Problem reclaiming unused HD space after cloning

[emlyna]

Hi,

I just used HDClone to copy the contents of a 20Gb drive to a new faster 80Gb drive. The operation was successful, but I cannot seem to reclaim the additional unused 60Gb of space on the new hard disk.

(The new hard disk has been installed in the place of the original, same location/connectors etc.)

All of the partition software (PowerQuest Partition Magic, Paragon Partition Manager, Windows XP Disk Management) show approximately 18Gb of space used by the XP OS (NTFS), then another tiny partition of about 30Mb (FAT32).

When I read up about HDClone it said "...you only have to add the gained space on the disk via some partitioning tool..." but I have not been successful with this step. The XP system doesn't seem to know that there is more hard disk space available on the new 80Gb drive.

(Does the partition software need to be run from a separate location when partitioning a disk with the OS?)

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Emlyn

 

[Freestone]

Technical Documentation for the Dell Dimension 4400 can be found here:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4400/

and BIOS IDE specific info:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4400/syssetup.htm#1100634

emlyna, I understand your reluctance to change anything, and I strongly suggest holding off on any BIOS flash until it proves necessary.

At this point I assume the links I gave above, especially the IDE specific, matches what you see in BIOS. If you don't mind, would you list what BIOS has for the IDE Configuration Submenu entries? That's as good a place to start as any.

IDE Controller []
PCI IDE Bus Master []

Primary IDE Master []
Primary IDE Slave []
Secondary IDE Master []
Secondary IDE Slave []

 

[garebo]

Looking at your dell dimension setup, specifically about the ide as we have explained, there is a user setting.
But first you would have to get the model number for your maxtor drive, go to maxtor website and get the parameters for your drive, and then we can coach you how to enter the info in the ide area of your bios.
If we try that and it fails then maybe consider a bios update but i dont think you even need a bios update.
You could always ask dell support if your bios needs a bios update to recognize a maxtor 80 gig drive, but again i dont think you do, since your computer is fairly new?

I went to this page to see your bios and ide setup, its about half way down the page.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4400/syssetup.htm#1097118

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[garebo]

Getting back to HDclone, my friend said you made a mistake there.
He says the bios is seeing exactly what you have, a 20 gig hard drive. He says you have to partition first, then do your thing with HDClone. So, partition the hard drive 20 gigs and 60 gigs, then your bios will recognize it as 80 gigs.
Makes sense to me.
What you could do is format the whole drive as one and then make sure your bios sees it as an 80 gig drive and then partition it 20-60 as 2 partitions for the job you want to do. Thats only if you want to make sure the bios sees it, but i am sure it will anyway so you dont really have to partition it twice, but you can just to prove it.



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[garebo]

I dont think you need to update your bios, but you can run bios wizard, you can get it here for free:

http://www.pcnineoneone.com/downloads/system.html

Its a good prog and you could find it useful down the road.


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[Freestone]

I'd like to maintain the focus of the thread on emlyna's problem, but the statement that BIOS seeing hard drive sized based on its partitioning is wrong. According to that statement, if one buys a new drive, which has no partitioning information, BIOS won't see the drive at all.

 

[emlyna]

Hey Garebo and Freestone--thanks to you both for putting in so much time on this issue. This is very new territory for me so I appreciate it. As long as nothing we do damages or erases the data that was cloned from the old drive I'm prepared to try stuff.

The HD info:

Maxtor model # 6Y080P0 (80Gb ATA/133 8Mb cache, 7200 rpm)

PDF specs:

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/diamondmax_plus_9_data_sheet.pdf

Freestone:

Ths BIOS settings (from memory--but I'm pretty sure this is correct):

IDE Controller [Both]
PCI IDE Bus Master [On]

Primary IDE Master [SONY CD/DVD drive] (*see below for explanation)
Primary IDE Slave [Seagate 20Gb HD] (new cloned drive)
Secondary IDE Master [None]
Secondary IDE Slave [Maxtor 250Gb HD] (storage)

*(In an earlier post I had mentioned that the original HD was set as secondary slave or master and that I had changed it to be primary master. Actually, it turns out that now it's primary slave--my CD/DVD drive is primary master (simply because of the ribbon connector configuration inside the stupid machine--there really is no way to physically make the wire extend the other way to make the HD primary master. However this doesn't seem to have affected the system.)


Garebo:

I followed these instructions when I did the cloning:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=418

The HDClone instructions said nothing about doing any partitioning BEFORE running the clone, it simply indicated that running a partition app AFTERWARDS would reclaim unused HD space in the new (larger) drive. But it seems to me that the partition app would first need to *recognize* that a larger HD exists (which right now it can't).

