Restoring a 1,000GB drive to a 500GB drive
I purchased a new Dell XPS-8700 pc with a 1,000GB disk and Windows 8 installed on it. The disk
was partitioned into six partitions. Most of the partitions are for Dell’s backup and restore.
The OS was on partition 4 and was 920GB. I updated the OS to Win 8.1 and installed all my
software on it. I made a full backup using ATI 2014 Home edition and attempted to restore the
backup to a 500GB drive.
I used GroverT’s article “Restore a TIH-2012 Backup to a larger or smaller disk.” Grover’s
article is very detailed and well written. Without it I would not have attempted this
operation. Thank you for the article Grover.
Grover recommends using Add New Disk operation before restoration, to delete any old
partitions on the disk. I did that and at the prompt Select Initialization Method I chose MBR.
This was a wrong choice, although I did not know it at the time.
I started restoring the ATI backup to the 500GB disk following Grover’s procedure. All went
well from partition 1 through partition 4 (the OS partition). When I attempted to restore
partition 5, the Target Location, which was “unallocated space” (Grover’s article Figure 11
note) for partitions 1 through 4, was grayed out for partition 5. I could not restore
partitions 5 and 6.
I went back to Add New Disk and this time for Initialization Method I chose GPT instead of
MBR. I followed Grover’s procedure again. Two noted differences this time: I was never asked
for Partition Type (figure 12 in Grover’s article) nor was I asked for the active partition.
I restored partitions 1 through 3, then partition 4, the OS. I reduced this partition size
from 920GB to 450GB. All went well including the restoration of partitions 5 and 6. I removed
the ATI restoration disk and rebooted the pc.
Instead of the OS firing up, I got a Dell BSOD. The message was: “Your PC needs to be
repaired. A required device isn’t connected. Error code 0xc0000225.” To recover from this
error, go to the following link:
http://itsolutionsblog.net/solution-to-your-pc-needs-to-be-repaired/
Apparently because I did not choose an active partition (or I missed the check box)I got the
BSOD from Dell.
I applied the steps in the link above and that fixed everything. I now have all six partitions
sized the way I want and everything restored and working properly.
There is one difference and that is at boot time, the system asks me to choose my boot OS.
There are two choices “Windows 8.1 on volume 5 (default)” or just “Windows 8.1”. I don’t know
why this is happening or what to do about it. The correct choice is the default. If nothing is
chosen then default boots. I let the system choose its own boot.
So if you’re running and backing up Windows 8 or 8.1, be sure to choose GPT not MBR at the Add New Disk
operation.
Grover if you’re reading this, you might mention the difference in your procedure for windows
users. Other than that, your article was excellent and very helpful. Thank you.
Alfred
Hello Bob,
Thank you for your reply. I went to the recommended site and found that the bcdedit command has a lot of ways to totally destroy a working system. The command
bcdedit /default
I stayed away from because I have no idea what the GUID number is for the windows bootloader boot entry desired or where to get it.
However the command: bcdedit /timeout proved very useful. I set the time to zero
bcdedit /timeout 0
which resulted in the loader immediately going to the default OS without displaying the "Choose OS to boot" option. So that means that I'm 100% satisfied.
Thank you for your help Bob.
Alfred
You are correct, using developer level tools can and will do unrepairable damage. Glad you found a way to fix your. problem none the less. Your welcome for the help.
Alfred,
Thank you for the comments. I am glad it was helpful. The guides were written prioir to GPT and UEFI and were written for MBR type systems. While the basic procedures remain the same, MBR type system differ greatly from the new UEFI system. I would use both Windows Disk Management and Windows DiskPart and look at both disks from those viewpoints. These two methods can give you a visual as to how close the two disks are in partition arrangement. The links below can also help for you to see if any differences exist.
http://forum.acronis.com/system/files/resize/mvp/user285/misc/show-disk…
http://forum.acronis.com/system/files/mvp/user285/misc/show-final.jpg
