Splitting one big partition in two smaller ones fails

Hopefully, you have a backup image of the drive.

Personally, I avoid using the Split and Merge features of DD. Serious data loss can occur if something goes wrong.

Usually, when DD reboots and doesn't make any changes it's because it detects something different than expected or it runs into an error. These types of errors are not displayed in the DD log since it's not accessible at the time.

Have you run chkdsk /f on the partition to check for any file system errors? Are any bad sectors reported?

The general recommendation is to boot to the DD CD and perform the procedures that require a reboot.

Is the partition full? If not, you may be better off resizing the existing partition smaller and then creating a new partition in the unallocated space instead of using Split. Data can then be moved to the new partition.

Hello Joe,

Thank you for posting your question, I will be happy to help.

I would like to add to MudCrab's suggestion that you can temporarily detach any USB storage device that is plugged in. Perform the operation with the USB storage device detached.

If you have an inbuilt card reader, then disable it through Windows Device Manager:

- Hit Win-R to get to the command prompt;

- Type in devmgmt.msc and hit Enter;

- In the Device Manager window locate your card reader (it probably starts with letters SD, MMC etc);

- Right-click on the card reader and select Disable.

Perform the operation and see if the issue remains. 

Please let us know the results, we should be sure that the program runs flawlessly. If the provided information is not clear or if you have any other question do not hesitate to post them and we will be glad to answer.

Thank you.

Hi- I use Vista 64 and used Oleg's fix to no avail. Unfortunately support is closed at this time and I will have to get back tomorrow. I have no idea what is wrong but I have a red flag in my drive that I need to partition and think this is the problem...any ideas before I contact support???

Have you run chkdsk /f on the partition to check for errors?

Is the "red flag" a little red "C" on the partition graphic? If so, that usually means that DD has detected errors in the partition or file system.

Apparently Vista does not recognize "chkdsk/f" as a run feature...would it help to defrag my C drive?

To run chkdsk /f in Vista or Windows 7 requires an Administrator Command Prompt.

1. Start a Command Prompt in Administrator Mode (instructions can be found here, if needed).
2. At the prompt, run the following command: chkdsk c: /f

You shouldn't need to defrag the drive first.

MudCrab- I did as you said and again to no avail...I contacted Acronis and followed their instruction...(rt clk c drive > properties> tools > check disk now and selected all available...this took 2.5 hours and again left me with the same red flag on my c drive that I need to partition. Is it time to give up? I only need to install Xp on a new partition to run video games...should I simply remove Vista and install XP? Thanks for all of your suggestions, they are greatly appreciated as I am still a novice!
Dan

Dan:

A red C means that the partition contains errors. A red flag, like the one shown below, is simply an indicator of an Active partition. It's not an error message.

Thanks Mark- No matter what I have tried (i.e. defrag...chkdsk...chkdsk several options) I still receive the end result that shows no new partition. I am open to any new suggestions...I'm frustrated on this situation...Thanks

Dan:

Any partition operation that will affect the Vista system partition needs to be done while Vista is not running. Can you boot your PC from the Acronis recovery CD and does Disk Director run correctly this way? If "full" mode version doesn't work then try "safe" mode version.

Once you get DD working from the recovery CD, right-click on your existing partition and choose "Resize". Shrink the existing partition until you have enough room (unallocated space) after the partition for your new partition. Then create a new partition in the unallocated space.

Mark- I do not have an Acronis Recovery CD...can I create one? I downloaded DD from the website so I received no hard copy. Thanks for any info.

Dan

Dan:

Yes. There are two ways to do this:

1. Create your own using the Bootable Media Builder application on the DD tools menu.
2. Download an ISO image file of the boot CD from your account on the Acronis web site. Burn the ISO to a CD.

Note that the first option will allow you to include both the "full" mode (Linux-based) recovery version and the "safe" mode (DOS-based) versions. The second option is the Linux mode version only, but may contain newer hardware drivers than the one you create with the DD Bootable Media Builder program.

Mark- It worked! You're a savior. I had to use
bootable media cd but I finally figured it out...now, how do I access this new partition to load a new OS?

Dan

Dan:

To best answer your question, may I ask you another one?

I believe that you said previously that Vista was on the first partition. Which OS do you want to install on the second partition and do you care if OS #1 can see OS #2?

