Best way to expand drive size after "cloning"?

The title I chose was probably not the best, come to think of it. It isn't so much the resizing part of this process as it is all the rest of it that I seem to be having problems with.

Okay, first of all I need to specify that I'm just an average user when it comes to Win7 and hardware nitty gritty. But I have called upon the wisdom of this forum in the past and always received extremely helpful advice, to which I am very grateful. And here I am again, hat in one hand and a problem in the other.

Here's the situation: I have a laptop whose hard drive I've outgrown, so I bought a larger one for the machine. I also bought a USB-based enclosure so I'd be able to have the drives share data. I installed the new drive into the laptop, and put the old one in the enclosure. The old drive is 160 gigs in size with only about 3 gigs open. The new one is 500 gigs.

I used Clonezilla to clone the 160 to the 500. This worked perfectly. But I wound up with a new drive that still only had 3 gigs open. There were about 340 gigs left unallocated. So I used another Linux-based utility -- Parted Magic -- to reclaim the unallocated space.

Okay, I need to back up for a second. The old drive has two partitions, call them C and D. The D partition is fairly small -- about 10 gigs.

So Clonezilla cloned both partitions at their original sizes, but the funny thing was, it set the D partition ahead of the C partition. When I picture the graphic display that I get with a disk partition program, in my experience, the left most partition is the root partition, or "C". But for some reason, Clonezilla put D there, and C to the right of it. Well, I thought it probably doesn't matter because the OS can boot from other than the root partition -- or whatever it's proper term is -- from what I understand. So I expanded both in Parted Magic to take up all the unallocated space. Then I ran it and everything was set.

Went to boot the computer and no go. It couldn't find the boot sector or whatever. I didn't write down the error message so I don't recall the precise wording, but that is essentially what it was telling me. So I booted Parted Magic again, and took a look. Well, the "C" drive had the "boot" flag set, so I didn't really understand what the problem was other than it being out of place.

So this time I deleted the D partition so that C was the only one and moved C down to take up D's space. Linux is assigning each of these partitions a name or descriptor, like sba1 and sba2. Well, D got the sba1 and C got the sba2. When I deleted D, C's descriptor didn't change. It's still sba2. I dunno if this will matter or not.

Right now, I'm waiting for PM to finish moving the data as the C partition is expanded. Got another hour or so to go before it's done. I guess I'll find out if my workaround has worked.

My object was to transfer all the data from the old disk to the new, and to be able to access all the space in the new drive (duh). I also wanted C and D partitions. After the moving and expansion of C has been completed, there will be about 275 gigs of unallocated space left. My thinking is that if my latest attempt is successful, I'll go back and configure the unallocated space as D and then copy D's data off the old drive onto the new.

So anyway, the point of this long-winded post is to ask the all-knowing forum mind how I should have done it and whether what I'm doing now will work. So the next time I can avoid the hours I've spent spinning my wheels. If I have to start all over, I'm prepared to do that, but before I do, I would like to find a way to "clone" the old drive (probably not the best word choice) AND expand the two directories at the same time. Clonezilla did not allow for this, near as I can determine, so I'm wondering which other Linux-based utility I can use? I've got a couple of disks of Linux utilities, and for all I know I might have one of them already. From what I've recently read there's also a Windows 7 Disk Management Tool that can do the resizing? I'm not at all familiar with it. But I don't really think that resizing is my problem. It's positioning, and making sure all the right descriptors are set as they should be, seems to me.

You are making your life too complicated.

The fact that Clonzilla put D partition ahead of the C partition is to your advantage and nothing to worry about. After that's done, all you have to do is to go to Disk Management, right click on C and Extend Partition. The rest is self explanatory.

You might not want to extend C with all of the remaining freespace - just as much as you think you need for the OS on C. The rest is better invested into an additional Data Partition. No need to risk losing your data.

Thanks for the responses, guys. Whs, yes, I agree -- actually I was planning on having the D partition quite a bit larger than C, but I also figured I'd leave enough room on C for it to have elbow-room, I dunno. What would you suggest is a good size for a C partition? This is a 32-bit installation, btw.

I guess I need to read up on the difference between imaging and cloning. I've read Clonezilla's process as being referred to as imaging, as well. I guess to make things really confusing.

Ignatz, I wasn't given the choice -- or at least I missed it -- where I could have left out "D". Clonezilla cloned the entire drive. I would have preferred to have D omitted as well.

I have a copy of Partition Wizard. Guess I'll give it a try next. Speaking of which, this latest attempt was a total bust. Got some sort of Intel message this time telling me that it couldn't find nuttin' basically. So, I'm gonna start all over again. I'll let y'all know how things work out this time around. Or if I have any questions, I'll be back and I'll pose them before I dive in again.

What would you suggest is a good size for a C partition? This is a 32-bit installation, btw.

For the OS and programs, 40 to 50GB would be ample. That assumes that your user data is in a different partition. If you have large games, you may want to add some depending on the size of the games.

Wow, thanks for all that, pricetech! As it turns out, it looks like I won't have to use it, but I'm sure someone else here will be able to. Or I should probably do as you state and just have that disk for future needs. Whs, I finally made some progress last night, and I decided just not to mess with things any further, leave well enough alone.

I was experiencing no joy with Partition Magic -- didn't seem to matter what I was trying to do. Windows Boot Manager didn't like it, and even at one point where it would boot from the hard drive, then error out, it still was giving me error messages (from the "Repair" option on the DVD) that it couldn't find the boot loader or whatever. Made no sense to me, since it was finding something and booting enough for it to get all the way to the flowery Win7 screen.

So I went back to what worked the first time, and used Clonezilla again. About 5 hours and change later, it was done. And my computer was booting normally once again. This time, though, to capture the unallocated space, I used Win7's partition routine. It would not let me move the C partition down to occupy the D's space, even after I deleted "D", but I was able to claim all unallocated space above it. So that's what I did. Then I reformatted D and installed the stuff I deleted from D from the backup (ie, old) drive.

So, I've finally got access to the entire 500gig drive now, although most of it's one giant partition. Maybe I'll screw up the courage later and see about shrinking C and adding E. I'm afraid to mess with D after all I've been through this past day.

I'll swear I have the worst computer karma of anybody I know. Things always have to become a giant complicated mess. Actually, I got off lucky this time; only wasted most of a single day. Good thing I'm not in IT. I'd get run off the site, folks chasing after me with pitchforks or coat racks or whatever.