My 5 year old Dell Dimension 5100 recently suffered hard disk failure, so I grabbed a backup and restored all the disk partitions to a new, larger disk with Acronis True Image.
Restoring from an ATI bootable rescue disk gives less functionality than running ATI from windows, and unfortunately the options to resize partitions during restore weren’t available. So the contents of the original (nominal) 250Gb HDD are now imaged on to a new Seagate Barracuda, with a whopping 1.5Tb, except most of this is now unallocated space.
The original disk partitions are reproduced on the new drive, and are:
62.72 Mb MBR/Dell diagnostics (I assume)
229.6Gb Win XP
3.179Gb Dell Recovery image (I assume)
I’d like to start using the unallocated space (over 1Tb), but I’d prefer not to mess up Dell’s recovery stuff. I’m not intending to interfere with the first 62Mb diagnostic partition (have read it should stay put), but I’m not sure how things stand with the 3Gb recovery image? I’ve read that this is normally at the end of the disk, but does it matter where it is?
Ideally, I would add some space to the main 229Gb Win XP partition, and maybe create another larger one after it (could be before or after the 3Gb recovery partition), leaving the recovery image moved over a bit, or even all the way to the end of the new disk. But does anyone know if this will spoil the recovery options? Dell PCs don’t ship with Windows installation disks anymore, so I’d prefer not to obliterate the partitioned copy if possible.
Restoring from an ATI bootable rescue disk gives less functionality than running ATI from windows, and unfortunately the options to resize partitions during restore weren’t available. So the contents of the original (nominal) 250Gb HDD are now imaged on to a new Seagate Barracuda, with a whopping 1.5Tb, except most of this is now unallocated space.
The original disk partitions are reproduced on the new drive, and are:
62.72 Mb MBR/Dell diagnostics (I assume)
229.6Gb Win XP
3.179Gb Dell Recovery image (I assume)
I’d like to start using the unallocated space (over 1Tb), but I’d prefer not to mess up Dell’s recovery stuff. I’m not intending to interfere with the first 62Mb diagnostic partition (have read it should stay put), but I’m not sure how things stand with the 3Gb recovery image? I’ve read that this is normally at the end of the disk, but does it matter where it is?
Ideally, I would add some space to the main 229Gb Win XP partition, and maybe create another larger one after it (could be before or after the 3Gb recovery partition), leaving the recovery image moved over a bit, or even all the way to the end of the new disk. But does anyone know if this will spoil the recovery options? Dell PCs don’t ship with Windows installation disks anymore, so I’d prefer not to obliterate the partitioned copy if possible.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram