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Partition Magic sees my HD as chock-full, with no partitions

M

mset

Senior member
Hi guys

Just let me know if this belongs in Hardware.

Bought A WD 74 GB Raptor from a high heatware member here. The drive is fine, but.. when I built my new rig I asked for a partition. It was my intention to have the OS on one partition, data on another. I have now decided to do full imaging to an external HD as a backup protocol, so I want to clear the partition, to just have one volume on my primary internal HD.

I installed Partition Magic and opened it up. It shows my primary drive... but it shows it as being 100% full, which it isn't. Also, my partitions ( C: and G: ) do not show up - it is shown as one big volume with a Yellow border (this means dynamic disk, I assume). My external drive appears as well, but it shows as being as full as it actually is.

Another weird thing. I have Acronis TrueImage Server 9.1. TrueImage won't 'see' my primary HD when I ask it to make a clone of a drive. The only drive I can choose when I ask for a cloning procedure is my external drive. However, Acronis does show my internal drive when I ask to do a backup. In this case I see the internal disc listed after my external disc, under the header 'Dynamic and GPT volumes'. I can also see the C: and G: partitions here. I have done a full 'backup' of the primary disc, although the size of the backup file, which now resides on my external USB drive, is only 11GB and the size of the entire contents of C: (which is what I was trying to back up) is 16.9 gigs. I am assuming that 'full backup of disc' in Acronis does not mean the OS. (I am not a tech guy, as you can tell by now). This is why I tried the cloning procedure. (Is cloning the same thing as 'Imaging'??)

My questions are

1) Is it possible that although the seller wiped the HD in good faith, there is something left on it that is preventing me from both using Partition Magic to manipulate the partitions and from using TrueImage to make a clone of the drive, or even from making an effective partition in the first place? (I did not mention that until today, when I 'added a volume' to the space, the 2nd partition was showing up as a black bordered 'unallocated space' when I viewed it through Windows Disc Management. I added a volume and now it is called G: and has a green border around it).

2) Does anyone have any suggestion for getting around either of these problems?

What I want is to end up with a set-up whereby complete images of my entire rig are copied to my external USB drive (full image and then incremental additions), and in the event of internal HD failure, I can just go and get the latest image from the external USB drive and install it on a new HD and carry on as usual.

As I mentioned, I am not a tech guy but trying hard to learn - this build was my first one ever.

Thanks, Nik

 
"1) Is it possible that although the seller wiped the HD in good faith, there is something left on it that is preventing me from both using Partition Magic to manipulate the partitions and from using TrueImage to make a clone of the drive, or even from making an effective partition in the first place? (I did not mention that until today, when I 'added a volume' to the space, the 2nd partition was showing up as a black bordered 'unallocated space' when I viewed it through Windows Disc Management. I added a volume and now it is called G: and has a green border around it)."

Yes it is possible that there is a hidden partition on the drive. I only know of one way to fix it - and that is to FDISK the drive, delete every partition, and start over. It might even have to be low level formatted.

 
Hi Corky

Yeah, everything I am seeing is pointing to a full data backup and a reformat. I'll find out what 'low level' formatting is.

At any rate... I have used TrueImage to back up my entire HD and the backup is now sitting on my external drive - it's called MyBackup. It's 11 GB, whereas my C: drive is 16.9 GB... I guess because of the OS and apps and such not being included. I will have to figure out how to check this backup to make sure that I can restore my data after reformatting and reinstalling windows.

Maybe I can try restoring this backup file to the empty G: partition on my primary drive...
 
Low Level Formatting is a lengthy process - can take all night. It is available on most OEM utility disks such as IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. WDC and Maxtor also have such utilities.
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Low Level Formatting is a lengthy process - can take all night. It is available on most OEM utility disks such as IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test. WDC and Maxtor also have such utilities.
Click to expand...


Ok thanks Corky. Complete wipe and reformat is now clearly my best option. I guess I just have to give it a go.

If anyone else wants to chime in with one last comment re: the best way to ensure that this backup file, created by True Image, which is now on my external drive is actually a backup of all my data, I'd appreciate it. How do you check that a backup is good when you don't actually have to restore your data?

Also... my HD is now partitioned into two volumes - C: is the primary drive with the OS, G: is empty. Do I have to put the OS on G: volume before I could test the backup by restroing it to G? I assume that this is the case. If so, is it possible to load Windows onto G:, even though it is a volume on the sam disc that C: is on?

Basically, can Windows reside on both volumes simultaneously, and can I install Windows on any empty volume?
 
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