Recovery partition size when replacing a hard drive using an image

AddRAM · 31 May 2016

After you successfully do your reimage, post a shot of Disk Management from the new drive, you more then likely have to move the recovery partition if it`s to the right of C.

RolandJS · 31 May 2016

"Roland – according to macrium's knowledgebase, macrium reflect creates partitions when restoring an image to a new drive: v5: How to restore a backup image (Restore, v5)" -- EllenTK

AddRAM said:

After you successfully do your reimage, post a shot of Disk Management from the new drive, you more then likely have to move the recovery partition if it`s to the right of C.

AddRAM, that's one reason I normally make the "placeholder" [empty] partitions on the target HD in advance.

ellentk · 31 May 2016

AddRAM - Macrium shows this order of partitions on my image, from left to right: System, C:Windows, D

ata, Q: Lenovo Recovery. (The System partition is tiny, 1.46 GB.) Based on your comment, is this the physical order or just the order based on assigned drive letter? I believe I accessed the recovery partition in order to run some windows diagnostics when my hard drive began to fail. And the image was taken before that. So is it safe to assume the image will restore partitions to where they were? And since they worked where they were the restore will also work?

Macrium lets you resize partitions during a restore, which is what I thought I would do - expand both my C and D partitions as I will have twice as much space. Or is it safer to expand them using partition management software after I restore the image?

Thanks very much for your help. I haven't done this before (obviously) and I don't want to make any mistakes.

AddRAM · 31 May 2016

Have you done the reimage yet ???

Post the shot of Disk Management so we can have a look

A System Reserved partition of 1.46 GB is abnormally large. The normal size is 100 MB

ellentk · 31 May 2016

Here's a photo I took with my iPad of the diskpart/list volume command. I can boot into windows PE from Macrium's rescue disk but booting into windows even in safe mode is unreliable at this point. The image is clear when enlarged, but if it can't be made clear on your system, it lists:
Volume. ltr. label. Type
0 G. Rescue. DVD
1. E. System. Partition
2. C. Win7. Partition
3. D. Data. Partition
4. Q. Lenovo
recovery. Partition

AddRAM · 31 May 2016

Well what are you waiting for, Let`s get r done

In diskpart I would type list disk, select disk 0, then type list partition, not list volume, see if the order is the same. But it should be.

Diskpart > enter

list disk > enter

select disk 0 > enter

list partition > enter

ellentk · 01 Jun 2016

I'm haven't bought the new HD yet. And was waiting for the rails to arrive by mail.

Here's what list partition reports. It looks different then list volume. Is it okay?
#. Type Size. Offset
1. primary. 1500mb. 1024kb
2. primary. 122gb. 1501mb
0. extended. 326gb. 124gb
4. logical. 326gb. 124gb
3. primary. 15gb. 450gb

ellentk · 09 Jun 2016

AddRAM said:

After you successfully do your reimage, post a shot of Disk Management from the new drive, you more then likely have to move the recovery partition if it`s to the right of C.

I finally installed the new hard drive. It seems to be working well and passed Lenovo's diagnostics, so I hope it lasts longer than the old one. I've uploaded a disk management screen shot. The only thing different, aside from the bigger size, is a bit of unallocated space (for some reason I thought it might be safer to leave some room) and the recovery partition is now G instead of Q. I assume I can change it back to Q with no ill effects?And should I allocate the extra space?

Thank you again for all your help!

Ellen