Hello, cnet forums. I have a problem. So I wanted to upgrade my hard drive on my laptop from 60 GB to 160 GB. I saw the 'How to Swap Hard Drives' video on cnet, and decided that that was how I was going to do it.
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So I bought an Apricorn DriveWire and a Western Digital Scorpio and was on my way. I followed the directions to the letter- I got the Congratulations screen that said it was completed, i turned off the computer, pulled off the hardware, and installed the new hard drive in to my laptop. When I booted, I got a blue screen- stating that Windows will shut down to protect the hard drive from damage.
Failing HDD, clone fails. I need some help. My wife's laptop's HDD is failing. Cloned directly from laptop with EZ Gig, clone was not successful(i believe there were more than 200k read errors and a little over 100 write errors). What I'd suggest you do instead is get the vastly superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows.
It mentioned running check disk, and that my hard drive might not be 'terminated'. I then used the enclosure I bought to make the old hard drive an external to check the new drive. It now states that it only has 54.4 GB of space on it! I then proceeded to try a quick format, format, and a low level format. Nothing changed it back to having the 150 GB that was on the drive. I decided I'd take it back to Micro Center and get a new drive. I did so, and opted to get a 250 GB instead.
This time I decided to check the drive initially before I went through the process. It said it had 238 GB of free space. So I open the.pdf file for the software to make CERTAIN I did everything correctly. I again got the Congrats screen, tried to put the new hard drive in. Same problem.
Checked it again and it seems as though the cloning process did it again! It's like it's deciding that my new drive needs to be 54.4 GB (the size of my old one).
I know that is not the case, because when I was doing the Cloning it shows the new partition sizes based on the expanded size of the new drive. It definitely showed that the partitions would grow. I dunno what to do now. I can't take this drive back again. Some help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Paul.
This is a common problem for people who don't pay attention to the settings in the cloning software. Sometimes they will create a partition on a larger drive that is the exact size of the old drive. You can either check your settings with the cloning software and make a new image, or you can use one of a number of partitioning resizing programs. Since you currently have a functional cloned copy of the drive, plus the old drive itself, you don't need to worry about backups if the partition resizing program should have a problem and mess things up. If you want a free partition resizing program, look into Qparted. Last time I used it, which admittedly was a while ago, it was ugly and a little less than intuitive.
Once you figured out how to use it however, it worked a treat. For BIOS updates? Now, AS FOR THE REPORTED SIZE, yes - an attempted image to a drive recognized as considerably smaller will have written the partition table and a smaller size will be seen.
This is much the same issue as way back when there was an 8GB limit and a larger hard drive showed on systems as only 8 GB which was the largest the BIOS recognized. My Latitude wasn't very old either and a 120 GB drive would have been fine where the 160 was not UNTIL flashing to the A10 BIOS. Take advantage of your Service Number and locate the newest BIOS and go for it.
I'm having it write zeros to the entire drive as we speak. Unfortunately, it's still only showing the 114 mill sectors, not the 460 million that it should based on the ACTUAL drive size. So it's still only recognizing the 60 gigs. R Proffitt: Right now I have it hooked up to my desktop, where I initially checked the drive and it showed it as 238 GB. So I know it should show up as such on this hardware, yet it still isn't. That's my main problem.
I'm not doing this diagnosis on my laptop, and it's still having the problem ofs howing the full drive. So I called Apricorn to get some insight into the issue. Apparently it's not an uncommon problem. DELL AND THEIR DAMNED MEDIA DIRECT! HPA Problems When Upgrading Hard Disk Some people will eventually want to upgrade their hard disk to a new disk with larger capacity. Users should be warned about a unique problem that may occur in certain circumstances.
If you try to replace your hard disk with a larger disk, if you try to clone the contents of your original disk to the new disk, and if your original disk contains HPA-based MediaDirect, then you may discover your new disk's capacity becomes truncated to the size of the original disk. For example, say you wish to replace your 60 GB disk with a new 120 GB disk. To avoid reinstalling everything, you decide to use something like Acronis True Image or Symantec Ghost to clone the contents of the 60 GB disk to the 120 GB disk. When you try to boot the new disk, however, it blue-screens or fails to boot, and a check of the BIOS settings shows the BIOS thinks your new disk is around the same size as the old disk! No amount of recloning, reformatting, repartitioning, or rejumpering will get the BIOS to recognize the full size of the disk.
During the process of cloning, some utilities will copy the entire first track from the original disk, which includes the Dell MBR (in LBA Sector 0) and the HPA boot code (in LBA Sector 3). The problem is caused when both of these sectors are carried over to the new disk. The problem is avoided if either one or both sectors are not copied. (Note to reader: Remember that we are only talking about HPA-based MediaDirect here.
