Invalid Partion Size

Are you running DD from Windows or from bootable media? I believe this activity (resizing a system partition) has to be done from bootable media rather than from Windows. You could download the latest ISO image file from your account and try that.

Mark Wharton or MudCrab would be much more helpful. I was just offering one suggestion.

Gary's right. It's usually recommended to resize the Windows partition from outside Windows (from the DD CD, for example).

However, before you do anything further, create an Entire Disk Image backup of the drive (if you haven't already). This is an important step that a lot of people skip. This will allow you to return to the current state if something goes wrong.

After you have your backup image, try using the DD CD and see how it goes.
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Have you run chkdsk /f on your partitions to check for any file system errors?

Is Disk 2 a flashdrive? If so, have you tried removing it before trying the resize procedure?

Here is a link where this topic is discussed some: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3951

Here is another useful related discussion, where detaching a USB drive and the role of built in card readers is pointed out: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6941

Another useful thread in this connection: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9028

Thank you for your responses. The computer in question is actually my wife’s and it may be a few days before I can get back to it. I really hate messing with someone else’s computer. I didn’t run chkdsk and there is no flashdrive.

I understand your comments that moving the c: partition should be done outside of Windows. However, now I am confused because that seems to be exactly what DD is doing. When instructed to resize c:, it shuts down, reboots into some kind of DOS mode, performs the various operations which it lists as 100% when completed. Then it reboots again, and before going into Windows performs a few operations, says “invalid partition size”, and then continues on into Windows without making any changes.

The partitions in my own computer are tweaked in pretty tight, but I did resize c: a little (from the Windows environment) just to see what would happen. I reduced c: by a couple of gigs, DD went through the motions as above, and rebooted with the downsized c:. Then I returned c: to its original size and DD performed this operation by staying in the Windows environment. I did this twice and it worked OK both times.

So, now I’m really confused. What works with my computer doesn’t work with hers. Her computer otherwise works perfectly. Now I’m back with the original “invalid partition size” and wondering if there is something about the size or characteristics of her new drive that is causing the problem?

Comments, please

Stu

The problem is that when DD is in automatic mode (as in a reboot), you have no control over the procedure. This means that you can't respond to errors or make any adjustments. By booting to the DD CD, you know what is being done and, since no reboot is required, you will see the errors and can hopefully make it work.

If you create a DD CD with DD and it doesn't boot up correctly on the computer or doesn't see the drives correctly, download the ISO version from your Acronis account and create a CD from it. It contains more updated drivers as well as several troubleshooting options in the boot menu.

If there are any file system errors, you will most likely need to run chkdsk to fix them before DD will be able to resize the partition(s).

Some of what I say here may be more properly put in the True Image forum, and I will continue there as things progress. However, many may be following this thread and need to be warned.

I will never use chkdsk again!!!

Using chkdsk as reccomended seemed reasonable. I tried it on an older computer using the same OS and it worked ok after making a correction. Still reluctant to mess with my wife’s computer, I decided to use it on mine. Mistake!! It entered into a corrupt attribute record, invalid security ID and return security ID to the default state mode. This went on for over an hour and involved well over 100,000 files. When it rebooted, Windows was a shambles! As I watched my computer being devoured I Googled the situation on another computer and found many entries of people having the same experience.

System Restore wouldn’t work. Recovering the registry didn’t help. Booting with the last known good system didn’t help. Restoring a backup was the only hope.

Now we’re into another Acronis product—True Image Home 2009. The installation disk is supposed to be an emergency boot disk. The computer didn’t recognize it as such. Yes, I had the CMOS set correctly. Next I tried the emergency recovery disk made from Disk Director which has a menu for both Disk Director and True Image Home. It would not recognize my external, backup drive which TI is supposed to be compatible with. Then I tried the emergency disk made from TI. It recognized the backup disk, although it changed the drive letters and would not recognize the contents of the backup disk. Finally I located an emergency disk made from an older version of TI and it worked, although the box to select where you wanted the boot record to be placed was confusing and one of the choices (the correct one) was listed twice. Why the boot record should be somewhere other than the c: is beyond me, but at this point I was not going to argue with success.

So, now my system is back up and running although it needs to be updated for those programs installed after the last backup was performed. An Acronis rep at our computer club poo poo ed my idea of partitioning my drives because TI made that unnecessary. Thank goodness I didn’t follow his advice and all my other partitions, including program archives, backed up by a simple DOS program I wrote are safe!

