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Replacing failed Drive with 2 separate partitions

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Hi, I'd really appreciate guidance on how to approach this task procedurally in a way that will insure minimal headaches:

I have TIH 2016 running on a multi-hard-drive Windows 7 Pro desktop.  A 2 TB HDD storage drive (not the system drive, which is an SSD, but it does contain "my documents" for windows 7).  This failing drive has 2 partitions, each 1 TB.  The first is my main "storage" drive for my desktop (Drive Letter E:).  The 2nd is a backup-only partition that I use for full backups from a different HDD (my music drive).  I have a "full" backup of my storage drive (E:) but not the backup drive (Y:). There's nothing on the Y drive that I need.

The replacement drive is 3TB, and I will likely split this into 2 partitions also.  

Here are my questions:

1) I assume I must create the partitions first, before doing the restore? True?

2) I ran a chkdsk /f on this failing WD hdd, and it did find and replace bad sectors, so Windows is cool with the drive at the moment (at least the storage partition).  It failed both quick and extended Data Lifeguard tests (so I'm sure I need to replace it).  Once I swap the drives (and before I do the restores), can I safely boot into Windows (without it freaking that the E: drive is missing)?  This would make it much faster to do the restore than booting from a recovery CD.

3) True Image 2016 has added some features (and, I believe,  taken a couple away).  Can I use TI to create the partitions on the new drive as well as restore the E: to the larger partition size?

Thanks so much for any thoughts,

David

 

 

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David, if your failing 2TB storage drive is not used to run any applications or being used by the same, then you have a number of options open to you on how to proceed.

You should be fine making backup with ATIH 2016 of the partitions you want to protect on the failing drive - these will serve as a safeguard against the drive failing permanently.

You should be able to connect the new 3TB drive to your computer externally using either a drive caddy or a USB to SATA adapter etc, then you have a choice of how to proceed.

You could partition the new drive as required, i.e. into 2 separate 1.5TB partitions, then simply use Windows Explorer to copy & paste the data from each of the original partitions across to the new ones.

You could also use ATIH to restore each of the backed up 2TB partition in turn to the new 3TB drive - if doing this, then ensure you take the option on restore to resize the data being restored to fit in the new partition size available.  When restoring, ATIH will wipe any existing partition as it overwrites the drive with the restored backed up partition data.

There are also free file / folder synchronisation tools that could also be used to mirror the contents of the old drive to the new one.

With regards to your question about booting with the failing drive removed, the key point to be aware of is that Windows may change the drive letters of any other drives.  This could lead to data being written to a wrong drive if you have any programs / applications active that were looking for the old drive and now find a different drive with the same drive letter.

Umm, a further thought/question.  Since Windows 7 assigns the "my documents" folder to the current E: drive, even if I could keep E: mounted and also mount the new drive, would Windows file explorer really work to get the "my documents" folder to the new drive?  I mean - the data would be there, but would Windows recognize it?   I assume ATIH image restore would handle that?  

Not sure if this works in Win 7 - long time since I used it. However, in windows explorer right click on "MyDocuments" then select Properties, and you may then be able add locations or change the location of the "MyDocuments".

Ian

IanL-S wrote:

Not sure if this works in Win 7 - long time since I used it. However, in windows explorer right click on "MyDocuments" then select Properties, and you may then be able add locations or change the location of the "MyDocuments".

Ian

That should work.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-fol…

 

Well, I have the new drive installed and working, and I'm trying to use the "create new disk" tool to create the first partition @ around 1.5 TB.  Tool seems completely buggy to me.  When I get the unallocated disk up and click on "Create new partition", I get a user friendly screen that shows me all 2.79 TB, and give me both a slider and well as individual "space before", size, space after.  Problem is, if I try to use the slider on the right to bring down the partition size, it goes from 2.79 TB to 784 GB at the first touch.  I had picked GPT.  Entering what I wanted directly also didn't work.  

Bottom line, I cannot get the tool to Create New Partition tool accept a 1.39 TB partition to restore to.  

Better news: Tried to do what I wanted with Windows 7 Disk Management, and it's worked fine.  

David, I wouldn't use ATIH as a partition editing / manager tool personally, this is more the province of the dedicated Acronis Disk Director tool, or one of a number of free partition managers from such as Easeus or Aomei etc, but as you have found can equally be done using Windows Disk Management (providing you are working with a drive that doesn't already contain data).  

I'd second Steve's notes.  I've never used DD either so can't say much about it.  There are lots of good / free ones out there that work just fine. You only need to pay for them if you want some of the super advanced options like converting from dynamic back to basic (pretty much all of the free wants only allow this if you pay, but how often does this come up?)

The times that the ATIH one has come in handy is brand new disks that have not been initialized yet.  In some cases, you may not be able to use an unitialized disk (not detected) as a valid destination, so you can use the "add new disk" feature in Acronis to initialize it and then proceed with a restore.  

Bobbo_3C0X1, the brand new disk situation you described was exactly what I was trying to do.  I'd used this feature successfully in past Acronis Versions, though it was quite a while ago.  I'm still getting used to the way Acronis feels much less user-friendly with the newer interface (like no Help-About feature or direct access to useful logs)  Finding out the "create new partitions" feature of "Add new disks" doesn't work for 2+ TB disks is very disappointing.  I'll post a message to support. 

Thanks.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the update, I haven't tried to format an 2+TB drives with Acronis (and don't currently have one available to use as a test).  Would be nice to confirm this behavior though and contacting suppor to verify is a good way to start.  

FYI, I use minitool partition wizard as my go-to free paritioning software.  I've found that after you install it, you can copy the install folder from program files (x86), put it on a USB drive and use it on any system as a "portable" tool (assuming you can get to Windows or a WinPE bootable environment first).  They also have a bootable.iso and that can be converted to a bootable UsB flash drive using a tool like RUFUS. 

Dell David, if you will need to partition the new disk before restoring from a backup, you could always define the desired resulting size of the partition you want to recover in the restoration wizard. If you will need any assistance, please use this page for contacting us: http://www.acronis.com/support/contact-us.html. The free support period for Acronis True Image 2016 is 2 years, so you will not have to pay anything.

Regards,

Slava