"How can I get the entire disk in the one partition - FOR FREE." - there are some free partition manager or similar programs on the web, but off hand I don't know their names. With those you simply re-size the partition so it fills the unallocated space. - some free drive prepartion utilities you get from hard drive manufacturer's web sites copy the complete contents of partitions to already formatted partitions. Some will only copy a partition to unallocated space, in which case the destination partition ends up the same size as the source partition, unless the formatting type is different in which case it is slightly larger or smaller, and the remaining unallocated drive space is still unallocated. Some will copy existing partition contents to their destination and partition/format all of the destination hard drive. ..... An example of the first type? Older versions of MaxBlast I believe, ones made by Ontrack (a brand specific crippled version of Disk Manager - other manufacturers that use Ontrack made software may have the same capability). You can copy the contents of just one partition from a hard drive that has more than one. An example of the third type? The current version of MaxBlast. You probably have to have at least one Maxtor or Seagate or Quantum hard drive on the computer. The current version of MaxBlast on the Seagate site is made by Acronis and only clones a whole drive, however many partitions are on it, to another drive, adjusting the partition sizes proportionately if there is more than one partition automatically, or you can adjust partition sizes manually, if the drives are different sizes. (try automatically; if it doesn't leave enough space on a partition choose the manual method and make adjustments) It partitions and formats the entire destination drive partition(s). It will do what you want if the source drive has only one partition. It automatically overwrites whatever is on the destination drive. This version of MaxBlast is relatively large. It will run fine from the source drive if there is nothing wrong with it. It has to be installed on the drive. You can also make a set of floppies you can boot from once you have installed it but it requires a lot of them, or make a bootable CD. It's relatively fast on a fast computer. .... A disadvantage of cloning a partition vs copying the entire contents of one is if there are any bad sectors on the source, the locations of the bad sectors are copied to the destination partition. You cannot easily get rid of falsely marked bad sectors in XP and previous without wiping the partrition, but in Vista you can deal with that.

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When you buy a new HDD, a software CD is *usually* included. If it's not, the same software is available thru the HDD manufacturer's website. With that software, you can partition, format, customize cluster size, test drive integrity, write zeros to the drive, etc. You can also CLONE the entire contents of an existing drive to the new drive. In other words, all you need is the manufacturer's software. Most people pay no attention to these CDs & then go about things the hard way. But if you clone a smaller HDD to a larger HDD, I believe you will still need a 3rd party program such as Partition magic to reclaim the rest of the space.

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Thank you all for your help. It is much appreciated. I will try to address your comments as best I can, but I will likely use the wrong terms in places, because I really don't know the difference between clone, copy, and image. I guess I've been spoiled by Ghost. When I use 98se or Me, I just clone the whole bloody thing in 10 minutes, produce an exact bootable reproduction that I exchange for the original, without even the slightest noticeable difference. I had success with xxClone, I think it may have been Cuffy who suggested this app, but the clone took longer to boot, and some of my tool bars were slightly off centre, both things that I can live with if necessary. So I decided to look for something 'perfect', like Ghost. TheNerd - Yes, you're right. The source disk is 8 gig and the destination is 19 gig. Cuffy - I want an exact bootable copy of my source OS on ONE partition, that takes up all the available space of my destination drive. "That app is at v.95 in development which gives it license to do pretty much anything it wants without any accountability. Are you aware of that?" No, I wasn't aware. Is it the v.95 which is the tip off? "...you're cloning, or making an exact copy, of the FILES on that drive and not cloning a hard drive. You clone the contents!" My mistake. I didn't mean to imply that I could make an exact copy of the HDD. "Disk management has nothing to do with the size of the cloned files??" Yes, I know, but Disk Management is what told me that I had 10.78 gigs of unallocated space on my destination drive. I was just citing it as my source of information. "You can't repartition a cloned drive if I understand that part of the conversation." That's one of the things I was wanting to know. "If you have unallocated disk space you should allocate it by giving it a drive letter assignment and formatting it to whatever filesystem you are using, probably NTFS?" I'd rather not do that. I would like to have only one partition, the size of the entire drive. Stuart - "Cloning files can simply be done with the copy command. Cloning a partition is a different thing altogether. Cloning an entire hard disk is very rarely done unless the disk consists of a single partition. Cloning is done by partitions, not by files. Files are copied." Thanks for the expanation. "With the unallocated space you have two choices. Either extend the existing partition with something like Partition Manager or create another partition to fill the space using Disk Management." or use XXClone, which does not require repartitioning. TheNerd "I think he just wants to use the whole disk with one partition." You got it! Hi TubesandWires - "You probably have to have at least one Maxtor or Seagate or Quantum hard drive on the computer." Yes, they're both quantum drives, but for some reason MaxBlast 5 doesn't recognize them (maybe quantum drives are no longer recognized in version 5), and MaxBlast 4 refuses to open; it installs, but when click on maxblast.exe, aside from the mouse pointer showing an hourglas for a couple of seconds, nothing happens. I don't understand it. Maxblast was my first choice, but........ "A disadvantage of cloning a partition vs copying the entire contents of one is if there are any bad sectors on the source, the locations of the bad sectors are copied to the destination partition." Good point. I hadn't thought of that. Jam - Thanks for you input. I think I answered your comments above. ....... john www.cedargallery.nl

