EFI system partition problem.....

hi....im using windows 7 ultimate on ibm x61....i want to clone my
80gb hd to 160gb hd......problem is when i look at my hd in disk
management i see my C partition with the os and files on... next there
is a 32mb EFI partition......when i clone the C partition to my 160gb
hd i get the 74.50 gb NTFS C partition and the EFI
partition.......then when i go into disk management i cant expand the
C partition volume because the EFI partition is blocking it....how do
i move or delete this EFI partition...i tried in diskpart but cant see
the EFI partition.......thanks for any help.....

 

What program are you using to clone the disk and who manufactures the
new drive?

Some manufacturers have their "own" free hdd clone program. WD and
Seagate come to mind. They are both based on Acronis. I *think* they
work this way: The free Seagate program will create an image of whatever
partition on whatever brand drive (it shows all my partitions on all
four of my various drives) but it will ONLY write the image to a Seagate
hdd. The same for WD I guess. Check with website of the manufacturer of
your new drive to see what they offer.

 

hi...thanks for relpy....i dont have any problem cloning the drive but
when i install the larger hd i cant expand the volume of the C
partition because the EFI partition is still there,,,,, so on my
larger hd i get the original C partition then the EFI 32 MB partition
then the extra free space on the larger hd.......i cant expand the C
partition into the free space because the EFI partition is in the
middle...the EFI partion has no drive letter so i cant move it or
delete it.....thanks

 

Well trying to delete this partition under Windows 7 will probably be
next to impossible. Booting from the Windows 7 DVD should have utilities
that should be able to handle it I believe.

If not, there are other CD boot utilities like Paragon Partition Manager
(there is a free version too) and EaseUS Partition Master (also free).
Or use your favorite partitioning boot CD to do the job. Don't even try
to delete it under Windows.

 

Acronis True Image (has a 15 day trial version available)
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Acronis True Image Seagate Edition (DiscWizard)
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Acronis True Image WD Edition
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&type=download&wdc_lang=en

Paragon DriveBackup Express (free)
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

XXClone, A New Way of Cloning the Windows System Disk (free)
http://www.xxclone.com/

 

Last time I looked, the trial version was fully functional, so if you
move fast ...

Still, I paid for it and use it for my nightly backups

 

I bought Acronis True Image 2009 and 2011 and I hate both of them. And
not too much difference between the two versions actually. Acronis True
Image for many years has had problems with some USB controllers. Oh they
backup to any of them just fine. Just when restoring they can't find
some of the drives. Some others, some days they can see them and
sometimes they can't. Not good at all.

I also use Paragon products and they are about the same as Acronis True
Image. Although no USB controller problem. Paragon full backups are
fine, but incremental backups takes forever (much longer than a full
backup actually). Acronis True Image is far better for incremental.
Otherwise not much of a difference.

Nowadays I only use Acronis True Image just for cloning. And Acronis
True Image can't clone live (under Windows). Although Paragon and
XXClone can and does. Nowadays I don't make backups, but I clone instead
and use the clone drives. I have about 5 drives that I rotate.

I didn't think XXClone was going to be too good, but I was surprised how
well it works and it is only 1.6MB in size. The commercial version will
also do incremental cloning which is like unheard of. And unlike Acronis
True Image and Paragon, has nothing running in the background when the
application isn't running.

 

The idea of trying to clone an active drive is just too creepy to
contemplate.

 

Yes, that is why run off of the clone drive to make sure everything is
just fine. If something is wrong, I always have the original. And
checking the XXClone log this last time, like 34 files failed to copy.
And they were all active (open) temps and log files. Which is no big
deal for a cloned copy. I am really impressed by both Paragon and
XXClone ability to clone an active drive. When I am not cloning an
active drive, I am still use Acronis True Image to clone.

 

Sigh.

Create a small partition equal in size to the EFI partition
in the free space starting at ( (last block) - (number of blocks in EFI) ).
Clone the EFI partition to this new partition. Delete old EFI. Add
free space to C:.



"And on the 8th day, God created the system administrator,
told him to go forth and make sure the internet stayed up, then flew off
to an executive summit on Maui."

 

been using Casper for years and it's saved my butt more than once. My main
box runs 2 500g drives and I have 2 500 gb drives in a USB enlosure. I can
backup (clone) both drives in about 5 minutes so usually do it at shutdown
each night. 100% good copies every time with one click of the mouse. Works
great on my 3 Desktops and 2 Laptops, but use Paragon for my eePC since HD
can't be swapped.

 

forgot to add the fact that with Casper you can set/change the size of the
partitions on the target drive when you clone ...which might solve the OP's
problem

 

I heard a lot of people mention this about their favorite software.
Although I haven't seen any software in the past 10 years that doesn't
do this.

 

You can clone 1TB in 5 minutes over USB2? Surely you must be taking
about an incremental backups right? As it takes me about an hour per
100GB. Thus 1TB would take me about 10 hours over USB2.

I had to quit using Paragon with my EeePCs. Oh it backs up through
Windows just fine. Although restoring with the Paragon Linux boot CD
doesn't fit the 800x480 screen. And there was no way to shift things
around. Also I don't believe an external monitor works in this case
since I seem to remember the external monitor is locked at the same
resolution. I never tried the Paragon WinPE boot CD. Maybe that one
would work just fine.

 

Casper has a feature called Smart Clone. The first time you run it it takes
a long time to copy to a new drive. After that it's a matter of minutes
since it scans the drives and only copies any files that were changed or
added since the last tme. So yes it's incremental in that sense. I usually
can re-clone each 500gb drive in 3-4 minutes which I do almost daily...at
least the C Drive. Twice now I have had C Drive failures....once the drive
went belly up and once it got infected. Dropped the side of the computer and
replaced the bad drive with the cloned one from the USB enclosure and was
back up and running in a couple of minutes

Just yesterday I made a new boot disc for my eeePC 701 using Paragon. I use
a 2gb Flash Card. When I booted with it I used the Safe MOde No Graphics
option and it fit the screen perfectly. I stopped there and didn't actually
do a restore from the Paragon arc file which I have on another 4gb flash
card, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Seems to me I did the whole
restore operation a few years ago to test it out and didn't have any
graphics problems.

 

Ah okay, XXClone Pro does the same thing. Although they call theirs as
incremental.

I am sure I tried that and I actually tried to restore and I had
problems. Also interesting, Asus XP restore disc uses a limited version
of Ghost32.exe to restore XP. Although it can only restore. Getting the
real Ghost32.exe and running it from say BartPE works and fits the small
screen with lots of room to spare. So that is what I use on my EeePCs.
Also works well backing up and restoring Linux too.

 

I know I'm living in the past (Jethro Tull - huh? not heard of them
either? oh.)
but Norton Ghost <=8) fitted on a 1.44M floppy (It was an ancient form of
removable media, m'lord)

 

I really don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick.

Ghost used to be cool but has sucked since version 10. A bootable CD
and dd is probably as close as you can get these days. Just whistle through
you teeth and spit, 'cause it's all right.

"The discs are squealing,clicking too
the firmware says "replace drive soon"
Read errors do from syslogs spew,
but it's all right.
Must've been a cosmic ray
kinda sucks but anyway,
looks like rebuild time today,
but it's all right..."

Lol, apologies to Mr. Hunter et. al.

 

I wouldn't mess with it but are you really concerned about 32mb when
you are dealing with 160gb of space? It's not worth your time IMO.

 

I forgot to mention that also when you format any drive, you loose a
little bit in capacity .... I use a rule of thumb of approx 5% tho
that's not exact.