB "extra" partition in about 5 minutes. There wasn't even a re-start required.

I used the machine for several days without incident. Then, when I got to work this morning, I booted up...to nothing but a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the monitor. Whoops.

Luckily, I still had the original 65GB Windows drive in the machine, so I just opened it up, plugged in the old drive, and the machine booted right up. I can see and access the larger hard drive (after putting it "online" using Disk Management), so I was able to access a couple of files I needed to make sure were saved.

Now, I'm back to my original problem: How do I turn my 65GB Windows partition into a larger partition? It's the 300MB "hidden" partition that's causing the trouble; it's right "after" the Windows partition and therefore won't allow me to expand the Windows volume to the unallocated space (which is "after" the hidden partition).

What is this "hidden" partition? Do I need it? Can I get rid of it? Or is there some other trick I need to perform to get the larger hard disk to simply boot correctly?

LittleJay · 10 Dec 2012

It would be helpful if you posted a screen shot of your disk management. You can use the snipping tool in windows to take a screen shot and then attach it to your next post using the paper clip in the above forum menu.

adt2 · 10 Dec 2012

Ask and ye shall receive.

Argh - Cloned HD on Wrong Partition After Upgrade-computer-management_2012-12-10_09-46-44.jpg

Disk0 is the new, larger hard drive.
Disk1 is the old, smaller hard drive (and the one currently in use, since Disk0 won't boot).

LittleJay · 10 Dec 2012

According to your screen shot the 300 Mb partition is active and where the system files are located. So, in order to make your the partition where Windows is installed you will need to make that partition active and then use either of the two procedures to transfer the boot manager from the 300 mb partition to the OS partition.

To make the OS partition active and you can follow the this tutorial. Except you will want to make the OS partition active. Partition - Mark as Inactive

Startup Repair Please note that you may have to run startup repair 3 times for it to work.

Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD

Once you are sure Windows will boot from the OS partition, then you can delete the 300 Mb partition.

PS I would mark the 300 mb partition inactive first, so you will know for sure that Windows will boot from the OS partition before you delete. If it doesn't work for some reason, then you can always make the 300 Mb partition active once again.

adt2 · 10 Dec 2012

So...to summarize:

Boot using Windows 7 Repair Disc
Select "Startup Repair"
Go through repair process
Re-boot
Download EasyBCD
Select BCD Backup/Repair
Select Change Boot Drive
Click Perform Action
Verify new startup disk letter and click OK

Is that about right?

LittleJay · 10 Dec 2012

If you use start up repair to add the boot loader to the OS partition, then you don't need to use BCD Edit. BCD Edit is just another option to do the same job. But when you boot up into the repair disk, don't forget to first use the command prompt to make the OS drive active and the 300 Mb partition inactive. And be sure you can boot from the OS partition before you delete the 300 Mb system partition. If you like, post another screen shot of disk management after you are done so we can have a look.

LittleJay · 10 Dec 2012

One thing I just thought of. It might be good to unhook the second drive while you are working on the other. It will make things easier if it is the only drive online.