Didn't resize partition and won't boot without USB stick
Hi all,
I made a backup of my computer then changed out the MB/CPU/RAM & HD.
Everything seems to have installed fine using Universal Restore.
However I didn't see an option to resize the drive which was a 74 GB RAID to the new drive which is a single 200 GB SSD. I see there's unallocated spave available to be used as a partition, but I don't want to do that. There was and still is only 100 MB free from before and after the migration on the "C:" drive.
The other issue is I installed all the necessary add ons from Acronis to copy the disimilar hardware onto a USB stick. I booted off of it fine and did the restore with it.
Now for some reason after migration the system won't boot unless that USB stick is in the computer. The computer is set to boot from the SSD drive now.
I'm not sure how to correct these two issues, can you help? :)
Thanks!


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Hi Steve,
Thanks for responding.
I did make an entire disk backup and did restore this as an entire disk to the 200GB drive.
hmm I'll have to check out DIsk Management, I wasn't aware you could resize with it. I am aware of 3rd party aps for that, but was hoping Acronis finally got around to having one of there own since it kind of goes hand in hand with the product.
It's for Windows 7.
Not sure on the mode and it's dissasembled so I can't go back and check. It was setup as a RAID with 3 drives though and this new system is just a single drive.
In BIOS there's no option for Windows Boot Manager. I'm looking at it now and it is set to AHCI.
Any idea why I need to keep the USB stick in with the Acronis stuff on it for it to boot?
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Mike, you can expand and shrink drives directly within Windows using Disk Management - it's not as pretty or flexible as using one of the third-party partition tools, but does it all inside of Windows and will tell you if it doesn't like or want to do it!
I suspect with the USB stick issue that you have lost the Boot Configuration Data store to tell the new drive how to boot correctly into Windows.
At this point you have several options, you could boot from your Windows 7 DVD and try doing a Startup Repair from there, or alternatively you could download and install a copy of the free EasyBCD utility program and use that to rebuild the BCD store.
Take a look at https://neosmart.net/wiki/windows-wont-start/ from the makers of EasyBCD which goes through a lot of the regular causes for boot issues. They also offer a free boot selection tool called EasyRE that may be helpful here.
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Thanks again for your help Steve!
I just discovered that it's my external USB drive that I saved the Acronis full disk backup to that is preventing me from booting. I just unplugged all my USB devices and that was the one causing the issue. I'm not sure why as the only drive I have on the boot list in BIOS is the 200GB SSD.
I'll check into resizing it in Windows.
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Glad to know that you have found the problem Mike. USB drives can be a problem if you have the boot order set to put them ahead of your main fixed drive, i.e. boot first from CD/DVD, USB, SSD - it then looks for a boot loader on the USB drive and most often does not find one and complains!
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Resizing was painless, took about 10 seconds to do in Windows. Quite shocking actually :)
If anyone else needs to do this there's an article here for Windows 7 - 10
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/
The USB issue is strange. The only item I have to boot is the 200GB HD which is SSD. Everything else is disabled.
Most be a motherboard issue as if I move things around that are plugged into the USB boots it will boot fine.
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Mike, glad to hear that the resize went smoothly, I have used those functions in Disk Management a number of times and found them to be quick and painless!
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