Looking for some help making a hard drive image...

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
5,713
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I don't know where this goes so I'm just putting it in OT since this is about as active a forum we have here and there are a lot of smart people.

I have a hard drive that is 500gigs and it has 4 partitions on it. The 4 partitions are about a total of 7.3gigs, so there is like 490gigs of unallocated space.

One partition is a linux OS, 1 is the game data that runs after startup, 1 is swap, and I don't even know what the other one is for.

I am trying to make a hard drive image of the allocated space, so that I can have an image that is (max) 7.3gigs, with all 4 partitions.

I tried using Clonezilla and it only saw 3 of the 4 partitions. Then when I tried to make it, it failed on 2 of the partitions and I don't recall the error. The partition that did work was the one with the game data on it. I also don't know if it would have made a full 500gb image or not.

I tried to use HDD Raw Copy to do it but it was creating a full 500gb image.

Does anyone know if it's possible to do what I am trying to do, where I just have an image that is the size of the allocated space? Preferably with freeware software too.

My goal is to put this on a little 8GB SSD SATA card that I have so that is why I am trying to do this.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
5,713
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Did you try macrium reflect?
You the man dog!

Just grabbed it and made the image which turned out to be just over 2gigs on my HDD.

When I went to load up the image it still had some reference that it was from the 500gb drive, however it wrote to the 8gb drive just fine.

I then tested it out and booted it and I believe it's working as it should. It's doing the same thing it was prior. I'm still waiting for a VGA adapter to come tomorrow so I can test it out in my arcade cabinet, but on my monitor after it appears that the game is booting up the screen goes black and says "out of range" which after googling means it's trying to send a signal to m monitor that my monitor cannot decipher.

But tomorrow I will know if the game actually works fully. But it appears to be doing the same thing with this 8gb drive as it is with the larger drive.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,244
10,748
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You the man dog!

Just grabbed it and made the image which turned out to be just over 2gigs on my HDD.

When I went to load up the image it still had some reference that it was from the 500gb drive, however it wrote to the 8gb drive just fine.

I then tested it out and booted it and I believe it's working as it should. It's doing the same thing it was prior. I'm still waiting for a VGA adapter to come tomorrow so I can test it out in my arcade cabinet, but on my monitor after it appears that the game is booting up the screen goes black and says "out of range" which after googling means it's trying to send a signal to m monitor that my monitor cannot decipher.

But tomorrow I will know if the game actually works fully. But it appears to be doing the same thing with this 8gb drive as it is with the larger drive.


I'm a little late to the party but I agree Reflect is one of my go-to PC software tools. Even the free version is super-useful.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
94,661
14,928
126
You the man dog!

Just grabbed it and made the image which turned out to be just over 2gigs on my HDD.

When I went to load up the image it still had some reference that it was from the 500gb drive, however it wrote to the 8gb drive just fine.

I then tested it out and booted it and I believe it's working as it should. It's doing the same thing it was prior. I'm still waiting for a VGA adapter to come tomorrow so I can test it out in my arcade cabinet, but on my monitor after it appears that the game is booting up the screen goes black and says "out of range" which after googling means it's trying to send a signal to m monitor that my monitor cannot decipher.

But tomorrow I will know if the game actually works fully. But it appears to be doing the same thing with this 8gb drive as it is with the larger drive.

I learned of Macrium Reflect here xd
 
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Svnla

Lifer
Nov 10, 2003
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Subscribe to this thread because I am planning to get a new HD (SSD) for my old laptop.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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It... might help... if the OP explicitly described, that the HDD in question that he is intending to clone to a solid-state storage device... is an arcade machine's HDD. Meaning, it may not use PC-style partitioning (though I gather that it does?), or "partition types", and disk cloning tools that are not "forensic", may not work adequately.

IOW, this has effectively ZERO relevance to PC cloning.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
5,713
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It... might help... if the OP explicitly described, that the HDD in question that he is intending to clone to a solid-state storage device... is an arcade machine's HDD. Meaning, it may not use PC-style partitioning (though I gather that it does?), or "partition types", and disk cloning tools that are not "forensic", may not work adequately.

IOW, this has effectively ZERO relevance to PC cloning.
Actually you are wrong. As mentioned it's just running a normal distro of Linux. There is absolutely nothing special about it other than the input/output that is handled separately by an I/O board that connects to the motherboard.

Also as mentioned, it's already been resolved.
 

Charmonium

Diamond Member
May 15, 2015
8,782
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I love Macrium relect, but if you use it to do image backups of your boot drive(s), I would suggest testing out the restore function via the boot cd. I've had trouble using the boot cd from one system on another. You should probably also do this if youu make any upgrades.