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278848
December 25th, 2015 20:00
XPS 8900 Hard Drive Upgrade
Hello,
I recently purchased a Dell XPS 8900 desktop computer running Windows 10. I would like to replace the original 1TB hard drive with a 6 TB drive. Both are Seagate drives.
My plan was to clone all of the original drive content to the new drive. This includes the Windows partition and 4 Dell hidden partitions.
I used Acronis True Image 2016 to do the clone and it worked except that all of the partitions are exactly the same size as the original drive and I get about 561 GB of unallocated space at the end.
The Acronis software seems to include controls for modifying partition sizes but I can't expand any partitions. Also, I notice that if I don't clone one of the partitions it is still created on the other drive but without any content. So it seems I can't modify the partitions at all.
What I wanted is for the Dell partitions to remain the same sizes but the Windows partition would expand and use all of the remaining unallocated space. As it stands now the 6 TB drive would work but most of it's space is unusable.
I did try some partition software also with no success. So where do I go from here to copy the hard drive without a big recovery effort?
Thanks,
Mike
ms3675
3 Posts
1
December 26th, 2015 18:00
UPDATE:
After many hours of grief and dead ends I found a solution to my problem.
First, this link describes the Dell recovery options. (add w to link)
ww.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN297920?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
I didn't like these options and didn't try them. I assume that they would only restore the 1TB factory image. Instead I decided to clone the drive.
I used a free version of Macrium Reflect to do this. The target drive was connected via USB. Despite their claim that I could use the software to resize partitions I was unable to modify partitions and ended up with a 1 TB copy. Also, they have no tech support for their free version. But I did get a working clone on my new 6 TB drive.
Then I used AOMEI Partition Assistant Free Version to merge the OS partition and unallocated space. To do this open the program, right click on the OS partition and choose "Merge Partitions" Then select the 2 partitions you want to merge (OS and unallocated space) Then select "OK". The computer will restart a few times and when it was done my OS partition was 5.44TB.
Good luck if you try it yourself.
Mike
osprey4
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34.2K Posts
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December 26th, 2015 03:00
Hi Mike,
Did you post this in the Acronis forums? That seems to me to be a better place to get an answer to this question.
Did you consider creating a recovery disc or flash drive, then restoring that to the new HDD? I'm not sure what Dell is putting on new systems but they used to provide a backup and recovery utility.
ms3675
3 Posts
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December 26th, 2015 08:00
Hi Osprey,
No, this is the only place I've posted. I'll try posting there but I don't think this is a Acronis problem but rather something in the Dell partition settings that prevents modifications.
What I need is more info about these Dell partitions, what each one is for and can they be modified? But the only modification I want to do is expand the operating system partition.
I'll look more into that and what my backup and recovery options are.
Thanks,
Mike
osprey4
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34.2K Posts
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December 28th, 2015 08:00
Hi Mike,
Good to hear. Thanks very much for that link on the Win 10 recovery options.