Hard drive has shrunK?!

Hi,

I did an unsuccessful disc clone with Acronis, no problem I thought, I will do it again with more care.
No my USB drive reads as 60gb, same size as the drive I was trying to clone! Despite being 100gb! Anybody got suggestions on how to get it back to the original size???


Thanks

 

A pic would be helpful showing the properties menu.

 

Looks like you cloned the partition table as well. Do you have hidden partition at the end of the cloned disk?

 

I don't know. How do I view that to find out?

 

I don't have the software to photograph an image of the properties page, but I can tell you that all it shows is the new smaller size of the hard drive. It doesn't appear to show the rest of the drive at all. Acronis doesn't see it either. I don't seem to have any way to select the WHOLE drive and reformat it. It looks like I am just reformatting the visible partition.

Can anyone help? What can I do, if anything, to get the hard drive back to its original state?

Thanks,

RD

 

yes it does, but how does it help me to know that? Is there some way to turn on 'viewing' a hidden partition, so that I can select it for removal?

 

....................

 

Sounds like it is time to repartition and reload. Put in a windows disk, and you should be able to delete the partition, and hopefully repartition back to the original size.

 

Contral panel > Administrative tools > Computer management > Disk management.

I believe you can add a partition and format into the unused space right through Windows' disk management.

 

So I did a reinstall of XP pro onto my 'shrunk' drive. It still reads as a 60 Gb drive. I can't 'find' a hidden partition if that is the problem. Acronis seems to have genuinely shrunk the clusters? Is this possible, a very strange experience.

Oh well, I have tried everything, I seem to have just lost 40Gb....

 

I do not think that you have lost 40 GB, it is just unusable right now...
No software has the power/capability to shrink or change any physical characteristics of a drive...

 

Hey Richard:

I had a similar experience.

I used Acronis True Image 11 Home to copy my 60GB Notebook Hard Drive to a new 160GB Drive, but unfortunately the extra 100GB just disappeared.

I discovered the problem lies with Dell. My notebook was a XPS m1710 with Media Direct, and the Media Direct Function was to blame for resizing the hard drive every time the new drive was booted.

If your notebook is a Dell with Media Direct (version 1 or 2) then I may offer a solution. It is not easy, but it does work. Follow the steps in post #33 in this thread:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=167401&page=2

Basically, you download a program called "Hitachi Feature Tool", and then burn it as an ISO image to a CD. Boot from the new CD. Use this program to resize your disk to the maximum size (works on all brands of hard drives).

Download Roadkil’s Sector Editor.

http://www.roadkil.net/diskutils.html

Then you will have to "zero" (aka erase) a specific sector (LBA - 3) on your hard drive BEFORE you boot it, otherwise the Dell Firmware will shrink it again. Note: your Dell's Media Direct feature will no longer work if you zero that sector. So, if you have erased any data on your original hard drive, you will have to create a boot disk, such as Magic Boot Disk.

http://hddguru.com/download/software...k_ISO_v2.0.zip

I can affirm that this procedure does work; my new hard drive is 160GB!

Thanks,
Andrew