I need to load Windows XP Home Edition...no it doesn't matter if 1 can see 2...I'm only using it for gaming older games. Thanks for all of your help and your quick responses!

Dan

Dan:

My apologies - you did mention XP in your reply #7 above. Whether you realize it or not, you really do need to hide the Vista partition when XP is running due to a problem with Windows XP that Microsoft has stated that they are not going to fix. Both operating systems use System Restore, but with different technologies. If XP can ever see the Vista partition it will destroy all of the Vista restore points. This means that you should always hide the Vista partition when XP is running. A boot manager will automate this process. You can use OS Selector which is part of Acronis Disk Director as your boot manager; however I am not the one to give you advice on how to set it up. Hopefully MudCrab is still monitoring this thread and can jump in to help. He's the resident OS Selector expert.

In the mean time, here is how to get started and how to boot either OS manually. I would proceed as follows:

1. Boot to your DD recovery CD
2. Hide the Vista partition
3. Make the XP partition active
4. Remove the DD CD from your optical drive and insert the Windows XP install disk
5. Reboot the PC. The XP installer should start
6. Install XP to the partition that you have reserved for it. Have the installer do a Quick Format of the partition before it proceeds. Be very careful to install to the correct partition! (you don't want to wipe out your existing Vista partition)
7. When complete, your PC should boot directly into Windows XP

To return to booting Vista, do the following:

1. Boot to the DD recovery CD
2. Un-hide the Vista partition
3. Set the Vista partition as active
4. Hide the XP partition (optional)
5. Reboot the PC. It should now boot directly into Windows Vista

You can switch between operating systems manually with DD this way. When you install a boot manager these steps will be done for you automatically, and you only need to select the desired OS from a menu.

I would recommend testing first using DD to manually boot between XP and Vista (as suggested by Mark). That way, it can be for sure working before getting OSS involved.

Once everything is how you want, creating an Entire Disk Image of the drive would be a good idea.

Before trying OSS, make sure that your DD CD includes the OSS programs (they'll be in the Acronis Menu when you boot the CD). If they aren't, create another DD CD and include them. It's important to have them on the CD if using OSS. This will allow you to install, uninstall, reactivate OSS, etc. from the CD.

When you install OSS, make sure that both the XP and Vista partitions are NOT hidden. OSS can be installed from Windows or from the DD CD.

OSS should be able to automatically detect XP and Vista. You would then just need to hide the other Windows partition for each menu entry.

I'd like to thank MudCrab and Mark for all of their fine work getting me through this task...you are extemely knowledgeable when not even the tech crew at Acronis could figure out my problem! Again, my hat goes off to the two of you!!!

Dan

Dan:

You're welcome. Thank you for posting your results. Enjoy!

I hope I'm not "hijacking" this thread but I WOULD like to chime in; I'm in a very similar situation...I recently bought a used computer with Vista Home Premium installed on a single 500 GB drive. I put in an additional new 500GB SATA hard disk in, and would like to install XP Professional on that drive.

I've searched the Net looking for instructions and -- if anything -- have found too much information...some of it conflicting, and some looking downright wrong, even to my relative newbie eyes. Your above solution looks to be the most elegant, by far...

SO same story ,with some minor differences:

1) I have two separate disks so I won't have to partition my primary drive

2) If it helps at all I have a second computer with a new, clean XP Pro recently installed on it

3) I have an Acronis backup of that XP drive, if that helps at all....(unfortunately it is on an external firewire drive and the Vista box doesn't have a firewire connection, but if necessary I might get a card)
I have a boot CD also.

SO, looking for some advice here, I would really appreciate it. Thanks,
Philip

BTW, how does one "hide" a partition or a drive?

Philip:

A partition may be hidden by changing its type to "Hidden" in the partition table, or by using a boot manager with partition-hiding capabilities. If you want to avoid the problem mentioned above with XP deleting Vista's restore points then you need to hide the Vista partition whenever you boot into XP.

Here's how to hide a partition manually with Disk Director (DD). In the main DD window, right-click on a partition and choose Hide, as shown below:

Since you have a separate disk to dedicate to an XP installation, the procedure for setting up a multiboot system is simpler:

1. Install your second disk.
2. Shut down, disconnect the Vista disk, and change the BIOS boot order to boot from the second disk.
4. Insert a Windows XP install CD and tell the XP installer to format the second disk.
5. Install XP.
6. When finished your PC should be booting directly into XP.
7. Shut down, reconnect the Vista disk, change the BIOS boot order to boot from the Vista disk.
8. Insert the DD CD and boot from it. Hide the XP partition and unhide the Vista partition.
9. Your PC should now boot directly into Vista.
10. When this is working to your satisfaction, follow MudCrab's advice in reply #17 to get OS Selector installed and working.

