Clone Windows 8.1 drive to larger drive.

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I have an Acer Aspire R7 running Win 8.1. This version has a small ssd with 7.46gb and 14.90 gb partions and a 500gb hdd with a 400mb recovery, 300 mb EFI, 18.76 gb Recovery, C and D drives.
I need to move this to a larger drive.
I have a 2tb hdd mounted in an external housing.
I have a drive image (created with Image For Windows) that contains all 5 partitions.
When I attempt to restore to the new drive I get a message that the drive already contains a partition.
I had hoped to simply clone everything to the new drive, then unplug the old one and plug in the new one. I’ve done this in the past on multiple machines and OS, but never with 8.1 and these extra partitions.

Is there a way to do this, and should I even be concerned about the 400mb and 300mb partitions (what are they??)? I would at least keep the Recovery partition.

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You probably need to keep the small partitions as they contain Windows boot files.
Can you run Disk Manager (Start > Run, diskmgmt.msc) and post a screen shot so we can advise?
Screen shots can be done using Windows Snipping Tool, saving as PNG, then attaching to your post.

cheers, Paul

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Screen clip

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Visit the Image For Windows Support page, and have a look at the Users Guide. From page 28:

To back up an entire drive, check the box beside the Drive icon—HD0, HD1, etc. Remember, you can back up only one drive at a time. If you want to back up a partition, check the box beside that partition. When restoring an image of a partition, you might need to use the Update BOOT.INI, Set Active, and Write Standard MBR Code (or Restore First Track) options described in the section, “Image for Windows Restore Options.”

If you individually select all partitions on a drive, Image for Windows handles the backup as individual partition backups, not as a full drive backup. You can restore an entire drive in one restore operation using individual partitions, but you can’t set sizing or rescaling options or restore to a different location (sector/LBA).

Note the blue. That may be the cause of your error message, if you made your image by selecting each individual partition.

When I do what you’re wanting to do (link), I select the drive (HD0 or HD1, etc) and make that image. That image will restore to any larger drive.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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I thought I had selected at the drive level, but maybe not.
Will try that.
Thanks.

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I select ‘backup’ at the drive level.
When I attempted to ‘restore’ at the drive level (see capture.png) and select the drive to restore to I get the error (see capture2.png), doesn’t let me select freespace.
I finally was able to make it work by selecting one item at a time and restoring to freespace.
It will be a while before I can pull in and see if it actually works.

Thanks.

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Would using Macrium or Acronis make this easier?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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I haven’t used either of these. From reading about them, looks like they might have the same problem.
If what I’m doing works, it will beat Geek Squads (this was a Best Buy purchased computer) recommendation…put in new drive and do complete reinstall. We hope to avoid that because software for a vinyl cutter is a pain to reinstall and get all the fonts and pattern libraries working.

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The four disks you have listed in IfW all have existing partitions. Try deleting the partitions on the disk you want to use, then select it as the restore destination.

cheers, Paul

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The system wouldn’t let me delete the GPT on the new drive, so I restored everything but the GPT from the backup, one at a time to the ‘free space’.
The data partition is restoring now.
Then I’ll plug it in and see if this works.

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Your images help me understand a bit better. Your target drive does not need a MSR partition, because you are restoring an MSR partition.

Use DISKPART on your target drive (HD3 as shown in your image). Open an elevated command prompt, and type (without the quotes) “diskpart” and hit Enter.

Once the DISKPART loads, type (without the quotes) “list disk” and hit Enter. Note in the listing that appears which is your target disk (there should be an asterisk under the GPT column).

Using that number, type (without the quotes) “select disk #” and hit Enter (where “#” is the number of your target disk). You will see “Disk # is now the selected disk.” (where “#” is your target disk).

Next type (without the quotes) “clean” and hit Enter.

Now try your full disk restore with Image For Windows.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Finally had time to put in the new HDD. Got a Recovery screen when tried to boot.
Will try to redo the clone using your suggestion.
May be forced to do a complete reinstall, as this version of the Aspire R7 appears to be running the little ssd and the hdd in some kind of RAID configuration. Installing the clone may not work.
Just have to try it and see what shakes out.

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SSD / HDD combos usually run as a cache – the SSD is the cache for the HDD. The cache is set up in the BIOS and you must turn that off before trying the new disk. (Press Del several times when you turn the computer on.)

cheers, Paul

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