I'm not sure you guys can help with this, but...

[bullwinkle]

I'm having trouble with Acronis 11.0.  I always back up my C drive and my data drive using their disk cloning procedure two other hds.  I have never had any problem in years of doing this.

Yesterday I got over rambunctious using Revo Uninstaller and needed to recover some lost programs.  So I installed the cloned C disk that I made two weeks ago.

The system booted and I was back where I wanted to be.

Since I was happy with where I was, I wanted to clone this C drive to the one I had been using.  This is where Acronis gave me an error for the first time since I've been using it.  I have done things like this before without problem.  Both drives are of the same size, although different makes. 

Here is the error:   Acronis failed to move your data because your new hard drive does not have enough free space to complete the operation.  The reasons follow:

1. Some of your partitions contain errors.  We recommend you reboot your OS and correct these errors, e.g. using chkdsk
2. Your new disk is much smaller than your old one. 


Well nr. 2 is eliminated since their sizes are the same.  Regarding nr. 1, I performed a chkdsk /f on the destination disk.  Same result.  I then formatted the destination disk to be sure it was OK.  Same result.  There were no bad sectors in the chkdsk report.

I ran chkdsk on the C drive and found that there were corrupt attribute records.  I am nervous about running it with /f because I don't have a backup.

Is this corruption the problem?  Can I safely run chkdsk /f without having to worry about losing the disk?

BTW I'm using Windows XP and NTFS file system.

Thank you.

[Geek-9pm]

You can safely run checkdsk with no options. It will identify but not correct problems. The problems may be trivial and it so you can ignore them.
The two discs are not the same size. One, the source,  is a tad larger.
A good practice is to have your drives divided into two or more partitions. That way have a way to avoid the size problem. A partition program can reduce the size of the partition a wee bit, enough to let Acronis  do its job.

[DaveLembke]

I also ran into the size issue with 2 drives I thought were exact. One was a WD 40GB and the other a Seagate 40GB drive. When looking at the drive properties they were very slightly mismatched in size and my master drive that I wanted to pass to the slave was just a few MB larger.

Fortunately it was also an XP system and I still had Ghost 2003 and Ghost 2003 allows you to clone drives of various sizes at ease.

With Acronis on my Windows 7 system that does not like Ghost 2003, I ended up resizing my C: drive before making my master image for C to the spare hard drive and the problems you are facing went away. I was able to take a 500GB master drive that only had like 78GB used on it and clone it to a spare 250GB HDD. Then swap out the drives and boot off of the 250GB drive. The capacity that I shrunk my partition to was 119GB so I could use a 120GB or larger drive if I ever had to. Did this in case I was to clone to a 120GB SSD in the future etc to not have to yet again resize smaller. I could always go and resize back to max capacity if I wanted too as well.

[bullwinkle]

So what can I do now?  I'm having trouble booting up...the screen stays on the moving blue slider until it just stops.  I can get it up using safe mode but that doesn't connect to the internet, which I need for my business.

I tried going back to the restore points.  No success there.

Finally I just turned off the power on the stalled screen, rebooted and it finally came up.  I'm not going to shut it down until I find a way to clone the C drive.

I'm wondering if those chkdsk problems are the reason for the trouble I'm having booting it up.

So what can I do now?  I do have a much bigger drive which is a clone of my data drive.  Should I just use that?  How can I partition the C drive if it's running?  Don't think I can.

Any suggestions on how I can create a clone of the C drive? (because I know I'm going to have these boot problems in the future and it would be helpful to have another drive to boot from)

[Geek-9pm]

I recommend you first  use the checkdsk with no options and see what it might do.

The post by DaveLembke outlines the method you need to use. Make the C drive smaller. You can get a version of a partition program that can do a modest resize with the system is running. It does that by putting the partition program into the start-up stuff.  It is automatic. EASUS has a free version that works good.
This is what I use:
http://www.easeus.com/
But here is an alternative.
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free
Shrink it just a bit and then you can copy it.

[bullwinkle]

Thank you for posting both of those resizing applications.  It seems to be just what I need.

I have downloaded and examined both, but they require a reboot to take effect because "Drive C is being used".

I am afraid to reboot for fear that the system won't come back.  It took me over half an hour to get it running this afternoon.

But I guess there's nothing for it...I'll do it in a day or two after I get some stuff done that I can't afford to ignore.

Thanks again - P.S. I used chkdsk on the C drive earlier - that's where I got the attribute errors.

[DaveLembke]

If you get into a bind to where Windows will not boot, your other option is to perform a Repair Installation of Windows XP which will fix for problems and not wipe out your important data and programs installed etc. Just be careful that your actually performing a repair installation and not a clean install or else it can wipe out your personal data and programs installed etc. If there is a way to backup your data prior to this, that would be best. Hopefully you already have a data protection method already in place such as to copy data to a cloud drive or external drive frequently to avoid a total data loss. On my one Windows XP system I have it as part of startup copying the local data to the NAS, and this way if I forget to manually run the batch file to xcopy source to destination /s/d/y, the next time I boot the system up or logon it will compare and update the data on my NAS.

[bullwinkle]

UPDATE:  I decided to go for it and reduced the partition on the destination drive.  The system wouldn't do a warm boot - just like before.  But did a cold boot when I cut power.

So now it seems that I'm OK once again - at least I hope so.  My destination drive has been going nuts since the reboot.  I have no idea what it's doing.  Plus when I do a DIR of my C and destination drive (E) I get a different result.  IOW, there are more files and unknown stuff on the E drive.  I thought they should be identical.  Meanwhile the E drive hasn't stopped chirping since the reboot. 

I should replace the C with the E and see if it boots.

I have just one last question:

How can I determine the actual size of a hard drive so I can now make my destination drive the same size as the source?  I'd like them to be interchangeable.

 Thank you, thank you, thank you!  All of you.  You saved me.

[DaveLembke]

How can I determine the actual size of a hard drive so I can now make my destination drive the same size as the source?

Drive Properties under Windows will tell you as well as other hard drive utilities and most partition resize tools will show a maximum capacity in which you can set the partition size to any value lesser than or equal to the maximum allowed capacity.

With Windows XP this is pretty easy, but if you are working with like Windows 7 for example you will find extra hidden partitions such as the System Reserved 100MB and also possibly a Recovery Partition of say 15GB, so then when you look at your 320GB HDD and wonder why so much is missing from the maximum size of C: you then find its because of these hidden partitions. But with XP you should be all set. Its pretty straight forward unless your going with Dual Boot etc.