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Cloning and partitions True Image 2014

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Hello, non-techie newbie here. I have an HP desktop with a 500Gig Hard disk which is almost full. Currently it is split 465G of data and 7 Gig of recovery (and a small amount of free space). I've bought a 1Tb disk and gone through the cloning process, hoping to end up with 7Gig of recovery space and the balance as space for data. However, which ever method of cloning I select, I end up with 465Gig of data, another 480g of space (a separate partition) and 7G of recovery. If I continue like this I will have two separate drives for data - wont I?

Can anyone explain what I am doing wrong?

Many thanks in advance.

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Mike, welcome to these User Forums.

Please see topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!! for some information on the subject of cloning.

You say that you have done the clone from your 500GB HDD to your new 1TB HDD - albeit you end up with a copy of the partitions using the sizes they were on the original drive.

Have you removed the 500GB HDD and replaced it by the 1TB HDD then tried to boot into Windows with this?
If you have, does it all work correctly as expected?
Again, If all is working correctly, then I would recommend not trying to repeat the cloning process to solve the partition size issue.

I would recommend downloading a copy of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software which will allow you to move your small (7GB) Recovery partition to the end of the unallocated free space on the new drive, then allow you to resize your main (465GB) partition to use the remainder of the unallocated free space.

Note: I would recommend making a full disk backup of your drive to an external backup drive before doing the above resizing and partition moving unless you want to rely only on the old 500GB HDD for this.

It is possible when doing either Cloning, or using Backup & Restore to allow Acronis to automatically resize the partitions involved to fit with a larger (or smaller) target drive, but the option to do this is not always obvious to see!

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Steve

Thanks for the reply.

I have not actually installed the new 1Tb HDD into my case. It is currently sitting outside and connected via USB. I really cannot see where I am able to re-size the partitions using the Acronis software itself. I will try that MiniTool Partition Wizard to see what happens.

I haven't actually done the cloning yet. I've been through the Acronis steps and it shows a graphic of what the new disk will look like and am getting (in round numbers), 2 x 465Gig and 1 x 7G of HP recovery. because that is not what I want, I have stopped the procedure.

Mike

 

Mike, I personally prefer to use a partition tool program to manage my partition sizes rather than let Acronis do the resizing of partitions automatically for me.

Please note that when you use either cloning or backup & restore, any existing partitions on the target drive will be removed by Acronis during this process, so there is no point in spending a lot of time getting the partition sizes exactly right before doing the clone or restore - do this after that is done.