Disk Clone Manual Relayout will not allow partition size increase?
TI Home 2010
I'm cloning a 250GB disk to a 1T disk. I need to change relative partition sizes. It would seem I can't...
[One minor point before we move on to the real problem, for "Automatic " clone mode I read ".. your hard disk will be made bootable" - well I hope NOT as I am cloning a non-booting drive. Nothing like a bit of early confusion to worry the user.]
Anyway....
I select "Manual" as it will give me "FULL CONTROL over the cloning pocedure. You will be able to adjust the size of the target partitions...."
I now see that the new drive ("Disk 3") is marked as Interface = "RAID" . I don't think so, buit let's ignore that.
I select Disk 2 as the source and see the partitions.
I select Disk 3 as the destination
I select Manual as the method
I see the partitions proportionally resized. I want to make some smaller than the allocated size and transfer that space to other partitions. So I Edit a partition to make it smaller (but bigger than the original size). I see unallocated space created.
I now find no way to move that space to another partition.
In other words the description is wrong I think.
Also, since it will be duplicating the drive letters, I'm surprised I can do this inside windows. Anyway let's see what happens.
Ah, right at the end it tells me that a reboot is required, why not earlier?

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"Grab hold of the slider partition in the middle and pull the existing partition to the left " Well obviously that is what I would expect to happen too, and is what you see in a general partition manipulation utility.
However, the slider was on the left already with no "unallocated" space shown available to use. The "Space before" value was 0.
Have you actually tried this?
I ran the operation anyway and the following unexpected events occured:
1) The unallocated space I left at the end of the reduced partition was included in the next partition, so I have achieved what I want BUT with a disk manipulation utility I expect NO SURPRISES. Afterall I may have wanted to create an empty partition at this point.
2) The disk letters were changed. Again I expect NO surprises. Especially since a boot was forced (before the copy) I expected the drive letters to be preserved (yes I did remove the old drive before I restarted Windows).
All in all I find it amazing that this kind of mainstream product can have so many quirks (note the ones mentioned in the initial post too). Version "one" maybe, not this far down the line.
Unimpressed.
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Sometimes when cloning, it is easier to edit in reverse sequence. For examples, if you are cloning a 3 partition disk and want each of 3 partitions to be 150GB each and the size of the disk unallocated space is 450GB.
Edit partition 3 and resize so that the partition size is 150Gb and the amount of free space before the partition is 300GB.
Edit partition 2 and resize so that the partition size is 150GB and the amount of free space before the partition is 150GB
Edit partition 1 and resize so that there is zero free space before of after the partition and the partition size should be 150GB..
If you desire to give me specifics about the
a. number of partitions
b. size of each partition
c. amount of total disk unallocated space
d. and if you want unalllocated space left for a future partition, where do you want the unallocated space located.
e. Are you performing the clone from within Windows or from the Rescue CD?
With this information, I will attempt to recreate your clone on my 500Gb disk. I currently have the 2011 beta installed but will see if I can revert to 2010-7053.
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Hi Grover,
Thanks for your continued interest.
The point is not, I think, to find some complex workaround. Of course that might be nice in certain circumstances, and I may yet but grateful for some other work-around that you have for future problems, but not here....
This Disk Cloning is a disk manipulation tool within a mainstream file/disk utility.
I expect it to do what it claims to do.
I expect it to work without surprises.
I think we have established that the product both does not do what it claims to do (full control over the resizing), and that it also has several surprises, just the kind of thing to make novice and experienced computer users concerned that the program is not as well-tested as it should be.
I hope that Acronis people read this form and will take note and hopefully give the official company comment.
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