Harddrive cloning issue.

[Deleted]

Hi,

Let me just give you a quick summation I hope that will help you understand this issue a little easier.
I have three harddrives in my computer, one SSD (C) & 2 old harddrives (D&E) for storage. Now one of those old harddrives only had like 36 GB space on it, so I wanted to replace it with another HDD that my cousin gave me because he didn't need it anymore, I formatted the drive myself.

Now to the point; I used a program called Macrium Reflect to clone the info on the 36 GB HDD to the new HDD from my cousin, it worked perfectly fine, all the data from it is now correctly on that drive now named H. The issue is however that my computer is pretty confused by all of this and has chosen to call my (D) drive (E), which messes up all the programs that are saved to (D). And the new (H) drive is shown only to have 36 GB when in reality it has like 300 GB.

Hopefully someone is able to make sense of this, and assist me on this matter.

Thanks in advance.

[yurano]

The issue is however that my computer is pretty confused by all of this and has chosen to call my (D) drive (E), which messes up all the programs that are saved to (D).

How to reassign drive letters (Windows 7): http://i.imgur.com/L6PhFS3.png

Note: Unassign desired target drive letter before reassigning it to something else.

And the new (H) drive is shown only to have 36 GB when in reality it has like 300 GB.

How to merge partitions (Windows 7): http://i.imgur.com/lltvegx.png

[Deleted]

Thank you for the quick reply and the descriptive tutorial. I changed the (H) to (E) and merged the partitions so that it now has 298 GB available space as it should, instead of 262 GB + 36 GB. I still have one problem though, I'm not able to rename the former (D) drive which was incorrectly named (E). I'm not able to choose (D) as a drive letter option.

[Deleted]

There most likely is another partition called D now. Rename this one first to a random letter and then follow to rename E to D.

[Deleted]

There most likely is another partition called D now. Rename this one first to a random letter and then follow to rename E to D.

You are 100% correct, it renamed my Dvd drive (D). Everything is as it should be now, thank you very much.
I have another question, but I'm not sure if you can answer it; the once again (D) HDD has a broken SATA port, which is quite annoying since I have to use tape to make it stick correctly to the SATA port. Do you know if I can clone the info on the (D) HDD onto the (E) HDD, which would result in me only having 1 HDD in my computer.

Reason I'm asking is because I'm not sure if it's possible to clone to a drive that already has information on it.

[Deleted]

Yes you can, I am not sure however if your software supports it. I use HD clone professional for it or Acronis. What you need to do is, create unused space on the HDD, by shrinking the partition, make it large enough for the new partition to fit. Now in your cloning software, instead of choosing to clone a drive, choose to clone a partition. It will clone it towards the empty space on your HDD. If it asks to format before start, you know something is going wrong.

[Deleted]

Yes you can, I am not sure however if your software supports it. I use HD clone professional for it or Acronis. What you need to do is, create unused space on the HDD, by shrinking the partition, make it large enough for the new partition to fit. Now in your cloning software, instead of choosing to clone a drive, choose to clone a partition. It will clone it towards the empty space on your HDD. If it asks to format before start, you know something is going wrong.

Okay so I make a new partition from the (E) HDD that has enough room for the data that is on the (D) HDD, then clone it and afterwards I merge the new partition with the (E) HDD?

[Deleted]

No don't make a new partition, just shrink the partition already present. Shrink it enough so you have enough unused/unpartitioned space on the target drive.

[Deleted]

No don't make a new partition, just shrink the partition already present. Shrink it enough so you have enough unused/unpartitioned space on the target drive.

I'm not sure I follow, on the HDD I want to remove I have used 38,8 GB, on the HDD I want to move it to I have 8 GB used, which means I have 290 GB available. Do you want me to shrink the 290 GB drive?

[Deleted]

Yes, you need to shrink the partition so you have 50 GB or so of unused space on the hard drive. Partitioned space, is in practice, used space. When you shrinked it you will see that 50 GB is unallocated. Like you see on the screenshot below. Don't look at the arrow just the unallocated space at the right. You will have 50 GB looking like that.

Once you have done that you need to make the partition from your 38,8 GB used space a bit smaller then the target, so around 45 GB and then clone it.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/image/s...v=mpbl-1&px=-1