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Cloned Hard Drive, but Recovery Partition doesn't work.

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I bought an HP desktop and I cloned the hard drive to another (smaller hard drive), and made sure the partitions and proportions were the same, but I just tried loading the recovery partition to check if it works and it doesn't load and then computer turns off. (The OS Partition works fine).

What could be the problem?

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This is probably because the size of the partitions has changed. Try to clone manually and do no change the size of the hidden partitions.

So I tried it again, and I didn't see that option to the hidden partitions? I tried to adjust it to be the same size, but I got it close to match in MB but I figure that's not close enough? I did this with the boot recovery software, and all I saw was clone the whole hard drive exactly (which I couldn't do because the hard drive im cloning to is smaller), proportional or manual. I used manual and tried to adjust the size myself.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help Pat

Click on link 1 of my signature below and browse my guides to 3-WW. This may be of some help which is cloning to a smaller disk.

GroverH wrote:

Click on link 1 of my signature below and browse my guides to 3-WW. This may be of some help which is cloning to a smaller disk.

My recovery partition is at the end of the hard drive unlike the gateway partition in your article. So I am assuming that the Start and End will never be the same because the sizes of the HDD's are different. Is there anyway to get around this?

Thanks GroverH

When you say the recovery partition doesn't load can you describe what happens? Can you see the recovery starting and then failing, or you cannot kick if off?
If it can't start (for example, it doesn't respond to a FXX key), this thread might help. http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6758

Pat L wrote:
When you say the recovery partition doesn't load can you describe what happens? Can you see the recovery starting and then failing, or you cannot kick if off?
If it can't start (for example, it doesn't respond to a FXX key), this thread might help. http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6758

Pat, the recovery looks like it's starting and it seems like it tries to load, but then the computer just shuts off completely. For my computer I press escape right when i turn it on and then choose system recovery.

Thanks.

This is probably a problem with your boot records. I am not competent enough to fix this, but the thread I pointed you to should help, in particular if you have a MBR boot disk setup. I am not sure how/whether the thread applies to GPT/UEFI disks, if this what you have. You should consider posting there.
If you backup and then restore the disk as is (no scaling), does the recovery work? Remember: restore from the recovery CD, put the target disk at the same spot as the original disk, put the old disk on some other connecter.
If that works, you can always keep a backup of your old disk. If you have to recover, you could simply restore the old backup as is, recover, then rebuild your system fromt here, including deleting the recovered recovery partition, stretching the user partition, etc. Not ideal, but that could work,

Pat L wrote:
This is probably a problem with your boot records. I am not competent enough to fix this, but the thread I pointed you to should help, in particular if you have a MBR boot disk setup. I am not sure how/whether the thread applies to GPT/UEFI disks, if this what you have. You should consider posting there.
If you backup and then restore the disk as is (no scaling), does the recovery work? Remember: restore from the recovery CD, put the target disk at the same spot as the original disk, put the old disk on some other connecter.
If that works, you can always keep a backup of your old disk. If you have to recover, you could simply restore the old backup as is, recover, then rebuild your system fromt here, including deleting the recovered recovery partition, stretching the user partition, etc. Not ideal, but that could work,

My partitions are GPT/UEFI (Windows 8) Am I just screwed on cloning HP's recovery partition to another HD??

Hp recovery discs and recovery partitions will not function on a hard drive that is smaller than the original drive. If you want it to work you'll have to use a hard drive that is the same size or larger.