I downloaded the ISO file but am having trouble getting it onto a disk. Nero 9 doesn’t seem to want to do it. Another program, supposedly especially good for this was lost in the crash, but it wasn’t working correctly and I am going to have to search it out and try to fix it if I want to continue with the emergency recovery disk fiasco.

As you can probably see by now, I am very displeased with Acronis. I will try to solve the emergency boot disk problem in the TI forum, but in the meantime it behooves me to search for another disk partitioning program. DD definitely returns to a DOS-like state when modifying the c: directory, but if it fails to work (which is apparently common) because of a driver problem then I would think it is Acronis’ responsibility to include those or to otherwise make the software operate the way it is supposed to.

My original intent was to repartition my wife's computer so there would be a partition to contain backups, which she currently does not have. I simply cannot risk it with flaky software!!

Sdculp

I am sorry to hear of the problems you experienced. As hard as it may be to believe, running chkdsk did not create all the problems. There was most likely serious issues with the hard disk. Routine running of chkdsk is a normal part of typical system maintenance. And if this is not done, problems can arise, which many time will be taken care of by chkdsk without you running it at all - this will happen upon booting.

All True Image recovery CD's should be tested prior to making any backups. Ones made via the bootable media builder in TI should be tested immediately after making them. Questions about bootable media brought up in the TI forum many times get a response from me, as this is a special area of interest of mine. Issues regarding bootable media can often be solved at the time of their creation and testing - but not if the first time they are tested is in a emergency recovery situation.

Disk image backups should always be validated from bootable media, since recovery will be done under Linux anyway. So one should know if the bootable media works, since it has to to carry out this fundamental step. Is this step being skipped? If so, this is not Acronis's fault.

Did you make a BartPE bootable disk? - this option exists for TI 2009, and a BartPE build takes care of many hardware driver issues. Acronis makes this available.

I understand your statement about the purpose of chkdsk. However, it left my computer in an inoperable shambles. Restoring it from backup put all the same files back in. I can only expect that running chkdsk again will result in the same thing, and on and on. What's the solution to that?

I did check restore from the Windows side of things and it worked ok for files. I would be really hesitant to actually do a restore of my OS just to check things out. Now that the dust has settled a bit, I'll look into the boot disk problem, but, again, I would be reluctant to push the "go" button and restore the OS unless it was broken, especially considering the problems that have arisen.

I have 2 rules left over from 30 years of electronic engineering: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "Don't keep fixing it until it's broke". :-)

I made up a bootable rescue disk from TI 2009. It said nothing about being a BartPE build. That's the one that didn't find my external drive that the backups are on. I downloaded the iso file from the TI web and am having trouble making a disk from it. I don't know if that is the same as the disk made from TI or not. I would assume that it is, otherwise why would Acronis make 2 different disks.

Stu

Sometime disk problems don't manifest themselves clearly, but then things suddenly go south. I learned this the hard way, and have been better at disk maintenance ever since. There has been no problem since. For me, the issue is maintenance, because just because you don't see a problem does not necessarily mean one does not exist. Sometimes the first warning is a complete drive failure.

A BartPE build is something you must do yourself. Acronis supplies the plug-in. This is discussed in Chapter 10 of the User's Guide, and there are article about this in the Knowledge Base. I just mentioned this because you stated: It would not recognize my external, backup drive which TI is supposed to be compatible with. This situation could possibly be taken care of with a BartPE-base TI recovery CD. And the fact that you mentioned this means that the recovery CD was not tested earlier.

The download ISO image file is generally different than the one built within TI. The Linux loader is a bit different, and the drivers are different. The downloaded ISO is sometimes more up to date with its drivers - Acronis updates this periodically.

The reason for offering different options is the overcome hardware/driver support problems (can't see all the disks, etc.). Basically, if one version does not work, one can move on to another option. Start with the Acronis loader version made within TI, check it, does it work, does it need different parameters? If this doesn't work, try the latest ISO image from your account. If that doesn't work, time to build a BartPE (if you have an XP install CD laying around) - this has better hardware support because it is Windows based rather than Linux. And do all of this before doing a single backup. Change hardware - add a new USB hard drive perhaps. Time to check the bootable media again, to make sure it works with the new disk. The thing is to have the most options available. Myself, I have eight different versions of bootable media, all of which work, some of which required some effort to make work.

