Full capacity not recognized on new hard drive.

[Sprezza]

Hello!

Making a long story short--I just bought a new 320GB laptop hard drive to install onto my Dell Inspiron E1505 (running XP) which has a full hard drive at 50+ GB. I placed the new hard drive into an external enclosure and cloned my existing hard drive onto it. I am also trying to upgrade this new hard drive with Windows 7, but that is another issue. The guide I was following said that after cloning, I could simply EXTEND the HD to make the full 320GB usable--not the case. After much messing around with partitions, diskpart.exe and Disk Manager, I am at a standstill. At the moment, I have a brand new hd with 50GB of unallocated space. How oh how do I get the full 320GB? There is nothing on there that needs to be backed up, so I am open to any suggestions.

Thanks very much for your feedback!

- J

[Geek-9pm]

What kind of external enclosure? What kind of HDD?
Some of use here are very negative about extremal enclosures, except for DVD drives. Not recommended of hard drives.
Your machine is a laptop, -Right?
There are now low power internal drives for laptops that have 320 GB at reasonable prices.
In My Opinion, and some others here, is to return the external HDD and get a suitable internal drive for use in your machine.
Maybe I missed something in your post.

[Sprezza]

Geek-9pm,

Thank you for replying!    Please let me know if I am not being clear as I've been having difficulty explaining what the problem is.

 - Nippon enclosure
 - Seagate 320GB WD3200BEKT internal laptop hard drive

I don't see how the enclosure is to blame--isn't it only a connection? The sole purpose of buying that was to first transfer everything over to the new hard drive and then to house the old hard drive and use it as back-up if ever needed. The problem is that ever since I cloned the old (50GB) to the new (320GB), the new hd is only recognized as having a total of 50GB of space, even after cleaning, deleting partitions, etc. I just want to get the hd back to its original blank state, showing all 320GB of available space. Is there any info that I am leaving out? I don't see why it's such a difficult task, but I am totally stumped! 

[Geek-9pm]

Okay now I understand what you're doing and yes it seems like that should work.
Now, as for our criticism of the enclosure, we don't mean to say the enclosure is bad, but rather in the Windows operating system and USB devices are not as well integrated as we would like them to be.
Here is the essence of what I get from your original post.

Making a long story short--I just bought a new 320GB laptop hard drive to install onto my Dell Inspiron E1505 (running XP) which has a full hard drive at 50+ GB. I placed the new hard drive into an external enclosure and cloned my existing hard drive onto it.

 - Nippon enclosure
 - Seagate 320GB WD3200BEKT internal laptop hard drive.

The point I'm not clear on is whether or not you were able to get a new drive to work as the boot system on your laptop. And if so, are you satisfied that the clone was done properly and that the system is working Albright.
Now then, the issue is that you are using XP and not visa. If you have Windows 7 you can go ahead and install it now if you are happy with him leading Windows XP have a only 50 GB on the system. In my opinion 50 GB is planning for Windows XP, and Windows 7, in my opinion, you will like it very much. Window seven does take more space, but not as much as visa. That's the good news. The bad news is, Windows 7 is lacking some drivers. And, Windows 7 requires about 1200 updates. That's not a typo. Still, it may just be the best Windows that Microsoft has ever made. Anyway, we hope so.
If you already have Windows 7, I would suggest you just go ahead and install it and use Windows 7 to adjust the partition sizes to whatever you want. Also, in Windows XP you can create new partitions, but it does not have the ability to expand an existing partition. For that you would use a third-party software.
The instruction to "expand the partition " refers to a feature found in both Batista and Windows 7, but not in XP.
On the Internet you can find a number of partition managers that are three for a limited time and you can use one of them to resize the XP partition, or to create new partitions. Most of these do a fair job of resizing the XP partition.
I hope this clarifies so some issues.

Please excuse grammar and spelling errors or bad choice of words. I have limited eyesight and I have to use my voice recognition software to give you a long answer. Otherwise my answers are too short and sometimes not understandable.
Post script. I forgot to mention, when installing Windows 7 you should install it as a clean install. In other words, you don't want to install it on top of the existing XP installation. Tell Windows 7 you wanted to use a new partition and it will coexist with Windows XP. Of course, you will have to install your favorite programs and put in some your favorite settings and things like that. At this time we are not recommending that people try to update to Windows 7 from XP. In fact, it doesn't work.

[Sprezza]

Good day! 

Ok, I think we're getting a little closer. I actually did successfully install Windows 7 and again tried Disk Manager to extend the partition. The reoccurring issue is that nothing I try is recognizing that there are 320GB to which I can extend! I have created, deleted, cleaned, etc. but everything is within the 50GB.

At the time, I was not thinking of using W7 and so wanted only to copy everything over from my existing hd and be set with that--thus the cloning. Now that W7 is in the picture, I wish I could "unclone" the hd and start from scratch. I don't understand why no matter what I try, the capacity is STUCK on 50GB. Where is the rest hidden?

I am not concerned with W7 at the moment and am putting that aside for now. I would like to somehow (magically) find the mysterious 320GB, have it recognized, and continue with W7 from there.

I do want to focus on the hd, but to answer your questions as well:

The point I'm not clear on is whether or not you were able to get a new drive to work as the boot system on your laptop. And if so, are you satisfied that the clone was done properly and that the system is working Albright.