MediaDirect 3 does not use LBA-3 or the HPA.) How The Dell MBR Works Here is a play-by-play of what happens when the computer boots with the Dell MBR. When the machine is off, pressing the power button turns the computer on.
Pressing the MediaDirect button instead turns the computer on and additionally sets a bit in the bios cmos registers. The computer proceeds through its POST (Power-On Self Test), then turns to the hard disk and MBR to determine what to do next: 1. Begin code in LBA-0. This tests if code exists in LBA-3. If not, skip to step 6. If yes, continue with step 2.
(Code in LBA-3 means the system is equipped with MD). Begin code in LBA-3.
This tests whether the MD bit in the cmos is set. If not, skip to step 4. If yes, continue with step 3. (The MD bit tells whether or not the MD button was pressed).
If MD button pressed, prepare to boot MD. Unhide the HPA, save partition table descriptor #4, replace it with the hidden MD partition descriptor, and set it active. Skip to step 5. If MD button not pressed, prepare to boot normally. Hide the HPA, replace partition table descriptor #4 with the saved copy (from step 3), and set partition #2 active (the XP partition).
Return to LBA-0. LBA-0 checks whether Ctrl+F11 is in the keyboard queue. If not, skip to step 8. If yes, continue with step 7. Prepare to boot the DSR partition by changing the DSR partition's descriptor from 'DB' to '0C' and setting it active. Check which partition is set active (normally it's partition 2, unless step 3 or 7 changed it), display 'Loading PBR x.'
On the screen, load that partition's boot record into memory, and display 'done' if the pbr read was successful. The MBR's job is now done.
Transfer control to the code loaded from the pbr, which is expected to take over and load the rest of the operating system installed on that partition-either XP (pbr2), DSR, or MD (pbr4). The crucial factor is that LBA-3 has embedded in it the starting location of the HPA. This information is used in steps 3-4. The starting location will be where the HPA begins on the original hard disk. When you install a larger hard disk and copy LBA-3 (as part of track-0), this number does not get changed.
(After all, the cloning utility has no idea what Dell is doing with LBA-3.) Thereafter, the first time you boot from the hard disk and the MBR is executed, step 4 will assume the HPA begins in the same place as it did on the original disk. All that extra space on the new hard disk will be hidden as part of the (now, super-large) HPA. Remember, when the HPA is enabled, the true size is kept secret by the disk drive itself. The computer, XP, and most utilities will think the hard disk is smaller than it actually is. This BIOS will think your new disk is the same size as the original disk.
Reformatting or repartitioning will not unhide the HPA and give you back your disk space. The HPA Cannot Be Copied No cloning utility can copy the contents of the HPA from one hard disk to another. Many utilities will not even know the HPA exists.
Even if you were able to expose the HPA area, utilities would not know there is a MediaDirect partition in there to copy. Remember, the existence of the MediaDirect partition is not recorded in the partition table, it's partition descriptor is secretly stored in LBA-3. If you want your new hard disk to include MediaDirect, you will need to do a fresh install from the MediaDirect CD. (Note that reinstalling from CD will not recreate the HPA.
The CD will instead create a regular partition of type D7.) How To Avoid the Truncation Problem The problem occurs when the Dell MBR and LBA-3 are both copied to the new disk. The problem is avoided if either the Dell MBR is not copied, and/or LBA-3 is not copied. As can be seen from the play-by-play above, the Dell MBR executes LBA-3 if the HPA-hiding code exists. Eliminate the code in LBA-3 (non-HPA Dell machines have all zeroes in LBA-3) and there will be no code to hide the HPA.
Or eliminate the Dell MBR (replacing it with a generic Microsoft MBR, for example) and the code in LBA-3, even if exists, will not be executed. Remember, the contents of the HPA cannot be copied.
The one and only purpose of LBA-3 is to enable the HPA. So, if the HPA cannot be transferred anyway, there is no reason to keep LBA-3. Use a utility (such as Roadkil's Sector Editor) to overwrite LBA-3 with all zeroes on the original disk before attempting the cloning operation. The new disk will not get the LBA-3 code, and will not have a HPA or the MediaDirect partition.
The Dell MBR has two purposes: to enable booting the DSR partition, or enable booting the HPA (via LBA-3). Even with LBA-3 eliminated, the Dell MBR may still be needed if you plan on copying the DSR partition to the new disk.
If you are copying the DSR partition, keep the Dell MBR and just zero LBA-3. If you are not keeping the DSR partition (or do not have one to begin with), then there is no reason to keep the Dell MBR at all. A simple 'fdisk /mbr' command executed from a Win98 boot floppy, or the 'fixmbr' command executed from the XP CD's recovery console will replace the Dell MBR with a generic MBR. How To Repair A Truncated Disk If you've already made the mistake of copying LBA-3 and had it hide the HPA, then you will need to take the extra step of unhiding the HPA. Zeroing LBA-3 and recloning will prevent the HPA from being hidden again in the future, but that will not unhide an already-hidden HPA.
