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Merging unallocated space on new boot drive

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I backed up my old boot drive (250 GB M2) and restored it to a 1 TB SSD.  The process went fine and I was able to boot to the new drive.  However, I now have a very large unallocated space on the new drive.  I would like to end up with 1 volume on the drive (except for all the system partitions).

Is this something I can do now with the restored drive or was there something else I should have done when I did the restore?

 

 

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David, this is a common issue and easy to resolve.

ATI should automatically resize your backup when it is restored to a larger drive but this depends on the options taken and also the partitions involved. 

To resolve the issue, use a separate partition manager program such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard.  Download & install this, then use the program to resize your partitions as needed. 
Note: you may need to move any Windows Recovery partitions that are located after your OS partition, moving these to the end of the unallocated drive space, so that you then have free space to expand the OS partition into.

Steve Smith wrote:

David, this is a common issue and easy to resolve.

ATI should automatically resize your backup when it is restored to a larger drive but this depends on the options taken and also the partitions involved. 

To resolve the issue, use a separate partition manager program such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard.  Download & install this, then use the program to resize your partitions as needed. 
Note: you may need to move any Windows Recovery partitions that are located after your OS partition, moving these to the end of the unallocated drive space, so that you then have free space to expand the OS partition into.

Thanks Steve.

What's interesting is that I could not restore the backup to a new M.2 NVMe SSD.  My system would not boot to it.  I had no issues with a SATA SSD.  I tried everything to no avail.  Must be a BIOS issue.

 

Steve Smith wrote:

David, this is a common issue and easy to resolve.

ATI should automatically resize your backup when it is restored to a larger drive but this depends on the options taken and also the partitions involved. 

To resolve the issue, use a separate partition manager program such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard.  Download & install this, then use the program to resize your partitions as needed. 
Note: you may need to move any Windows Recovery partitions that are located after your OS partition, moving these to the end of the unallocated drive space, so that you then have free space to expand the OS partition into.

Thanks Steve.

Interestingly, I could not do a restore to an M.2 NVMe.  The system would not boot.  Restoring to the SATA SSD was easy.  It must be an Asus BIOS issue.  I tried everything.

 

Interestingly, I could not do a restore to an M.2 NVMe.  The system would not boot.  Restoring to the SATA SSD was easy.  It must be an Asus BIOS issue.  I tried everything.

David, how did you boot when you did the restore?

Any NVMe M.2 drive requires UEFI or else will not work, so your restore must be done with the Acronis Rescue Media booted in UEFI mode.

If you run msinfo32 from your working Windows, this will tell you how you are booting from the SSD drive that is working?

Steve, I followed the exact procedure in restoring to a SATA SSD and an M.2 NVMe drive.  The system was fine with the SATA but not the NVMe.

I booted to a UEFI optical drive in both scenarios.  True Image is actually good in telling you that your new drive won’t work if you accidentally boot without UEFI.

 

David, thanks for confirming that the restore was done correctly using UEFI mode.

Did you check the BIOS Boot priority setting and ensure that you had Windows Boot Manager selected for the M.2 SSD?

Steve Smith wrote:

David, thanks for confirming that the restore was done correctly using UEFI mode.

Did you check the BIOS Boot priority setting and ensure that you had Windows Boot Manager selected for the M.2 SSD?

Yes.  I manually selected the M.2 SSD.

I have tried at least a dozen times to get this accomplished.  At this point I am stumped.

As I said, going to a SATA SSD was trivial.  Once that worked I repeated the process with the M.2 and nada.

I even updated the ASUS bios to the most current version just in case there was an issue with the old bios.

Oh well. 

Yes.  I manually selected the M.2 SSD.

David, just to be absolutely clear, when you say you manually selected the M.2 SSD - did you select the 'Windows Boot Manager' for the M.2 SSD or did you select the SSD itself?

Steve Smith wrote:

Yes.  I manually selected the M.2 SSD.

David, just to be absolutely clear, when you say you manually selected the M.2 SSD - did you select the 'Windows Boot Manager' for the M.2 SSD or did you select the SSD itself?

I selected the boot manager.  I don't believe the drive itself was even an option.

I will repeat the process this week and confirm everything.

Thanks for your responses.