Yes, once cloned in the enclosure, I swapped drives, installed the new hd, booted, and everything worked fine! Still the issue--max of 50GB showing on the hd and since under XP, Disk Manager could not extend. I used a free version of Partition Master and that did not recognize the rest of the 320GB either. Lastly, I looked up Gparted and was quickly scared away--I could not even understand the instructions for downloading the program!

Another idea: during one clean install of W7, I thought I could delete partitions and find the hidden 320GB at the point when W7 asks what disk to install to. The "delete" and also "extend" option were grayed out. I created a partition just for fun and yet the total size was still 50GB. So that did not work.

Geek-9pm, please come through for me!     

- Jasmine

[ale52]

What did you use to clone the drive / did your existing OS see the full 320G in the external case?

Alan <>< 

[Sprezza]

Following this guide: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2345356,00.asp

... I used the free trial of Acronis' Migrate Easy 7.0. Yes, before cloning, the full 320GB was recognized by XP. I wasn't so worried since the last part of the guide said the partition could simply be extended. Tricky tricky, the guide also says (in other words) that it's much easier in Vista and complicated to nearly impossible for XP.

[Geek-9pm]

. I used the free trial of Acronis' Migrate Easy 7.0. Yes, before cloning, the full 320GB was recognized by XP. I wasn't so worried since the last part of the guide said the partition could simply be extended. Tricky tricky, the guide also says (in other words) that it's much easier in Vista and complicated to nearly impossible for XP.

Now you got it!
Trying re size a system in use is hard to do. The "clone"  program you used did literal "clone" and made the copy the exact same size as the original.

Here is a very good partition manager.
Click on the place that says "try it fre" or something to that effect.
Do not download the stuff you have to buy.
http://www.partition-tool.com/

Just to be on the "safe" side, first see if  it will crate a new portion for you.
Then copy some documents of photos onto it. Then try to re size it. I  don't mean to scare you, but  you have to  be come familiar with the terminology and procedures they recommend. After you  make  kyour changes, you have to hit  'apply' and it may have to restart windows and it will take awhile to re size a partition.

Anyway, windows  7 does a good job of doing expand or shrink. reside. As I recall, it can not change its own partition. So you create a new one and make it bigger or smaller.

In general, we recommend that a large HDD be divided into two or more partitions.

I will be back later, Have to go make coffee. I am a night bird, hence the name Geek-9pm.

[soybean]

Here is a very good partition manager.
Click on the place that says "try it fre" or something to that effect.
Do not download the stuff you have to buy.
http://www.partition-tool.com/

The Home edition (for home users only) is free.  It's at http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

[Sprezza]

I will be back later, Have to go make coffee. I am a night bird, hence the name Geek-9pm.

Don't leave!      What time is it where you are? I'm in Washington, DC, at work, at my desk (yes I should be working rather than glued to this forum).

Nah, I've got nuthin! All that is what I did a while ago, and then there was much messing around with the hard drive and now I'm stuck. 

I hope this tool works. I tried using the free version of Partition Master and again, it did not recognize that there was 320GB to extend to. <Sigh>

And I see what you mean about W7 changing its own partitions... I guess that was the problem? At the moment though, I can only access the new hd through the enclosure since I wiped it clean of an OS. Is there a way to "unclone" and take that 50GB limit off the darn thing?

How's that coffee??

[Sprezza]

The Home edition (for home users only) is free.  It's at http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

soybean, thanks for the link. I will try this first thing when I get home today. Assuming the worst though, what if this tool also only sees 50GB in which to edit partitions? Creating new will only pull from the space seen, correct? I'll stay cool for now and hope for the best... 

[Geek-9pm]

Coffee was good. Fell much better now,. I am in Northern California.
I am puzzled as the why the manager will not show the unused space.
Here is a drive with many partitions and some unallocated space.
Notice the left arrow. There is an 'apply' button y0u have to hit when lyou are ready to put something into effect.
Aldo you grow  a partition only into the free space, the unallocated space.

Sorry I have to go. Need to be at my post at 10 AM It is after nine and I am not dressed.

[Sprezza]

I am puzzled as the why the manager will not show the unused space.

I have not tried the manager yet--I am just concerned that it will act the same as another third party app (Partition Master) that I had tried already. I will post success/failure later this evening. Thank you for your efforts thus far!

[Geek-9pm]

Back again.
Here is some additional information that may not apply to your case. This is about use of the bios setup. When starting up, the bios will scan for hardware and save information into an area known as the CMOS. Additionally, information is placed into the lower part of the system RAM. If the deals has been set to quick boot, then it will not changed the information found in the CMOS. In rare cases this can cause bopd  to not recognize that a new drive has been installed it  appears to have the same attributes as the older drive. If that is the case, all you have to do is go into the bios and set it for auto detect, or something like that. or just turn off the quick boot option. And in some cases an error will cause the bios to rescan the hardware. Without looking at the documentation, I don't know if these observations would apply to your computer. But, you could just go into the bios and see if there is a way of turning off a quick boot or enable the auto detect process.

[Sprezza]

Good morning!

I'd like to share a screen shot, but don't know how to paste in here.

I've opened Partition Master and realized it is the same tool I had used before. I understand that partitions can only be extended into unallocated space. The problem persists that the new drive has ONLY 50GB of unallocated space. Options to resize are grayed out and creating a partition only uses the visible 50GB.

Still stuck!