There are several tools that can be used to unhide the HPA and return a hard disk to its full capacity. These include Hitachi Feature Tool, Seagate SeaTools, Magic Boot Disk (MHDD), and HDAT2, among others. Just so you guys know if this ever comes up again! Thanks a lot for everything, I can take it from here.
When we originally introduced the Corsair Notebook Upgrade kit, we were really impressed with the Apricorn software. In fact, we used the term 'chimple' to describe just how easy the kit was to use. It was so simple, a chimp could use it. Customers related to us that they wanted a software cloning kit like this without having to buy the entire SSD based kit. So, we've created the new which utilizes the same great software but also has an improved USB 3.0 connector. The kit includes a USB 3.0 to SATA connector and the Corsair Data Migration software CD. The original connector was USB 2.0 but the new connector shown here is USB 3.0.
The new connector is much faster than the original allowing up to 180MB/s read and write speeds. Software is exceedingly simple to use. In the article below, we've covered the steps needed to use the cloning kit in Windows. Also, here are links for using this kit with MAC OS, Linux, and also how to create a bootable image for using the kit with no operating system present. For those users that have never replaced or upgraded a drive in their computer, you typically have three basic options. You can do a clean installation of your OS, you can restore your OS from a backup, or you can go the chimple route and simply clone your existing drive.
With the EX GIG IV software, you can make an identical copy of your existing drive thus eliminating the need for working with the OS. Once the clone is done, you remove the old drive and install the new drive. Of the three options, a clone is typically the most simple and fastest way to add a new drive to your machine and get it running. And here's how you do it.
Initially, your SSD may not show up in Windows if it is not initialized. This is not an issue and the software will see the SSD without initializing it.
Connect the Apricorn USB to SSD adapter to the Force 3 120GB SSD, then connect it to a USB connector on your computer. Insert the CD and if the Autorun function does not start the program, simply view the files on the disk in Windows Explorer and start the application. Once Once the application is started, you will see the EZ GIG IV startup options screen. Start EZ GIG IV. You'll need to accept the EULA to continue. After you accept the EULA, select 'Let's Get Started'.
Select your source drive and then select next. In this example, my source drive is drive C: and it is listed as drive # 1. The next step is selecting the destination drive. In this example, it is drive # 2 and shows up as connected by USB. Be sure to select the proper source and destination drive! After you select the source and destination drives, you can continue with the default settings or, you can select Advanced Options and Data Select.
Using Advanced Options you can manually select options to customize the cloning process. For example, since we are using an SSD as the destination drive, it is important to select the 4K Alignment option so that the partition is properly aligned on the SSD. 4K alignment is critical for proper SSD performance. Data Select is a neat option that allows you to select data to be omitted from the clone if needed. This will help speed up the cloning process. For example, if you wished to omit the My Music folder as I have here, you would omit 19.8GB from the cloning process. You can then manually add any omitted folder at a later time while operating the OS from your newly cloned drive.
Once you have finalized these options, select Next and go to the Start Clone option. Click Start Clone and you'll be prompted to Abort the clone or Start copying. If your settings are correct, select Start copying. The status window will show the progress.
The time to clone will be determined by the speed of your source drive and the size of the data copied. Once your clone is complete you can repeat the process with the Another Copy option, Quit EZ GIG IV, or check the details of the operation. Once the clone is complete, you'll need to remove your old drive and replace it with the new drive. You'll most likely need a small Phillips or 'T' head screw driver for this. Most notebooks/netbooks are fundamentally the same yet subtly different in their layout.
If you are not familiar with how to replace a drive in your specific unit, please consult your manual or consult the manufacturer. Here, we've used a Dell Inspiron as an example. Be sure to unplug your power supply and also remove the battery before beginning.
Find the panel covering the drive bay and remove it. Once this panel is open, you'll need to remove the existing drive. Most drives are going to sit in a small retention cage.
Remove the screws (circled in red) holding the cage and carefully pull the drive out of the machine by sliding the drive away from the SATA interface. Again, if you are not sure of this procedure, be sure to use the resources provided to get the proper procedure for your machine. Once you have removed the old drive from the system, remove the drive from the retention cage. Place the new SSD into the retention cage in the same orientation as the original drive. Then, carefully slide the drive back into the SATA interface in the direction of the red arrow and replace the screws holding the cage.
Then, replace your cover, reinstall the battery, apply the power supply if needed and power up. Once it is up and running, your OS should look exactly as it did with the previous drive and also have the blazing speed of an SSD. This process really is exceedingly chimple. In my testing, my laptop was still usable while this operation was running.
Of course, any data you add or changes you make after you start the process will not be included in the clone and moved to the new drive. No chimpanzees were harmed during the cloning of this SSD.