Trouble resizing partition
Hi,
I thought id turn to the forum for help as support, although helpful and deidcated, is turning out to be a slow process as ive been troubleshooting this issue for nearly 2 weeks. So i have a brand new laptop with a 256gb ssd and im upgrading to a 1tb ssd. Ill bullet point the steps ive taken below so you have a clear picture, sorry if its long winded.
Received laptop from supplier.
Booted up laptop.
Ran through initial setup.
Installed Norton anti virus and scanned pc (no viruses or malware found)
Installed acronis and paid for subscription then activated product.
Created entire disc backup onto USB (fat 32 formatted).
Created acronis bootable media onto secondary USB (fat 32 formatted)
Shut down laptop.
Removed 256gb ssd and installed 1tb ssd.
Removed killer ac wireless card and replaced with Intel wireless card.
Booted up laptop into boot screen.
Acronis bootable media worked but mouse (trackpad) would not work.
Contacted support - advised to use acronis winPe bootable media and I could use trial version so not to use another License key.
Installed trial version onto spare laptop and created winPe media onto USB.
Booted up laptop into boot screen.
Acronis winPe bootable media worked but could not find ssd installed.
Contacted support - informed I needed to use tools and initialise disc.
Could not use tools in winPe bootable media as it was created on trial version.
Contacted support - informed winPe bootable media tools require full licence.
Created new winPe bootable media with activated acronis product on spare laptop.
Booted up laptop into acronis and initialised disc into GPT format.
Recovered backups - I was talked through the steps by support in real-time to be sure I did everything correctly.
Did not manually adjust partition size during recovery as I was informed by support that it could be done in Windows disc management.
Contacted support on how to resize partition in Windows - allowed support to access my pc remotely and then a separate partition (d:)was created to use the unallocated space on new ssd.
Informed support I wish to merge the new partition with the original partition "c:".
This could not be achieved as there is a partition between the newly created partition d: and the original partition c:
Support advised that performing another recovery process and manually resizing partitions could achieve this.
Performed recovery process again - could not manually adjust partition c: above the amount that I took a back up of (226gb of 256gb ssd)
Contacted support - performed recovery stages again with support talking me through stages to the point where I should be able to resize partition, sent screen shots of the adjustment bar not being able to exceed 226gb.
Initialised disc into MBR format (advised by support) as i previously wanted to use GPT.
Recorded video of initialising disc and recovery process.
During recovery this time, after selecting "what to recover" i was not allowed access to the settings of the partitions, instead a dialog box popped up saying "locking partition d:" then replaced by "analysing partition c:"
Contacted support again and they said they would look into my logs and video i sent.
Then support informed me to use a USB formatted in NTFS, i had a hdd in the format so reinstalled original ssd and completed a new backup on the hdd.
Uninstalled acronis on my spare laptop, logged into my account online, downloaded the installer directly from the account page and reinstalled acronis to make sure i was not using a trial version. Then created winpe media again onto a fat32 formatted usb and continues the reocvery process again.
Again i could not access the "settings of partition" section of the recovery, it just skipped straight to the "disk destination" part of the recovery then "final" part of recovery.
So im stuck now as to understanding why i no longer have access to this part of the recovery and also why im having such a hard time resizing my c: partition. Support did inform me that "computer mother board is locked by computer manufacturer to prevent using larger capacity hard drive on the computer than originally supplied hard drive" which is possible i suppose. But this doesnt explain why the recovery process has changed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also i can post the log i took of acronis is bootable media and also have 2 videos showing my reocvery process if it will help (about 300mb each)
Joel, welcome to these user forums. Sorry to read you tale of woes in doing what should really have been a fairly quick and easy process.
Can you confirm what the actual current status is with regard to your new laptop?
Which drive is currently installed, and what is the status of the drive, i.e. do you have the 1TB SSD drive installed with your Windows OS restored to this, albeit with the original partition sizes from the original SSD?
