Cannot resize my primary partition

[pakman]

This is going to be long I suppose...

I cloned my old HD (30gb) onto a 160gb HD using Acronis True Image 11. When I went to clone the drive, Acronis originally set the hidden partition on the new drive to be around 18gb, which is ridiculous and a waste of space. So I set it back to around 5gb, leaving 13 or so gb free and unallocated. Unfortunately, Acronis would not let me resize the primary partition to use up the unallocated space. It kept saying the 130gb primary partition was at its max.

I went ahead and cloned the drive with the existing issue in the hopes that Partition Magic would bail me out once the new HD was installed. Using PM 8.0, I tried to resize the primary partition, and once again it would not let me do so. I tried creating a partition with the unallocated 13g then merging it with the primary drive, but it gave me an error "there are no drives to be merged" or something. So now I have 13gb partition.

I know it's not that big of a deal, but I personally don't like partitions and would rather have everything together. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks.

[rbena]

I've also had the odd problem going past a certain size limit on a partition with Acronis. However, I was able to resize it later using Partition Magic 8.

I would recommend before using Acronis, set the single primary partition on your new hdd to the maximum size using Partition Magic - to confirm the drive can be partitioned to the maximum.

Next clone the small hdd to the new (larger) hdd using Acronis, and -manually- set the hidden partition size. Hopefully Acronis will allocate the entire remaining space to the primary partition. If not, simply proceed with the clone, with what Acronis allocates. If any unallocated space is remaining, use Partition Magic to resize the primary partition.

Good luck, and please report back with the results.

[basketb]

Sounds like your system doesn't support 48 bit LBA http://www.48bitlba.com. Could be bios and/or OS related.

[pakman]

Sounds like your system doesn't support 48 bit LBA http://www.48bitlba.com. Could be bios and/or OS related.

Well I have a T42 2378-FVU, how do I find out if my system is/is not supported by 48 bit LBA?

[basketb]

Install the latest bios and, if you have Win XP Pro installed, make sure you have at least SP1; SP2 is better (I would stay away from SP3). I have no clue about other operating systems.

[pakman]

Install the latest bios and, if you have Win XP Pro installed, make sure you have at least SP1; SP2 is better (I would stay away from SP3). I have no clue about other operating systems.

The BIOS update did it, thanks!