- - - - - - - - - -
ONE TEENY BIT OF INFO: I don't know if this helps, but I did make one small booboo after running HDClone (sorry, I totally forgot about this). As soon as the cloning was done, I simply restarted the machine without removing either drive, but as soon as XP had finished booting I remebered this step and immediately shut down the machine, removed the old drive and put in the new one. Right now the machine works just fine with the new HD, but I remember reading somewhere that if you restarted with both drives still connected after running HDClone the system might "get confused". Not sure if this managed to screw up the BIOS??
- - - - - - - - - -

If either of you think that the BIOS is the culprit, and have a suggestion for how you think I should approach that, then I'm willing to try. Seems like it should be doable.

Thanks.

Emlyn

 

[garebo]

There are a bunch of statements to be considered here and a bunch of questions to be answered.
But i think the biggest question is can you run a win xp system with the hard drive set as primary ide slave? I dont think you can but i stand to be corrected.
As for no physical way to change that, there has to be. Simply change their places in the case. Take them out and swap places, then your cable will fit properly and your new hard drive can be primary master as it should be.
Also, i wonder if your new hard drive has been made active, but it likely has.


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[emlyna]

Actually it works just fine, but the problem (yet another one) is that the new cloned hard drive is basically STUCK where I replaced the other one--for some reason the Dell brackets were a VERY snug fit and >>>believe me<<< there's no way to get this thing out: I've tried! lol

In fact, the system was working fine for 2 years with the boot HD as secondary master too (before I did any of this cloning stuff).

 

[garebo]

I'm not mr computer so this is news to me, i didnt know you could do that. I automatically presumed your main hard drive had to be formatted, made active, have the os on it, and it had to be primary master.
Shows how little i know!

Actually, i think you should start all over again as i think you missed something or did something wrong or in the wrong sequence when you used HDClone.
I dont think doing it again would be harmful if done properly?


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[emlyna]

Ugh, I know. Doing it all over again is certainly a possibility, but right now I just have so much work to do that I can't afford to not have a working PC.

I think when I have some down time I might try all this again...

 

[Freestone]

garebo seems convinced that HDClone is the culprit. I'm convinced that somehow BIOS isn't communicating properly with the drive, especially if BIOS is still saying Primary IDE Slave [Seagate 20Gb HD], since this should say [Maxtor 80GB HD].

As far as the hard drive being Slave and the CD/DVD being Master, I'm betting that both of the units are jumpered for Cable Select (CS), and the hard drive is in the middle of the cable, and the CD/DVD is at the end. If you want to change the master/slave relation of these units, then either the positioning of the units on the cable must be swapped, or the jumpers changed on both.

emlyna, in the BIOS Primary IDE Slave Submenu, can the Drive Installed or Type be selected with the arrow keys and the Enter key pressed to bring up a submenu? What I think needs to be done is somehow force BIOS to rescan the IDE interface and detect the new drive, despite the fact Auto is set.

Lastly, are you using the newer 80-pin IDE cable on the drive? I would think so if Cable Select is indeed being used, but I want to cover this base too.

 

[garebo]

No, im not convinced. If you read above you will see that i have been trying to get Emlyna to get the parameters of the drive from maxtor, or let us do it, and then go into bios and set them manually, that is what needs to be done first of all.
Failing that, he might try HDClone again since its obvious he may have made an error there in the first place.
I think Emlyna is hesitant to set the hard drive bios settings manually. I have suggested he go to maxtor site and get the parameters of his h drive a few times.



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[emlyna]

garebo: I did go to Maxtor to get the settings, but not knowing what I really needed, all I got was the model number and some other spec data (bytes per sector, logical CHS...). Is there something *specific* I should be looking for about the maxtor HD that I need to enter in the BIOS?

Freestone: Yes, everything in the PC is set to cable select, so I'm not at all surprised that the system was booting from secondary slave before I did the HD clone&replacement. Honestly, there's no way to reverse these anyway--the cable is currently set up in such a way that it would be impossible to have it go the other way (not to mention, the DVD drive and HD are in the only physical place they can be, so I just think this is a weird anomaly with the Dell 4400).

In the BIOS, when I select the Primary IDE slave (currently Seagate 20Gb) it gives me a bit of generic data about the HD but not much else. Believe me, I've been tapping TAB and tapping the arrow buttons and just about anything else I can think of that would somehow unearth some sort of useful setting in the BIOS, but to no avail.

**Personally** I don't see HOW I could have done anything wrong with HDClone. The process wo so straightforward that I don't believe the problem lies there. I did mistakenly restart the machine with both HDs installed--briefly--but I can't imagine that this would cause the PCs BIOS to simply not offer common settings options. Of course, I haven't found the solution to it yet, so it could be anything!

I'll take yet another gander at the BIOS...

 

[garebo]

Ok, give us the exact model number of your maxtor drive, we will get the parameters.
Also, start your computer up, and at some point, usually the very first page, you can hit your "pause break" button on your keyboard and that will pause the bootup. Then you can get the info on your bios, i should have a machine with the same bios around here and i can tell you how to do this.
You will see, on the first screen, something like:
Award bios v4.51
Could be Phoenix-Award, i think, and i forget the other name, but there are only 2 now, i believe. You will also see the bios version, it will have a date on it, see what the date is as well. Then just turn computer off or hit space bar or enter key to continue booting.