Your image of XP from another disk will not be useful here if you have dissimilar hardware on the two PCs. You're better off installing XP from scratch. The image restoration will only work if the two PCs have identical hardware configurations. Let us know if you have problems getting your dual-boot system working.

*Edited to change procedure. I think it's best if the Vista disk is completely disconnected when installing XP - you want the XP boot files to be written to the XP disk and this is one way to force this outcome.

Thanks, Mark --

I've been thinking about this procedure and would like to make sure of a few things before I pull the trigger...pardon if my queries are hopelessly newbie, but even though I've had various computers (starting with a TRS-80 even) it's only recently that I've been forced to delve into that arcane minute or so of white text on the black screen that is the boot sequence...kind of like peering back towards the "big bang"

I'm also being doubly cautious -- because most of last December was spent in a limbo of "computer hell" caused initially by an ultra-nasty virus and exacerbated somewhat by some misguided attempts on my part to fix it. (I picked up that Vista computer partly out of major frustration!)

Here goes:
1) Since I cannot yet hook up the Vista computer to my firewire external disk I've been backing up my Vista disk to a folder on that new second disk. Would it be possible to put that folder in a newly created partition and continue to do so (then installing XP on a formatted partition instead on the entire formatted disk), or would this scenario cause problems?

2) For that matter, how does the following scenerio look: If I am successful in getting this dual boot set up and running smoothly could I then partition both disks and backup the Vista disk to a partition on the XP disk and vice-versa? My figuring is that if either disk went south I would still have both OS's on the remaining disk; the working OS plus the other partition holding an Acronis image.

3) OR...would the other disk be so well "hidden" by the miracle of Acronis that this is not possible?

That's enough for the moment (...to quote an old Far Side cartoon "...my brain is full. May I be excused?...")

Philip Shantz wrote:

1) Since I cannot yet hook up the Vista computer to my firewire external disk I've been backing up my Vista disk to a folder on that new second disk. Would it be possible to put that folder in a newly created partition and continue to do so (then installing XP on a formatted partition instead on the entire formatted disk), or would this scenario cause problems?

I think that would work okay. Just remember, if you move your backup images, revalidate them to make sure they're still okay. In fact, it's better to copy them, validate the copies, and then delete/move the originals.

I assume you would want the XP partition at the start of the drive. If so, resizing will move data. You may want to copy the backups to the other drive so you have duplicates before proceeding. Or, you could resize the existing partition smaller from the right, create a new partition in the unallocated space, and copy the images to it (this assumes that the resize wouldn't move any of the backup data). Once done, move all the rest of the data from the original partition to the new partition and then use the old partition for XP.

If the partition for XP is created with DD, make sure to let XP do a quick format of it during the installation, otherwise there well be problems. If the partition is created with Disk Management it should be okay either way, though I still recommend doing a quick format.

Philip Shantz wrote:

2) For that matter, how does the following scenerio look: If I am successful in getting this dual boot set up and running smoothly could I then partition both disks and backup the Vista disk to a partition on the XP disk and vice-versa?

That should work okay as long as you're only hiding the OS partitions from each other.

My intention was to initiate this process last weekend but life intervened, so I've still been mulling it over and reading more about OSS. I'm probably over thinking this, (that IS one of my quirks) and, of course...with Acronis, I can always get back to where I was before (so far...)

But I did find one site with reviews of 8 different third party (Vista oriented) Multiboot software programs and there were serious caveats with Acronis, and it -- along with "Boot Magic" -- were rated "Not Recommended" (build 2160)

Here are the reviews: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/managers.html

The factor that I'm wondering about is the mention of Acronis' "extreme intrusiveness" and the modifying of normal OS System files to the point where the computer becomes dependant on OSS to function. On the other hand, this might be only that it is just "not for beginners" and a modicum of knowledge about how things work and exactly what you're doing is necessary to succeed.
One thing I would like to ask about is installing OSS in it's own tiny partition formatted with FAT32 (as mentioned in an Acronis knowledge base article) Is this recommended or necessary?

