Cloning I am totally confused

Thanks for your comments Kurliana regarding my post but I think you might have a look at both these postings by other people. You don't need to be IT specialist to clone a disk you just have to be aware of the problems that might arise theafter............

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/hpa-issues.htm

Cloning is not as easy as you might think if you have Dell computer with Media Direct 2 as I do.

Instead of Cloning, make an Image (same as Backup) of the entire hard drive - you will need an external usb drive as a destination for the Image.
Make the bootable True Image Rescue CD as this is what you will use to restore the Image.
Then remove the old drive and put it away safely. Install the new drive.
Boot with the Rescue CD and use the Recovery feature to restore the Image to the new drive.

numinbah wrote:

My plan is to clone my Laptop 100GB hard disk and replace with a 500GB hard disk. I know that there will be problems because of Media Direct 2 which I have on my Dell Inspiron 6400 Laptop.

I have done my research, and have over the last couple of weeks read a great deal of information on the subject, I have to admit now I am totally confused and lost.

There seems to be so many work arounds. Some seem so complicated that I don't think I would be able to carry out the instructions without making a mistake, and some look really easy ( too easy I think ) so my question for the members of this forum is there anyone who can give me and others that have this problem, A solution that works without having to be an IT specialist. (Which unfortunately I'm not )

I don't see why you can't do the following:

1. Burn an Acronis Bootable CD which contains the Acronis software.
2. Boot with the CD and select to clone your present hard disk to the new hard disk.
3. Power off and unplug the computer, remove the old hard disk and install the new hard disk, and then plug in the computer and boot up using the new hard disk.

Am I missing something?

numinbah,

GroverH has a guide called B. PDF Guide: Upgrading to larger harddrive V9-10-11

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426

See page 9. I wrote an article about how to do this. Cloning/ imaging a Dell MediaDirect HD.

Any questions?

numinbah,

Any follow-up for us?

Thanks for your input Brian K. Sorry I'm a bit late in getting back (other things to do I'm afraid ).
I will have a read of Grover H's guide and get back to you, I expect that I might have a question or two. I will also check on your article before I begin. I will let you know how I get on.
Thanks again...........

Sorry Brian K You wrote: See page 9. I wrote an article about how to do this. Cloning/ imaging a Dell MediaDirect HD.

Any questions?
where I've looked but can't find it

In Partition Magic V8.0 I can see the partition which I think has the HPA in it Why can't I just delete it ? what would happen, I don't want it anyway

Brian K wrote:

numinbah,

GroverH has a guide called B. PDF Guide: Upgrading to larger harddrive V9-10-11

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426

Check item 7C inside the referenced link. My signature below has the same link.

numinbah wrote:

In Partition Magic V8.0 I can see the partition which I think has the HPA in it Why can't I just delete it ? what would happen, I don't want it anyway

That is not the HPA. Partition Magic can't see the HPA.

In Disk Management, could you let us know what partitions are present?

Are you north or south of the border? The map is confusing.

Hi Brian K
In Disk Management the Partitions that are present are

First 78 MB Fat EISA Configuration
Second (C:) 88.67 NTFS Healthy (System)
Third 3.00 Fat 32 Healthy (Unknown Partition)

In Partition Magic. V.8

1 DELLUTILITY (*) 78.4 MB
2 Local Disk(C:) NTFS 90.791.1 MB
3 Local Disk(*) CP/M Concurrent DOS.CTOS
4 (*) Unallocated

If you mean UK Map I live North of the boder Scotland (or am I being dim)

numinbah,

I'm from Australia. The town of Numinbah is about 1 hours drive north. I've always thought it was an aboriginal name but obviously not.

Your partition 3 is the Dell Recovery partition. Unless you are planning to restore your laptop to the day it arrived, you can delete this partition. It won't function anyway once you alter the Dell MBR.

G/Day Brian K You are right about numinbah being an aboriginal name. It was only on a recent visit to Australia ( I go back and forth ) all my sons (3) live in Brisbane. that I found out Numinbah was a place, the real meaning of the name is aboriginal for...... Hold tight hunting dog ........ or at least that was what the sign said in a hollowed out tree, at a by the road tourist stop not far from Cains which I saw over ten years ago, Iv'e used it ever since..

I'm still reading up on GroverH and your many posts before I take the plunge and do the swap over of the drives, this time with your help I will get it to work.

Brian K

Am I right in thinking that If I follow the directions in Section 6: Special notice to owners of some Dell Computers! Section 2, And carry out a clone, that is all that is required so that after replacing the old drive with the new larger drive my laptop will boot correctly (I know that I will no longer have media direct).

numinbah,

For safety, create images of your HD partitions before changing the Dell MBR. There have been occasional reports of non booting after using the Acronis mbrautowrite_en.iso. I now recommend the use of a Win98 boot CD instead of the Acronis tool.

"Use a Win98 floppy (or a Win98SE floppy). At the A: prompt, type fdisk /mbr and press ENTER. You won't see anything happen. It just goes back to the A: prompt.

As most people don't have floppy drives, you can also use a Win98 boot CD from...

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

Get the Win98SE_bootdisk.iso. Burn the ISO file with ImgBurn. Use the same method. Type fdisk /mbr at the A: prompt and press ENTER."

Also, make sure you do a reverse clone as outlined in Grover's guide. Rarely, cloning can go wrong and wipe the source HD so having a backup image is nice. Actually, my preference for upgrading to a new HD is to use image/restore rather than cloning. If you do it this way, remember to NOT "Restore MBR and Track 0". If you haven't done this before, cloning is easier.

numinbah,

Any news for us?

Hi Brian K Sorry to be away for a while, Christmas New year celebrations and all that.

I am now the happy owner of a laptop with a 500 GB hard drive.

To sum up I followed your instructions re section 6 as referred to in previous posts.

It was really straight forward. Although I must admit I cloned the drive, because I had done this in the past and had no trouble. I did a full backup first to cover myself in case of problems.

For anyone else that reads this don't worry, follow section 6 and all will be fine......

I would like to thank Brian K especially, and also GroverH for their input regarding this problem,
without them I would have a drive which was nearly full and no idea of how to replace it with a bigger one. Thanks to Dell and their Media Direct. which causes all the problems in the first place.
That is up to and including version 2 I think.

I hope all members of the Forum have a trouble free 2010. But if they don't this is the place to be for answers.................

I'm planning a similar move and I have an additional question for clarification: I understand I will loose the MediaDirect function (quick boot to limited function with special Dell button) if I clone using the above solutions. Will I also loose the associated Media Center software?

I like that program because it is easy to use with a remote, but can live w/o the quick bootup.

Thanks for all the info!

--HH

HH,

The above solution only applies to MediaDirect 2 in WinXP. MediaDirect is installed differently in Vista/Win7.

I gather Dell has a repair app but I haven't tried it.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm

I would think that Windows Media Center would still function normally and be unaffected by any changes to MediaDirect. (I don't have a Dell with MediaDirect to test with, though.)

I'm using WinXP.
If anybody has any information I'd really appreciate it...

Hello all,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

MudCrab and DwnNDrty, thank you for your help.

H H, unfortunately, if you will remove Dell MediaDirect partition, you won't be able to use any of it features, even within Windows.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thank you.

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll have to find another player that can be seen from across the room (or wait for cloning software that can really clone the entire drive...:)

Thanks again.