Put the h drive info and bios info here and we will help you.


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[garebo]

I hate to mention this again, but my friend insists that when you set the size of the hard drive in HDClone, that is all the bios will see.
He emailed me this:
HDClone takes your "whatever gigabyte HD and puts up a HUGE sign saying "BIOS! listen up!!! this now a "perfect copy of the original HD" if you use this program to copy a 4G HD onto a 250G, the BIOS sees 4G!!

Back to me, garebo again.

In your case, Emlyna, you have set your 80 gig h drive up as a 20 gig hard drive by using HDClone, so, apparently, all your bios will see is 20 gigs, which it does.

So we might have to figure out some other way to fix this.
My friend is on the other side of the world so out time zones dont help as far as getting emails.


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[garebo]

My friend, who i do trust, sent me this info. He says you must do HDClone over again as your hard drive is now set up as 20 gigs throught HDClone and bios wont recognize your 80 gig until you redo things with HDClone:

if emlyna has his 'old' HD.... AND he wants a workaround?

set the 'old' as primary master
set the 80 gig 'cloned' HD as primary slave
set his CD drive as *whatever* on the second cable

reboot
enter BIOS setup
set both HDs as "auto"
exit and save? YES

use the 'old' HD to format the 'cloned' HD

close down the computer

set the freshly formatted HD as 'master' and 'old' as slave

reboot and enter BIOS

set the boot sequence as:
'first option' CD
'second option' IDE 0
exit and save? YES
then continue with the XP CD in the drive

the computer boots from the XP CD and shows a setup XP screen then set up XP (as NTFS) on the formatted HD with a 20G partition

you now have an 80G HD with TWO partitions 60+20
run HDClone
clone 'old' HD to the 20G partiton
you now have your 'old' setup on a new 80G HD with an 8M buffer
And now? either buy partition magic or google "freeware partition manager"

end

Me again, i believe you can use Ranish Partition Manager for free, but if not, google will find one or someone here will help out.



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[garebo]

I found Ranish for you, its free. I would suggest you download the stable version.
3rd paragraph down, it says download and over on the right it says 2.40 (stable), click on that and you get the download.

http://www.ranish.com/part/

There are lots of others out there as well.


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[emlyna]

garebo, per your last note about what HDClone does when cloning from a smaller drive to a larger drive, I got this from the miray.de website (they make HDClone):

"When buying a new larger disk, HDClone copies the data for you, you only have to add the gained space on the disk via some partitioning tool, and in an instant you have the same environment as before on a larger (and faster) disk."

I'm in total agreement with your friend: I UNDERSTOOD all along that the BIOS would only see 20Gb as soon as I cloned the HD (I saw the warning too), but what I DON'T understand is why *none* of the partitioning software that I've tried can, as miray puts it "add the gained space on the disk via some partitioning tool" after it was all complete. Clearly they know what they're talking about, so why can I not free up this remaining space if they say that it will work?

Maybe the miray.de people are idiots? I dunno.


The HD info:

Maxtor model # 6Y080P0 (80Gb ATA/133 8Mb cache, 7200 rpm)

PDF specs:

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/diamondmax_plus_9_data_sheet.pdf

I'll have the BIOS info up in another post as soon as I get it.

Thanks.

 

[emlyna]

Except for setting up the HDs as primary master and slave, and setting anything in the BIOS (all this would have been set to AUTO anyway and all HDs are set to Cable Select), I basically followed every step of what your friend is suggesting.

But what has me REALLY confused is that he recommends partitioning the new HD BEFORE cloning?? The miray manufacturer didn't say anything about having to do that before the clone operation was run--surely they would have included this in their instructions if it was necessary?

Seriously, has he read the instructions for the free version of HDClone? (The readme doesn't have much more info, so it led me to believe that all this was going to be very simple)

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#free

I already have Ranish and was testing it in the simulation mode--no different from any of the other apps--still doesn't see anything beyond the old Seagate 20Gb HD.

BIOS info coming up...

 

[garebo]

I would suggest you do it as he says.
For one thing, we happened to be talking about this when you first posted, that is why i replied. He just got done doing the very same thing with HDClone.
He is making the suggestion as to how to fix the prob. I feel you should try this first because I bet the HDClone would work similar to an overlay software, in which case the bios is being fooled, or doing what HDClone wants it to do and it cant be undone no matter what we do.
So, i would suggest you follow his steps, print them out, and do it that way and perhaps all will be well.
You dont have to listen to anything anyone says but I believe you got into this with HDClone and you can get yourself the same way. But the main prob here is that the bios has been fooled. If you reformatted the hard drive then i bet your bios would show the full 80 gigs.

Up to you.


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