I will try to answer some of your questions regarding OSS.

Is OSS intrusive? The simple answer is, Yes. OSS places BOOTWIZ folders on your OS partitions and on most other partitions. It will take over the MBR of the booting drive (as will any other boot manager). OSS, however, goes further. It will also take over the MBR of some other drives (especially external drives). This generally causes no problems unless the drive is bootable. I think the idea behind this "feature" is to make OSS boot regardless of the drive that actually boots. For example: You boot your flashdrive and instead of it booting, it jumps to the OSS code on the booting hard drive and displays the OSS menu. Of all the "features" of OSS, I hate this one the most. I had to resetup so many flashdrives because of this that I got where I wouldn't even set a flashdrive near that computer. Seriously, OSS can take over a flashdrive just by looking at it.

Does OSS modify the booting files? Yes and No. OSS does make a copy of some booting files and uses them when that OS boots. This can cause some confusion, but I've never found it to really be a major problem.

Does OSS work with Vista? Yes, it does -- somewhat. Vista support was never strong with OSS. It tends to work fine with normal Vista installations. Modified BCD files or anything out of the Microsoft norm cause problems. Supposedly, the latest build of DD addressed this "detection" issue, but I haven't had time to test it yet. Don't bother trying to boot to Vista on the non-booting drive -- it's just asking for problems. If you want separate drives, use Vista on the booting drive and XP on the other one.

The "Copy OS" feature: I have never bothered with this feature. Personally, I wouldn't recommend using it. If it was used, I wouldn't recommend it above Windows ME (possibly XP). It's just too risky when things go wrong.

Is it necessary to install OSS to its own partition? No. It can be installed to any FAT32 or NTFS partition, including an existing OS partition.

Is it recommended to install OSS to its own partition? Yes. The OSS installation partition contains the main BOOTWIZ folder. This folder contains the booting files and information required by OSS. The reason I recommend using a non-OS partition is only to make OS partition restores easy. If you restore an OS partition that contains the main BOOTWIZ folder, all the OSS files will also be restored. That will return OSS to the state it was in at the time the image was created. This can cause problems if any changes have occurred since that time. It's easier to just avoid the problem by keeping the main OSS files off of an OS partition.

---

I've found OSS does much better with all Windows operating systems installed on the booting drive (this is especially true of Vista and Windows 7). In your case, that would mean having both XP and Vista on the booting drive and using the second drive for backups.

Whichever boot manager you decide to use, I recommend creating image backups of your partitions first. This will allow you to return to the previous state easily if you run into problems.

Thanks, y'all...I finally got around to trying this operation and managed to get XP installed OK, but when I got to step 8 in Mark's post (#21 ",...booting from the recovery disk...") after the recovery module loads when I open DD I got the following message:

ERROR E000101F4 Acronis Disk Director Suite has not found any Disk Drives
wassup?

Philip:

The DD full-mode recovery environment is Linux-based, so the error message indicates that your hardware is not supported by the Linux hardware drivers in DD.

Have you tried the safe-mode version of DD?

yes, safe mode works, I was just curious...

When I do use safe mode, however, I get a message:

AUTOCHK Program not found
Skipping Autocheck
I just click through but I was wondering

You could also try the DD ISO download from your Acronis account. It includes more updated drivers and may detect the drives properly.

Thanks for all your help, Mark and Mud Crab...after a lot of trial and error (mostly error) I've got this thing off the runway and slightly airborne, but after (still) having a bear of a time with drivers that don't work in XP I think I will pull a complete turnaround and try a totally different dual boot scenario...I was sort of looking to XP for the simplicity and stability but I'm going to give Windows 7 a shot.
SO...I would certainly appreciate any help you might throw this way; your usual succinct and expert instruction, any tips, pitfalls, and so on.
I'm thinking of dual booting by leaving Vista on the primary drive where it is now and installing Win7 on the second SATA drive. Should this be done by booting from the W7 install disk or from within Vista? Are partitions OK on the drive I want to install Seven on or does it want the entire disk?

I'm also thinking (correct me if this won't work) of just using the Disk Director Suite and True Image Home software I already have installed on the Vista drive for all my disk management and backup imaging chores, avoiding any of the snafus I hear about with ATI and windows 7 (I understand that the particular build of Disk Director I have WILL work in Win7 but I think I will leave it where it is for now)

Is this all gonna fly?
Thanks,
philip