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OK. I assumed the latest version of MaxBlast should support Quantum drives. I know you can use it if you have Seagate and/or Maxtor drives for sure. Do you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive you can install as well temporarily? It probably doesn't even have to be formatted. I assumed that earlier versions of MaxBlast should support Quantum drives, since they certainly did at one time. You could do anything with any drive as long as one drive was Maxtor, or in older versions, Maxtor or Quantum. I have noted older versions of MaxBlast or PowerMax don't work properly with some more recent drives. The only Quantum drives I still have are 540mb or less. ....... In any case this still applies: "- there are some free partition manager or similar programs on the web, but off hand I don't know their names. With those you simply re-size the partition so it fills the unallocated space." I looked around on my computer for info about that. Here's one: http://www.partitionlogic.org.uk/ Perhaps others who answer can suggest other ones.

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I see this discussion is still going on. I'm still not sure of the mission, if we should chose to accept it, but maybe somebody can try again to outline what you're trying to do??? Maybe this will work: You have a C:\ drive and 10+GB of unallocated space. You don't want to partition the drive? The C:\ partition can be moved from left to right to include the unallocated space in the boot partition, making C:\ 10+GB larger. Warn me if this is not the case. The cloning operation with XXClone can use a larger target partition, OR a SMALLER target partition (smaller than the source) as long as the cloned files will fit on the smaller partition. Did this not work?? NOW! I'm losing something maybe? What is the point of cloning your system files and using the system partition as the target partition? If the drive goes south and takes your operating system it's going to take the cloned copy right along with it. I use an image file made with Acronis True Image 11 to image my system partition to Drive F:, where I can easily retrieve it if XP takes a dump. I also burn a copy to a DVD, making this image before the system files plus added apps exceed the limit of 4GBs that the DVD will hold, so I have a place to start if the machine goes south along with the HDDs. Am I off on a lark in the park?

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free http://www.ranish.com/part/

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Hi TubesandWires, Well, I scrounged up a (27 gig) Maxtor drive, and tried Maxblast 5 (the version on the UBCD disk, and low and behold it worked, and very well I might add. There is only one minor problem, and that is that the clone takes about a minute longer to boot than the original. (I noticed the same thing when I was trying XXClone.) Any idea what might be causing this? (The slow down is right when the little curser is going back and forth across the the opening XP window.) Thanks again. P.S. For anyone trying this - While using MaxBlast on the UBCD disk, I was not able to move my mouse, i.e. I had to run the program via the keyboard. If I moved the mouse I was immediately ejected from the program, and my computer rebooted. Hi Cuffy - It looks like Maxblast 5 has done pretty much what I wanted, make a bootable copy of my OS that takes up the entire drive space in one partition. Thanks for you help. ..... john www.cedargallery.nl

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It's good to hear you have found a solution that works. The data contents are identical - there should be no difference to the amount of time it takes to get to the desktop if the hard drive you now boot from has identical or nearly identical specs, as long as nothing else such as bios settings that affect that have been changed. If the hard drive you are now booting is significantly different from the one the one that was booted from before - e.g. if the ram buffer on the drive is smaller, or the max burst speed (UMDA rating) is less, that could certainly account for the difference. If you have anything wireless between you and your internet connection, that may affect the time it takes to boot all the way to the desktop because how long Windows takes to detect a wireless connection while booting can vary quite a bit.

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Hi, Yes, I feel that it's somethng to do with the harddrive, but I don't know what. They're both from around the same era. Thanks again for your help. ....john www.cedargallery.nl

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