PC hardware forum: why this error message concerning hard drive

I've used Acronis and Clonezilla BUT I need more details.

I can't find which HP laptop this is. The newer EFI (that's the new BIOS system) will indeed cause a lot of added expense today. I won't write why but it is going to cost a lot of folk more than they ever expected.

So, what laptop is this? And is it EFI?
Bob

http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/copy-dynamic-volume.htm

Will the free for home use vs clone one HD to another? I have looked at it and see that the Home use vs
is free.

It's free and free to try. As this is an EFI bios, the result should be interesting.
Bob

HP g7-2238nr Win 8

Cloning on such machines does require the latest and the plus packs.

Try the free clone tool I noted next.
Bob

The drive in my laptop now (old) is Seagate ST1000LMO24 does not say if it is Dynamic drive or not? What if it is basic, will the program clone from basic to dynamic?

Chatted with them for some time and they gave me all the details and said it would work for me. He said it would clone from any drive type to any drive type and they did not have to be the same. If you clone a dynamic drive then you will get a dynamic clone no matter what type drive you clone from to.

Thanks for the info. I ordered the 29.95 vs as the free one only worked for 15 days and I wanted one permenant for my use.

A clone is what I would want. A duplicate of said drive. Why would I want anything else?

I bought EaseUS to-do backup 5.5.
They told me via Support Chat that it would do what I wanted to do but so far I can't figure that it will.
I sent message to their support forum and then they told me that they did not tell me that.
Here is my problem:

I have a 500 GB Seagate in my lap top which is a GPT drive.
I have a 1TB new Seagate drive that I want to use as my target for cloning the 500 GB drive.

When I hook up the 1TB drive via USB 03 port on my computer and check in Disk Management (Windows 8), the exterior drive shows up as Disc 1 which says it needs to be initialized. I clicked on it to initialize it and it shows that it will be initialized as GPT.

The EaseUS to-do backup 5.5 will not clone the interior hard drive to the exterior one. I checked with their support and they told me that it would not partition the drive. They say I have to buy more softrware from them that will partition it.

Can I partition this exterior drive as GPT partitioned HD by useing Windows 8 Disk Management?

My interior HD is partitioned GPT into 2 partitions C: and D: (D is the HP recovery partition)?

Thanks for your help

My operation system is Windows 8 and my laptop is HP g7-2238nR.
I have added 4 GB memory which now makes it 8 GB. This is the only changes I have made to the factory state.

Tom

When I clone the drive I never had to partition it or initialize it. Since I don't own Todo, I can't offer you a click by click.
Bob

was your drive dynamic drive GPT partitioned? Evidently with EaseUS to-do Home 5.5 it will
not clone one that is. Now they tell me you have to buy their partition software. I wonder if
disc management in Win 8 will initialize and partition it?

In the worse case scenarios I use the sector copy of Clonezilla. If Todo has no support, not a good buy.

Again, something's off because I've never had to format or partition a target drive.
Bob

Last night I asked EaseUS abou this and they told me that their software EaseUS todo backup 5.5 would not clone any drive, it would only back it up. I told them if that was the case I would
ask for my money back since they told me it would and their software definitely has a Clone icon.

I was able to make the clone last night which proves to me that their support does not know what they are talking about. Most of the time they just refer you to their website where articles tell you how to do it.

I did initialize the disc and partition it with Windows Disc Management. When it cloned the C: and D: drive it showed different drive letters but I can fix that later, I guess.

This left some partitions too large and some unallocated.

What I am going to do now is completely erase the target drive and try to do this without
initializing it. According to some of their guides it should do it for me.

Their latest reply to me was that why don't you initialize it first with windows disc mgmt. and see if that will work.

Tom

I've used a couple of the Easeus programs and have been favorably impressed, but I use Norton Ghost for cloning. I've been using it for 8 years without the first problem, so if you continue having problems with what you've got, you should try Ghost. It retails for around $70, but it you watch the sales, you can get it with $70 worth of rebates. Frys for one has it on sale every 2-3 months.

Good luck.

Again, when I clone drives, and I've only been doing this since about the IBM XT days, clone software copies the source drive to a blank drive. No formatting or partitions had to exist.

I hope you plow ahead and get it done.
Bob

Thanks.
I did clone it but it was not correct because I had partitioned the drive. Now I have deleted the patitions and it shows as one with no partitions except one that says healthy and I don't know what that is.

I am recloning it and it looks better except it shows that the target drive will have A: partition which will be the same size as C: on the internal drive and F: which will be the size of the
D: HP Recovery. The only strange thing I see is the target shows this way:
A: same GB as source partition and next to it is F: same size as source and after that the rest of the drive is Grey with XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXall way to end. I assume this is
the rest of the drive that is not used. Will that be added to the A: partition.

I assume I can install the cloned drive into my computer and rename the A and F partitions to C: and D:. I don't know why it changed the drive labels.

Can I add this empty space to the partition which is now labeled A?

I thank you for your help in this.

Tom

Is the same size here. I can change it later with GPARTED or other tools.
Bob