Can't restore onto larger hard drive

[Eboy]

This should be simple but it throws me. I have a IBM T20 laptop running Windows 2000 Professional with 384 MB RAM and a 40 GB hard drive.

I bought an 80 GB hard drive from IBM to upgrade. The idea was to put in the new drive and run the IBM T20 Restore CD-ROM, then install my programs and data again. But, doing that creates a 2 GB partition containing Win2000, and does not let me see the rest of the 80 GB disk. I tested the drive (OK), and started over by erasing the boot sector using IBM's "Drive Fitness Test" (DFT) utility -- same thing.

I have Partition Magic 8, which showed no file system on the 80 GB drive. I formatted for FAT 32. It showed 80 GB. I could read and write from it in the Ultra Bay. Looks fine. I restore again, same thing (2 GB partition for Win2000, and can't see the rest).

I am not sure if I want a Primary or Logical partition to boot Win2000 -- I tried both and neither seemed to work. There are some other settings on Partition Magic that I did not know what to do with, so I left them alone.

I understand 80 GB is not a fundamental limitation for FAT 32. I did a similar upgrade a couple of years ago from the original 20 GB to 40 GB. I got into a jam, but a call to IBM informed me of the DFT, which let me start over after messing up the formatting. I don't recall doing anything else special then.

I called IBM again on this (since the T20, and the new drive, are under warranty), but the current weekend crew was not too helpful (I usually get good help from IBM). They wanted to spend more time figuring out how they could call this a software problem (and bill me) instead of fixing the problem. I give them credit, however, for suggesting I see if there was a file system on the drive. (Last time, though, they stayed with me until the problem was solved.)

Any tips or reference sources would be appreciated. Thank you for considering my question!


P.S. -- Partition Magic help suggests having the operating system on one drive and the applications on another drive if one can (and I could). Windows 2000 Help suggests having the paging file on a separate hard drive. I was going to use the 40 GB drive in the Ultra Bay for data. But, maybe I am better off just leaving the 40 GB drive alone with the operating system, and using the 80 GB drive in the Ultra Bay for applications and data.

[fobotcso]

Eboy, you clearly have good depth of knowledge on issues like this and know what you are about so forgive me if I state the obvious.

I've done something similar using Partition Magic and a new HD that was much larger than the original.

Using PM from the system disk C: I partitioned the new drive to include a partition the same size as the original (40GB in your case). Then I "cloned" the whole of the original boot partition to the new drive into the space taken up by the fresh partition. Then, and this was what took me two goes, I made it "Active".

Swapped over the jumpers to make the new HD the Master. I booted just fine.

Then used PM to tidy up the partitions and format the remaining space.

I'm going to search for where I reported all this and I'll be back...

Okay, try these two threads:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=54129

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=54041

[Eboy]

Thank you for those helpful links. I can handle the cloning/imaging software. (Do you have preferences for which brand?) My thought was there might be a lot of junk files built up that I don't want anymore, and re-installing would clean some of that up. But, it is not worth fooling with too much.

Where are these jumpers?!? I have set them on desktop drives before. These little Hitachi drives have a jumper diagram on the back (Device 0, Device 1, and Cable Sel.), but I see no jumpers. There is a plate attached with 4 Philips screws covering the circuit-board side. Maybe they are under that.

The T20 BIOS allows the selection of a booting hard drive. Maybe that takes care of it.

Thank you for the excellent advice!

[fobotcso]

Eboy, I confess to have missed the point that this was a LAPTOP! Sorry that I may have wasted some thinking time...

No sweat, my example in the second link was also in a laptop. They only have one drive as normal so there is never a need to designate one as Master and the other as Slave. Certainly, don't go unscrewing bits of it or you will invalidate the warranty.

So, use a caddy (Amacom or Minibank) and connect either by Firewire or USB to do your cloning. (I only know Partition Magic so would recommend that). Run your laptop on the old HD and put the new one in the caddy and clone your partition that way. Having cloned it and made it "Active", swap them over and it should boot from the new Partition.

There is a certain amount of swapping drives in and out of the laptop so wear and tear on the connectors is a risk. Minimise the "wiggling" of connectors.

Good Luck fob

[Mac the Knife]

Fobs, how do you make it active? Fdisk refuses to activate a partition if it sees another active one. I've always got around that problem by removing the original drive, booting from an emergency disk and using fdisk from there. But ya can't do this with NTFS (or are you using the install/restore bootable CD?)

Not familiar with laptops and still learning about NTFS.

[fobotcso]

Mac, sure you can only have one "active" partition on a given drive, but since we are talking about marking a partition as active on the HD that is in the caddy it seems to work OK.

As reported on your "Dodge" thread, I failed to do this the first time and had to repeat the rigmarole of putting the new drive back into the caddy, and reworking it with Partition Magic to make the new "cloned" partition active.

Then when I put it back into the Sony Vaio as the only drive the laptop had no choice but to boot from it.

I don't think this will work with Fdisk. Fdisk only sees disks that are on the IDE or SCSI interfaces. I think you have to use a Partition Manager like Partition Magic on drives that are just using data pipes like Firewire or USB.

[ORAC]

What does the T20 BIOS screen say when you put in the settings for the new drive? Does it automatically see the whole drive or do you manually enter the drive size/cylinder settings?

I had a similar problem on a Panasonic and had to flash upgrade the BIOS to the latest version before it would see it.

[Mac the Knife]

Was thinking about Win9x/DOS 7. If you have several physical IDE drives up and running in the box [obviously with the boot partition of Drive 1 marked active] and you "5. Change current fixed disk drive" to another drive and try to set that boot partition as active fdisk complains and says "Only partitions on Drive 1 can be made active." Once it IS active (by whatever means) Win9x/DOS 7 doesn't care, so this seems to be a peculiarity of FDISK.

This is OK for Win9x/DOS 7 'cos you can always boot from a floppy, but NTFS is another animal. You'd have to create a bootable disk for NTFS (see KB119467 & http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=305595 ) and take it from there. I gather PM has the ability to activate FAT/FAT32/NTFS primary partions - must get a copy one of these days. Presumably one could also do it with a sector editor, but I don't know much about NTFS disk structures. ).:sad: Aefdisk http://www.aefdisk.com/ should also do it (never used it).

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Eboy,

Just a suggestion, use a Win2k CD instead of the IBM Restore Disk. I doubt IBM gave you a full Win2k CD, but they would have given you the CD-Key. I would use a full version of Win2k and make a clean install. That way you will not get all the showelware that IBM includes on their computers.

If you were thinking of switching to WinXP, now would be a great time to do so. Just use the WinXP disk for the install.

Take Care,

Capt. Richard J. Gentil, Pres.
Naples Air Center, Inc.
Custom Computers of Naples, Inc.