Can't use full hdd capacity after cloning

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wdproblems

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I originally had a 500GB Hitachi hdd and suddenly my pc kept freezing with the hdd lights staying on so I immediately thought that the drive was about to fail. I immediately bought a 1TB WD hdd and cloned the Hitachi to the WD using Clonezilla.

This is the problem: After cloning and replacing the Hitachi with WD, Windows only sees (in windows explorer) and allows me to use 500GB of the WD drive. However, if I go to Disk Management, Windows recognizes it as a 1TB drive.

I'm not sure why this is and how to fix it. Does anybody know how to deal with this?
 
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The original source of the problem is likely the default settings in the cloning software. Most I have used assume by default that you want the CLONE Partition to be the same size as the ORIGINAL partition, which is just plain DUMB!! Almost all Cloning operations are done when someone is migrating to a LARGER unit, and wants the ENTIRE new HDD in one Partition.

I always advise people to read the manual for cloning and NOT accept the default settings. Use the menus available to change to the size you want before letting it proceed.

Next you got caught by Microsoft's cautious protection. Although it is true that, using Disk Management, you can Expand a Partition into Unallocated Space that follows the Partition, it will NOT let you do...
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Emerald

Emerald

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in the Disk Manager do you have a blue area and a black area on the drive?

clonezila only copies the exact size of the original drive and leaves the rest unused. either expand the partition or create another partition and give it a drive letter.

the other option would be to use Acronis software which you can download for free from WD. It has a Proportional option which will expand the original partitions to use the whole drive.
 
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wdproblems

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Yes, there's a blue area about 1TB in size, and black of about 41MB. Disk Management doesn't allow me to use expand past 41MB. So I suppose my best option would be to just download acronis then?

EDIT: btw, looks like the acronis software is a WD edition - does that suffice?
 
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wdproblems

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So I downloaded acronis WD version but don't see an option to expand or resize without cloning it again. I'm afraid to clone again or use the hitachi drive unnecessarily as it might 'degrade' even more
 
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wdproblems

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I've already done my 'research', that is why I asked here. Like I said, tools see the drive as a 1TB drive but Windows only lets me use half of it after cloning and no, the other 500GB is not unallocated space so I can't simply expand it through Windows it seems.
 
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wdproblems

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@Fast one - disk management and other utilities actually shows it as one contiguous space, not separate partitions.

Nevertheless, I was messing around with Easus Partition Manager and it seems fixed now. What I did was I resized the partition and made it as small as possible. After that, I ended up getting unallocated space then I resized the formatted partition again and increased the size to maximum. That took care of the problem including the extra 41 MB at at the end.

I'm definitely interested in knowing how and why this happened in the first place.
 
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Paperdoc

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The original source of the problem is likely the default settings in the cloning software. Most I have used assume by default that you want the CLONE Partition to be the same size as the ORIGINAL partition, which is just plain DUMB!! Almost all Cloning operations are done when someone is migrating to a LARGER unit, and wants the ENTIRE new HDD in one Partition.

I always advise people to read the manual for cloning and NOT accept the default settings. Use the menus available to change to the size you want before letting it proceed.

Next you got caught by Microsoft's cautious protection. Although it is true that, using Disk Management, you can Expand a Partition into Unallocated Space that follows the Partition, it will NOT let you do this to the Partition that is used for BOOTING (nor to any Partition that holds the Swap File). This is just Windows' way of preventing you from risking losing everything if the Expand operation glitches. Other third-party software like Easeus does not have this built-in fear and will do the job.
 
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glitch177k

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Jan 14, 2014
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This completely doable with built in Microsoft tools. I just cloned a 120 SSD to a 240 SSD and my resulting drive only showed 120 in windows. I booted to a command prompt and ran diskpart and was able to see the full size of the disk there. However, extending the existing volume still didn't work. I fixed it by shrinking the current volume by 100 mb. Once I did that, it fully recognized the remaining space properly and I was able to extend the volume using diskpart. Reboot and everything is perfect.

I'm not sure if you have to boot to a command prompt, I just did for good measure. It's possible this will work from inside of windows with a normal command prompt.
 
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