What is the "recovery partition"?

I don't think Macrium will do it. I recall Nick saying they don't support software Raid.

Your best bet is to convert it. Pretty sure Paragon PM10 Pro will do it - the trial won't do it tho. and it's not a free app.

If I come across something , will let you know.

They had a giveaway of Paragon HDM 9.5 SE , it is a special edition ( ie a special freebie ) so those more esoteric functions you get with the paid versions may not be included.

Greg - have a look at your HDM 2009 Pro and see what the helpfile says.

SIW2 said:

Greg - have a look at your HDM 2009 Pro and see what the helpfile says.

Sorry won't be home from Oahu North Shore til Monday.

Don't remember seeing conversion on there but everything else is.

So he needs to convert before reimaging or it will copy the dynamic format?

You should be able to convert a simple dynamic volume, spanned volume is something else.

Can't think of a free program though - that is a pretty esoteric function and usually only in the pricier apps.

Try shrinking C partition so it is smaller than the target drive to which you are going to restore.

Make an image of the now smaller partition and see if it restores - you may be lucky if the target is larger than the source - give Windows System Image a whirl, as Acronis is useless to you.

Or, you may find you can restore the Windows Sys Image you already made to the 1tb drive .

You will still have the problem of the dynamic drive tho.

He's getting dysfunctional PW read of drive, doesn't even show the Recov partition he wants to delete, recover.

Take a look: What is the "recovery partition"? Compare to Disk Mgmt.

Even if he could rightclick Resize, PW isn't showing the correct HD layout

PW won't show any vols on a dynamic drive - it won't do anything to a dynamic drive, except offer to convert it. After that, the volumes should be visible and accessible as it would then be a basic disk.


This guy had some luck with Test Disk - worth a shot:

How to non-destructively convert dynamic disks to basic disks My PKB

SIW2 said:

PW won't show any vols on a dynamic drive - it won't do anything to a dynamic drive, except offer to convert it. After that, the volumes should be visible and accessible as it would then be a basic disk.


This guy had some luck with Test Disk - worth a shot:

How to non-destructively convert dynamic disks to basic disks My PKB

That example appears to involve a data disk, not a system disk.

SIW2 said:

You should be able to convert a simple dynamic volume, spanned volume is something else.

Can't think of a free program though - that is a pretty esoteric function and usually only in the pricier apps.

Try shrinking C partition so it is smaller than the target drive to which you are going to restore.

Make an image of the now smaller partition and see if it restores - you may be lucky if the target is larger than the source - give Windows System Image a whirl, as Acronis is useless to you.

Or, you may find you can restore the Windows Sys Image you already made to the 1tb drive .

You will still have the problem of the dynamic drive tho.

I tried restoring from the system image I'd stored on the 500GB WD to the 1TB WD, after disconnecting the 640GB WD that was the C drive, but got the message: "No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found." So I can't use Windows 7's native backup and restore, which sort of leaves Acronis as the only game in town. But I can't seem to create a boot disk that works.

It just occurred to me, is there a way to make the 1TB drive a system disk, without actually installing Windows 7? I remember we used to do that with floppies years ago, and maybe if the image restore could see the 1TB WD disk as a system disk I'd be able to re-image it? The error message seems to indicate that's what it wants?

Doesn't the paid version of Acronis come with a WinPe recovery disc as well as the Linux one? Maybe it is a separate download.

Otherwise, you can get Testdisk in a bootable form . It is one of the apps. on Parted Magic cd ( free ) - not to be confused with partition magic , which is completely different .

News

You could try booting that , select Testdisk, and see if you get the options the author of the article got.

SIW2 said:

Doesn't the paid version of Acronis come with a WinPe recovery disc as well as the Linux one? Maybe it is a separate download.

Otherwise, you can get Testdisk in a bootable form . It is one of the apps. on Parted Magic cd ( free ) - not to be confused with partition magic , which is completely different .

News

You could try booting that , select Testdisk, and see if you get the options the author of the article got.

I tried TestDisk. I was able to get all the way through it and change both partitions from Dynamic to Basic, but after that when I booted all I'd get was a Gateway Vista screen asking me if I wanted to restore the system to factory defaults. When I clicked the "exit" button instead, it just hung at the cursor prompt. I couldn't boot into Windows 7 until I restored from the system image I'd created on the 500GB WD drive.

Note that according to this screen shot of the disk manager, the recovery partition shows up as 100% free space, and as simple basic. Nonetheless I can't use it or make any changes to it. Right clicking it just shows a "help" dialog, that just opens the generic windows help page.

Also, some people have mentioned RAID, but I'm not using RAID in either software or hardware form.

Are you able to restore using the Backup image you made?

Boot into the Win7 DVD recovery console, select "Recover using an image" and see if it will reimage onto the freshly converted Basic disk.