OK. Here is just a sample of what Acronis does. I went to start/programs/acronis/acronis ti home/bootable rescue media. I'm immediately confronted with 2 choices which say the same thing. I think one is for version 9 and the other is for version 12 but no matter, they both take you to the same place. At this point you can choose between v9 and v 12 full versions plus you can also include disk director. So I choose v9 plus DD. Then the DVD disk burns. When I boot from the disk I get two choices of TI plus Windows. No DD!! Either choice of TI takes you to a nice screen with Acronis on it which is followed by a black screen with a blinking cursor. Worthless!!

So, I suppose the thing to do is to find a way to burn the downloaded iso file to a disk and see what happens. But a consumer product just shouldn't behave this way. The manual talks about the creation of a Bart disk which includes using the original Windows installation disk and adding a TI plug in but I'm not very excited about taking the time it's going to take to get all this going. I'm supposed to be just a consumer with little or no knowledge of computers. It's really frustrating.

stu

Definitely not correct behavior. I have only TI 2010 installed (I use DD from the ISO bootable media), but supposedly one should be able to use the bootable media builder as you described to include both TI and DD, and obviously this is not working. This would be frustrating, and it gets me a little concerned as I am planning at some point to install DD and make a bootable disk with both like you were trying to do. Downloaded ISO image files make single product CDs, although I do use Grub4DOS following MudCrab's guide and boot various ISOs from a flashdrive and external USB hard drive.

I have not had any downloaded ISO, either TI or DD, not work. But that is just me - I may be just lucky. And from the bootable media builder, I always create an ISO file and burn it Nero.

Do you have multiple TI versions installed? So far as I know, there is no version 12 - this corresponds to TI 2009. TI 9 is much older.

As far as I know, DD 10 (2,160) is not compatible with the later builds of TI 2009 nor with TI 2010. You would need to update DD to the latest build (2,288).

Also, having two versions of TI installed is not a good idea. It can cause all sorts of problems, especially when there is such a large difference between the versions.

I have only one version of TI installed. Hmmm!! I just discovered something that may solve the problem. I have TI Home 2009. But I have both 2009 and 9.0 in my archive files. v12.0.9646 must refer to True Image 2009 Home build 9646. I see that the latest build is 9809. I might have updated to the latest version of 9.0 rather than 2009, but at any rate I wouldn't have the latest version of 2009. I'm going to download the latest version of 2009 and start over. 2009 and 9.0 are too easy to misread!

If I open up TI, how can I find out what the build is? On older vesions there used to be a magic spot in the header somewhere, but I can't find it.

Stu

You can press Alt and then access Help >> About from the menu bar. The later builds also have the About box available from a drop-down menu if you click on the (?) button/arrow on the far right of the toolbar.

Thanks for all your help so far. This may be my last post for a while. My computer is behaving strangely, sometimes crashing and won't even boot in safe mode, and the Windows installation disk doesn't respond correctly. After the machine cooled down overnight, I checked and verified the Acronis backup and it went ok. I was able to successfully restore to this point and it booted up ok. It looks like a thermally flaky c: drive. It looks like a trip to the shop. Maybe even an excuse for a new computer.

St

This is a little hard to believe, but the machine is back up running with no apparent problems except the need to install some software.

What caused the final crash was the attempted installation of TI v 9809. Halfway through the installation, it jumped out of Windows into a blue screen that said it had to do that to keep from damaging the machine. The cause (followed by a lot of stuff I didn’t have time to read) was IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. After the reboot I tried it again, but it wouldn’t do it because it said there was another version installed. But add/remove programs and Revo couldn’t find it. So I used the Acronis removal utility. Tried the installation again and the same thing happened except when it tried to reboot it couldn’t. Finally the old version of boot disk worked for the backup which is where I am now.

So, forget v 9809 as well as chkdsk. My wife’s machine has TI v 9646 and DD v 2288, as does mine. I created a recovery disk from her machine, but when booted with it, DD said she had no hard drive. When I booted my machine with it, it found the drive OK. I downloaded the iso file from DD and converted it into a boot disk with Nero 9. Booted up my machine with it. The opening screen has what looks like a lot of choices that I don't understand, but then, on its own, opens up DD and looks good. Now I’ll try it on her machine. Bart PE seems like a good approach, but I know nothing about it and will have to study up on it. Makes me yearn for the good old days with Partition Magic.

Stu