Inaccessible Memory on Cloned Hard Drive

[Joe R]

I cloned my failing hard drive (a 160gb) to a new one (500gb). The installation seemed to go smoothly enough (it was my first time though) as it just required me to stay grounded and remove about 4-5 screws. When I loaded the PC up it wouldnt start the first time so I had to a Windows repair, which didn't seem to do anything except now it worked (it said it failed or something). I then had an issue with Windows 7 claiming to not be genuine although for one reason or another that stopped. Now my issue is that I am unable to access the additional memory of my new hard drive, I am able to access the cloned portion but not the rest (about 316gb). Any help would be appreciated, my PC is a Dell Latitude E6400 if that helps.

 

[Techpumpkin_WD]

Hello there,

It is absolutely normal not to see the rest of the free space in the moment. When you clone a drive you create the exact same image of old drive on the new one. This includes the size of the original HDD. However if you go to Disk Management ( type diskmgmt.msc in the search in the start menu and hit enter) you will see that you have one partition of 160GB and the rest of the space will be listed as unallocated. To use it you have two options – you can create a second partition or you can extend the original one to take all the available space.

To create a new second partition just right-click on the unallocated space and select “New Simple Volume”. This will starts a wizard to guide you through the rest of the process. First it will ask about the size of the partition. To use all the remaining space just type in the same value you have for Maximum disk space. Click Next.

Then you will get to choose and available drive letter to assign to this partition. Choose one and click Next.

Then you get to the Format partition window. You should choose “Format volume with the following settings: “. For the file system is best to leave NTFS. Allocation unit size as default. You can also put a label for the volume here. Then tick the box for “Perform a Quick Format. “ Click Next. Then Click Finish. And you're done.

If at any point Windows pops up with the following message “The operation selected will convert the disk to dynamic... are you sure you want to continue? “ click NO as this will most probably make your Windows unbootable and you will have to reinstall it.

If you want to extend the existing partition right-click on 160GB partition and select “Extend Volume”. It will start the wizard and will only ask about how much space to add. Just select the maximum available space here and click Next, then click Finish. Once done your existing partition will be bigger and you'll be able to use all the space on your new HDD.

Hope that helps.