If you do, then if you look in Windows Disk Management, does it show the size of the 1TB SSD correctly to prove that the laptop does recognise and support the larger disk size?
A screen shot from Windows Disk Management showing all the partitions it sees would be helpful.
My initial thoughts would be to stop doing any further restores of the backup image to the new SSD if the above is your current status, i.e. you have a working laptop but with the smaller partition sizes.
Download a copy of one of the many free Partition Manager tools available, i.e. AOMEI or EASEUS or MiniTool etc - these will allow you to resize or move existing partitions on the SSD - if the partition following your Windows OS C: partition is a Recovery partition, then this could potentially be deleted to allow the OS partition to be resized to use the remainder of the unallocated drive space.
Hi steve
Currently the 1tb is installed, windows shows the c: partition as 256 gb (well actual 226 gb) and the rest remains as unallocated space. I created a new partition to use the unallocated space but i wish to have it all as c: so the read speeds are faster as this is a gaming laptop. Normally you could just merge the two partitions but there is a recovery partition between c: and the newly created partition.
I was coming round to your way of thinking and using a secondary software to acheive what i want but it just annoys me a little that ive paid for software that is perfectly capable of achieveing this and would like to get it working correctly. I dont really want to mess with the partition orders as i wouldnt know what effect this would have on the operation of the laptop. This is a razer blade 1060 just for information purposes, they have all sorts of quirky issues and battery life isnt the greatest so i wouldnt know if messing with partition orders is going to somehow increase power consumption or anything daft like that thats why id like to keep it exactly as manufacturer intended then if i hit any issues in the future i can rule the ssd swap out of the equation if that makes any sense.
I havent got a screenshot but i can certainly get one if it would help towards a solution.
The main issue i would like to resolve is why it seems the acronis program now is locking access to manually adjust partition size in recovery whereas before it worked.
Thanks
Joel, Acronis True Image is very good at doing what it is intended to do in terms of backup and recovery, but the partition management controls tend to be more difficult to use than a dedicated partition manager tool designed for that one primary purpose.
The recommended method of doing what you want with ATIH would be to allow it to 'automatically resize' the restored partitions when you are doing the restore operation, but given that you have already been through this process several times, I would recommend going the third party route.
You could either remove the Recovery partition or move this to the end of the drive in order to move the unallocated space to be next to the OS partition so that you can then extend OS partition into that free space.
Yeah I agree with you there, ok I'll go down that route. Thanks for your help.
If you do need to parition at any point and Windows gives you trouble shrinking or extending volumes - I would recommend the free version of minitool parition wizard. It's all I ever use and you can either install it to the machine or download an .iso and boot to it to parition outside of Windows. Both optoins work very well and it's pretty easy to use, has not let me down and is waaay more efficient at partioning than either Windows or the current tools in the Acronis rescue media.
I'll have to give that a try then. Just used paragon disk manager and even that can't move the winre partition. Have you used this on Windows 10 yet? I decided to do some digging into the winre partition and this is a quote I found from Microsoft ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufac…)
Data partitions
The recommended partition layout for Windows 10 does not include data partitions. However, if data partitions are required, they should be placed after the Windows RE partition. This allows future updates to Windows RE to grow the Windows RE partition by shrinking the Windows partition.
This layout makes it more difficult for end users to remove the data partition and merge the space with the Windows partition. To do so, the Windows RE partition must be moved to the end of the unused space reclaimed from the data partition, so that the Windows partition can be extended.
Windows 10 does not include functionality or utility to facilitate this process. However, manufacturers can develop and provide such a utility if PCs are shipped with data partitions.
So i tried minitool partition wizard and still no joy. Heres a screen shot
Joel, I would recommend deleting your D: New Volume partition given you don't appear to have any data stored on it yet (Used: 0%) shown. Then you should be able to move the WinRE partition to the end of the unallocated space.
Yeah that worked, dont know why i didnt consider that. Cheers all for help
Glad to hear it worked Joel, hope all else goes smoothly for you and have a good holiday season.