ATI 2012 on Win 7 PC and Cloning to 3 TB GPT disc

Bill,

You can tell if you are running the Plus Pack version by clicking the (?) icon in the top right corner of the True Image 2012 program and selecting "About" True Image. It will list two serial numbers, one for the main program and one for the Plus Pack. You can also check to see if you have both the Acronis True Image Main program and the Plus Pack installed in your Add/Remove programs list. Be sure to scan all the way through it from top to bottom looking for both software installations.

As far as the partition structures go, you have a new 3TB GPT partitioned disk. It will not be the same as the 2TB disk partition structure if it is MBR style.

Acronis can create either a MBR or GPT style disk.

Since you have totally confused me with your references to "cloning" your data and/or drives, clarification is needed.
Cloning refers to "making an exact duplicate of a drive" when referring to Acronis Products.

This statement could use some clarification:

"I have recently successfully Cloned aprox 90 MB of basically archive data that will not be subject to change, from a 2 TB drive to a 320 MB drive, thereby freeing the 2 TB drive for more efficient service elsewhere.
Earlier today I semi-successfully Cloned aprox 1.8 GB of data from a (another) 2 TB drive to a 3 TB drive. I successfully specified that the 3 TB target drive should be established as a GPT disk.

Do you mean you "copied" the data from one partition to another?

Here is some info on GPT disk structure compared to MBR. This might help explain what you are seeing.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463525#X-20110411192…

Tks James F,
Your confusion is understandable. When one is stressed out by a problem, we can be so tightly focused on the problem that we sometimes fail to step back and take a deep breath.

First, my "About" ATI shows one SN, and "Full Version: Activated".
Next, Thank you for the link to info regarding GPT disc partitioning. Near the beginning of the article it refers to "boot the system". And just to be clear, my situation involves only data disks and not the system boot disk. There is much more to the article, so I will be returning to it to read further.

You are of course correct in that technically all I want to do is copy data files from disk 1 to disk 2. At first I tried MS "Copy", then I tried "TeraCopy", you can appreciate that copying gigabytes of data takes a bit of time; both copy attempts resulted in a small percentage (equates to a large number of files) of the totlal files failed to "copy" over to the target disk.
I remembered ATI has sector-by-sector backup capability; although I have never used that feature.
I still do not know whether the sector-by-sector backup approach mignt give me what I am looking for; an exact copy of each and every file. One would expect a simple Copy to do the job, but Nooooo....

FWIW, the ATI Disk Mgmt and Win 7 Disk Mgmt both show my target GPT disk as having only one large and one tiny (100 MB) partitions.

I ended up looking at the Clone capability of ATI. Within its Clone feature, ATI states (and this is what I chose) "Copy partition and use disk as non-system, GPT style. Destination disk will not be bootable".
Further within its Clone feature, ATI states (and again this is what I chose) "Proportional. The size of the original partitions will be respcectively changed to fit the new drive size. If the new drive is smaller, the partitions wil be shrunk accordingly; if the new drive is bigger, the partitions will be enlarged proportionally.".
This seemed to me to be exactly what I needed, and it worked perfectly on my first try; the "Clone" of 90 GBs from a 2 TB drive to a 320 GB drive. (MY mistake stating MB earlier) Of course this was from an MBR drive to an MBR drive.

In addition to your reply, I received an email stating: "The partitions you are seeing are the GPT partition layout structure and should not be manipulated with partition management software unless fully knowledgeable about GPT partition layout. You can not "reclaim" the space used by the GPR structing (Only about 200MB anyway)."

Taken at face value, this indicates that my 3 TB GPT drive is partitioned (allocated ?) properly and that ATI did nothing amiss. FWIW, this is reinforced by the partition structure of another (a pre-existing) 3 TB GPT drive I have in my machine (6 drives in total). That pre-existing 3 TB GPT data drive shows (in EaseUS Part Mstr) a structure equivalent to the new 3 TB GPT drive, except that the pre-existing drive is missing the FAT32 100.00 MB partition (labled as "EFI System Partition") on the newer drive. I wonder why the earlier drive is missing that partition; it strike me that the EFI System Partition would be a good thing to have. And yes, I had failed to observe this structure on the pre-existing drive until I was/am writing this reply. Oh Well,...
It would seem I created a "tempest in a teapot".
Again, I appreciate all help.
Bill

Bill,

In my original reply to your other post on the Forum, I missled you a little since I was slightly confused about what I read. If you see additional partitions on your GPT drive in Windows Disk Management, they do exist, and are not part of the GPT structure that is sometimes misrepresented by disk management utilites that have no proper support for GPT. They exist because they were on the soucre drive, and you performed a "clone" with Acronis. If you have created a GPT structured disk (with one partition) using Windows or (Acronis's "Create a new disk" tool), only one partition/volume would show in Windows Disk Management, and the resultsing loss of disk space would be neglible (if any) compared to MBR structured disks.

In Windows Disk Management, on a newly created non boot, non OS, GPT single partition/volume drive, there is only one partition that shows. The remainder of the drive layout is hidden from view and does not show up unless using partition management software. Partition manipulation sofware (as well as data recovery software) that does not support GPT structed disks, shows partitions at the beginning and the end of the drive with the main partition located in the center of those two, or other bizarre structure layouts. This is not accurate, and if you manuipulate the partition structure or try to recover data using software that does not support GPT correclty, data loss WILL result.

I routinely use GPT partition structures on my data only disks, especially external drives (a must for larger than 2.2TB drives to only contain one partition, or if you wish to create more than four primary partitions on one disk). GPT structured disks are more resilent to problems since there are multiple copies of the partition table. As disks become larger, the MBR disks have more of a chance of partition corrucption since there is only one copy of the the partition table contained on the disk. Other benefits exist as well. Downside: A lot of disk management and data recovery utilites are still playing "catch up' with this technology. GPT will become the standard for partition structure in the near future for Windows OS's.

When I get a new internal or external drive that I will be using for data only, I use the Windows command line utility "diskpart" to "clean" and "convert" the drive to GPT. Additionally I use "diskpart" to create the volume(s) (basic), format, label and assign a drive letter. This prepares the drive for any future use I may wish, with the added benefit that the GPT partition structure is created properly by Windows own tools.

Attached is a screen capture of a system with a data only GPT disk from Windows Disk Management. Notice the single partition of "disk 1" and it's corresponding entry in the top pane.

Hope this points you in the right direction.

Have you looked at Karens Replicator, RoboCopy, and RichCopy for your "copy" needs?