My Friend Ronny's 7 Gig Hard Drive was so full that it was creating problems so we decided to swap his drives as his D: was 20 Gig. We tried doing a Backup on his computer using Nero Essentials but it was so full that there was not enough room for Nero to do a disc image, so we pulled his 2 Drives & did the backups using my computer with his 2 drives acting as my D: Drives. All good in theory & it worked, sort of.

Here is the problem! Using a Nero startup disc which we had burnt on his computer we installed the Backup of his old C: into the 20 Gig Drive (MAXTOR D7404-6L (6LO2J1)) with the 2 drives back in his computer but what NERO did was turn his 20 Gig drive into 7Gig. I guess we should have used FILE BACKUP instead of DISK BACKUP. I should have realised that there was a problem when we had started doing the D: (20 Gig) & after 6 CDs it was still wanting to burn more disks, so we stopped & I used 2 CD RW to do a Backup by File then as a 2nd safety did the same thing on a DVD RW for the old D: drive.

The question is how do we get his 20 Gig drive back to being a 20 Gig drive instead of a 7 Gig drive & how should we have done the Data swap from 1 Hard Drive to the other. He does not have the original Windows XP PRO disks but he is running a legal version of XP as it updates & everything. Simple Formatting does not seem to be an option & using DOS commands looks really scary. I want to save his system but do not want to do any more harm. For now his system is working OK but did not solve his original problem as now his 20 Gig is now a 7 Gig.

Please help as I am at the end of my string & way out of my depth here. :blush::blackeye:

Well normally support actually "Image" the drive to another computer
Have a look here at some imaging tools: http://www.techspot.com/vb/post664079-2.html

Regarding the now issue of how to get the Partition back to normal
Check out Gparted, it may or may not help, but it's free and is an excellent bootable disc to show your current partitions

Thanks for the info kimsland.

I tried downloading Gparted but I must be doing something wrong. It gives me the option to Save but not install, so I saved it on a 3.5 disk but could not get it to go as it shows up as a single file. So I made a 3.5 systems disk & saved it on it but it would still not work when I rebooted my system. What am I doing wrong, I assumed since you said it was "an excellent bootable disc" that the error/fault is my dumbness.

Also when I Formatted Ronny's old 7 Gig HD before transfering his D: data I noticed that after the format there was about 300+ Meg of used space & today while scanning the Gparted disc with AVG it also scanned the F: drive & there were about 70,000 files called MSOCACHE but if I check on my C: HD there is no such animal. Is this a leftover of his old C: & is kind of like the old UNFORMAT data because when I did the Format I did a complete Format not a Quick one. I cannot find anything about MSOCACHE & they are hidden files that only show up on the AVG selection list of files to scan. Any words of wisdom.

I am going up to his place with his D: drive on Saturday & would like to try the Gparted to try & recover his C: I am running XP PRO on a PENT 4 2666Mz. I suspect it is a Zipped file but how do I unzip it. I guess this is the stupid question of the day. :blush:

No such thing as "stupid" questions, only "stupid" answers (I hope this is not one though!)


GParted Live CD/USB/HD/PXE

Live ISO 94Meg (cannot fit on floppy!)
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-live-0.3.9-4.iso?modtime=1222872844&big_mirror=0

Free ImgBurn ISO burning application Download:
http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
Or use your own burning software (Nero?)

Once the Live CD is created, start your computer up with the Live Gparted CD in the drive, and "Boot" from it

I hope this helps

Hi Kimsland;

Just wanted to let you & everybody else know that it was a long journey in learning (a really good experience) but the problem is solved. The FIX in the end was really simple, easy & fast, it was just my learning curve & scheduling was on the slow side.

What NERO did was copied the old HD & since it was only 7 Gig, it took a 7 Gig chunk on the new HD to put in the data but left the rest as UNALLOCATED space & since it was not labeled, poor old Windows could not see all that free space. GParted Live could see the whole drive & then it was a pretty easy task to Grow the HD up to it's full size using GParted Live.

Many thanks to cmdr & the boys @ the GParted Live forum for their patience in walking me through the whole learning process & their detailed, personalized guidance. They were a real Godsend. If anybody is interested in my Learning Adventure the can go to the GParted Live forum & look it up under the title of

{Solved} Computer will not exit from Linux screen. (Clone & Grow HD)

or go directly via the link

http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?pid=16584#p16584

I tried to edit the Post's title to flag it as solved, but I guess that will have to the next thing that I will have to learn, maybe somebody can do that for me.

Again many thanks & now off to the next adventure in learning. :grinthumb

Thanks for the update :grinthumb

I have saved some information from there as well, namely Vista Recovery CD I was trying to get a valid link for that.

And some info on mounted volumes.