Recovery partition size when replacing a hard drive using an image

ellentk · 30 May 2016

I'm going to be replacing a 500 GB hard drive with a 1 TB hard drive in a ThinkPad laptop. I created an image of the 500 GB drive using Macrium. It contains C:/, D:/ and a recovery partition. I will be extending the size of the C:/ and D:/ partitions and have read that the size of the recovery partition should not be changed or it will become inoperable. Just checking here to make sure that information is correct. Thanks.

RolandJS · 30 May 2016

Scuttlebutt has told me that one can restore a partition onto an equal-size or greater-size partition; one can restore an entire hard-drive X-size onto a target hard-drive x-size or larger. Quick example: I have restored an OS image from a 465GB partition onto or into a 467GB partition. I found it best to "parallel" the target HD to match the source HD -- quick example: OS/465GB-C, Data/467GB-D source was successfully restored onto OS/467.8GB-C and data/467.7GB-D. Just before restoring, I split the whole 931GB/1 giant C into 467 C and 467 D. What brought all of that on -- I was in a hurry, and totally toasted my hard-drive logically [not hardware-wise]; I fixed it all with the abovementioned steps.

ellentk · 31 May 2016

Thanks for your reply, RolandJS, but you're confusing me. I'm asking about the recovery partition. I can't see how to apply your example to my situation. Perhaps I'm missing something? My hard drive is failing so I want to install a new one and then copy the image of my old drive onto the new drive. Then I will assign unallocated space to both the C and D partitions and leave the recovery partition alone. I would like to confirm that this is what I should be doing as I have never done it before.

RolandJS · 31 May 2016

I forgot the part about the Recovery Partition, sorry! I was focused on your C and D partitions. You're aok with cloning the source HD onto a target HD, as long as the target HD is as large or larger than the source HD. You're good to go.

ellentk · 31 May 2016

No problem, Roland. But, I can't clone the hard drive as it is failing. I have an image that I want to use. I've read that method works and I'm pretty confident it will. At any rate, I have no choice but to use the image. What I am not clear on are the requirements/limitations related to the recovery program. I plan to leave it alone after the image is copied to the new drive but I am curious about it.

pbcopter · 31 May 2016

I would leave the recovery partition the same size that it was. There is no reason to make it any larger.

RolandJS · 31 May 2016

pbcopter said:

I would leave the recovery partition the same size that it was. There is no reason to make it any larger.

Yes, a full image of this partition from the target HD should restore nicely onto the target HD.

RolandJS · 31 May 2016

pbcopter said:

I would leave the recovery partition the same size that it was. There is no reason to make it any larger.

Question for pbcopter: Does the target HD have to have the partitions already created via a disk management utility? I had to do that when I was "transferring" SysRes, C, D from source HD onto target HD.

ellentk · 31 May 2016

Thanks, pbcopter.

ellentk · 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)

I don't know how other backup programs work but this is the one I'm using.