cloning and partitions

[ranchmom5]

I am not sure why I am having so much trouble with this but I have been at it off and on for two days now and don't seem to be making much headway!

I am trying to clone using ATI 9. I printed out the post from robert213 http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=62901 and am following the steps there. My problem seems to be that I cannot change partition sizes and then, ATI won't proceed with the cloning.

My T42 drive is as follows:
TOTAL 55.89
51.17 GB NTFS
4.72 GB FAT

The other drive in the external enclosure states:
TOTAL 52.54
52.23 GB NTFS
310 MB FAT
5.07 MB Unallocated

They are the same size drives but the external drive shows up with 3+ GB missing. Then when I proceed with ATI, at the manual relayout screen, it shows (for original HDD) the before cloning as stated above and the after cloning as 52.54 Total, 48.11G NTFS, 4.11FAT. I am pretty ignorant of such things, but doesn't that change my original partitions and where did the extra 3GB go?

If I click on proceed relayout, it doesn't really allow me to change anything....except make the NTFS smaller and end up with 7MB of unallocated space.

I am hoping that all of you wiser TP forum members will show me how completely simple this is and help me get out of this spot I have been floundering about in for the past 2 days!

Blessings,
Sharon

[BeeJayEmm]

Hi Sharon,
I hope this isn't a dumb question but why do you want to clone your drive? Are you going to swap them? If so, your current drive should be in the USB case and the new drive should be in the ThinkPad. If not, why not just backup the entire internal disk to the external? If you have a disastrous crash, you can put in a new drive and restore from the backup. I have used Acronis ver. 8 & 9 for both backup & restore, and cloning and have never had a problem.

FYI, the thread you linked to is about Acronis ver. 11. I'm not sure how much of it applies to ver. 9.

Brian

[rbena]

Then when I proceed with ATI, at the manual relayout screen, it shows (for original HDD) the before cloning as stated above and the after cloning as 52.54 Total, 48.11G NTFS, 4.11FAT. I am pretty ignorant of such things, but doesn't that change my original partitions and where did the extra 3GB go?

If you could also include the purpose you are duplicating the contents of your T42's hard drive, this may also help provide some solutions.

It seems that ATI 9 is only working with the formatted partitions of the drive in the external enclosure (52.54GB Total), and not with the unallocated space (5.07GB).

It may be worthwhile to use partitioning software to format and partition the 2nd drive exactly the way you want it, and then copy or clone the contents of the T42 drive using ATI 9.

I use Partition Magic, and can set up my drives with exactly the size and partitioning I want before transferring contents to them. There are also free partitioning utilities available that work the same as Partition Magic, but with less features.

Another option may be to format the entire space of the 2nd drive as a single NTFS partition, and see if Acronis can clone your T42's partitions as you desire. Again, I'm not one for relying on Acronis to set up my drives too specifically, and I often resize the partitions using Partition Magic once Acronis has transferred the contents.

I hope this gives you a few options to consider.