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Now I Really Need Your Help Guys!

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Hi,Santa brought me an early christmas present for myself this year :(, a couple of new WD Raptor 10kRPM disks that I will use to replace my old and tired disks with. However that showed to not be as easy as I had hoped for...I'm using the built-in Complete PC Backup in Vista on a regular basis to keep the image updated whenever I do any changes to my config and my plan now was to simply replace my old disks physically and then restore the image onto them but when trying to do so I get a message saying the new disks (seen as one disk in Windows since it's a Raid0 array) isn't big enough to fit the image. The C partition on my old Raid0 array is 500 GB where the new one is only 300 GB and that of course is what triggers this message but thing is that I only use about 70 GB of those 500 GB and thus those 70 GB of data would fit just fine on the new 300 GB array but appearently the Vista Complete Backup/Restore routine doesn't look at the size of the image file which is about 70 GB or the amount of data that is in fact used but instead it looks at the total size of the partition it's about to restore.Since I will do almost anything to avoid having to reinstall my whole PC considering all the time I have invested in it to have it configured with all programs and not only FSX with all it's add-ons but also lots of other programs my first idea was to try and shrink the C partition since I have in fact about 430 GB empty space. To do this I tried the also built-in feature in Vista in Disk Management but first problem I encountered was that it told me I would only be able to shrink the volume with approx 70 GB. I managed to solve that using Perfrect Disk's defrag for system files since I found out it was the MFT that was in the way for the shrink process to find more continous free space. Then after fixing that I get this new problem where it after a couple of seconds after starting the shrink process gives me an error message from Logical Disk Manager I belive it was simply saying 'Access denied' - a very helpful and informative error message indeed but guess the problem is that I have some running process/program that is located somewhere on the part of the volume I try to shrink. Can't figure out what process/program that might be though since I have both booted in Safe Mode and also made sure NOTHING is running except for what is really necessary for Windows to work.After some reading in various forums on Internet I found I was very far from the first one with similar problems so I guess this shrink feature in Vista isn't that good... Anyway some guys managed to get past this error message by reducing the amount of space it would shrink the volume with and some other guys got past it by doing what I did and boot into Safe Mode. I have tried both but still same problem so now I turn to all you fellow captains...anyone else had the same problem and managed to fix it?Another thing I though of is if it would in some way be possible to edit the image file manually and change the property indicating the size of the original volume to "fool" it to fit on my new smaller array but maybe that just isn't technically possible...? Next thing would be to find some other utility/program and hopefully a freeware one that would also let me shrink the size of the C partition and then I could do another backup that would then fit onto my new array - any good suggestions? Another thing that maybe add problems to this is I'm running the 64-bit version of Vista Ultimate so it must be a program that is compatible with 64-bit Vista. Or...even another option would be to find some other program to create the image file rather than the Vista Complete Pc Backup that will let you restore the image even when the destination array is smaller than the original one but guess most alternatives to Vista's Complete PC Backup are payware software and I would be happy if I didn't have to spend any more $ on this more than I already did on the new Raptor disks.Thanks alot in advance for any input and help on how to fix this!!


Richard Åsberg

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Hi,Santa brought me an early christmas present for myself this year :( , a couple of new WD Raptor 10kRPM disks that I will use to replace my old and tired disks with. However that showed to not be as easy as I had hoped for...I'm using the built-in Complete PC Backup in Vista on a regular basis to keep the image updated whenever I do any changes to my config and my plan now was to simply replace my old disks physically and then restore the image onto them but when trying to do so I get a message saying the new disks (seen as one disk in Windows since it's a Raid0 array) isn't big enough to fit the image. The C partition on my old Raid0 array is 500 GB where the new one is only 300 GB and that of course is what triggers this message but thing is that I only use about 70 GB of those 500 GB and thus those 70 GB of data would fit just fine on the new 300 GB array but appearently the Vista Complete Backup/Restore routine doesn't look at the size of the image file which is about 70 GB or the amount of data that is in fact used but instead it looks at the total size of the partition it's about to restore.
There exist software that can clone from a bigger to a smaller drive. I found out when I researched this issue earlier. The sw was called HDclone but in order to clone from bigger to smaller the free version don't suffice. I think the cost was only $20 for an upgrade that would be able to perform the task.

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You are going to need to get some software made specifically for imaging/cloning your drive. I happen to use Acronis TrueImage Home Version 11. I know they have a downloadable trail but I do not know if there are any limitations to the trial software or how long the trial lasts. You can download the software here: Acronis

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Thanks guys for your input, I'll check out the software you recommend although I think it feels so-so that the features in Vista doesn't work better than they do - why even include such crap in the first place when you still have to go out and buy 3rd party software in the end.


Richard Åsberg

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Get Acronis True Image Home - it'll be the best ~$20 you spend for a long while. It will let you clone your existing disks to the new ones and downsize the partition to the smaller new disks.

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Guest JNS
Get Acronis True Image Home - it'll be the best ~$20 you spend for a long while. It will let you clone your existing disks to the new ones and downsize the partition to the smaller new disks.
Man, the timing of this thread is perfect. I had just posted in "Tuning question for NickN" about needing to downsize my OS/program files on a 500G drive to fit an image on another drive. Sorry to hear the results of the "Shrink Volume" option in Vista.I was going to purchase Acronis Disk Director to make a smaller partition for the OS before making an image file, but with True Image I guess I won't need to do that, correct?Thanks,Jeff

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I was going to purchase Acronis Disk Director to make a smaller partition for the OS before making an image file, but with True Image I guess I won't need to do that, correct?
As long as the existing data usage does not exceed the total disk space of the new disk then yes, that's correct.

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As long as the existing data usage does not exceed the total disk space of the new disk then yes, that's correct.
As it turns out it looks like Disk Director is not suitable for Vista anyway. At least that's what the documentation indicates.Jeff

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