I upgraded from a 320 GB HDD to a 500 GB HDD. I've followed every instruction, but my system (windows 7) still only shows the HDD capacity of 289 GB. I've done two full system recoveries (which takes about 10 hours). When I run disk management in Windows 7, it shows the HDD size as 497, but I can't change the volume size. I've tried Windows Boot from a CD and ran diskpart, etc., and extend, but get errors. I am truly at wits end. Can't believe there isn't a post for this matter.
Rebit Support Forum » Troubleshooting
Full size of new (larger) HDD not being recognized
(3 posts)-
Posted 11 months ago #
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Resolved - not sure exactly which part fixed it, but here are the steps that I took to fix it.
I left the new 500 GB HDD installed. I used a Recovery Disk that I created when I first bought the computer (VAIO Z570N). The Recovery Disk was Vista Business OS with a lot of extra on it. This "rebuild" took several hours, but once completed, the HDD was recognized at 457 GB. Then I had to decide what to do about the old (Vista) OS. I repeated the "Full System Recovery" process for Rebit (page 35 of the documentation) and "Recovering Your Hard Disk" steps (page 36 of the Rebit Documentation - notice the poor wording for step 6. It's not exactly clear that step 6, for USB drive users, is actually pretty short. I think the documentation should at least have a line-break between USB and Network sections. I digress). The full system recovery took 10+ hours. Since I had done this 2x before, I was very skeptical about what would happen, and what to do, next.
At the end of the recovery, I clicked "restart" in the bottom RH corner of the rebit screen. Note - there were no instructions to disconnect the rebit drive, so I left it connected. The compuer ejected the Rebit Boot CD, but did not boot. I reinserted the rebit boot CD, but still no boot. So I manually ejected the rebit boot CD. I was left with a black screen with "VAIO" in the middle and "Insyde H2BIOS" on the lower right. I waited about 15 minutes. Nothing. So then I disconnected rebit USB drive (recall there were no instructions about what to do with it). When I did, the computer booted with the "did not shutdown correctly" error message displayed. I selected the "boot with command prompt" option. Once I had the CMD window, I did the following. "diskpart" followed by "list disk" which listed my disks. Disk 0 was my new drive and it showed 465 GB (with 167 GB free). I then ran "list volume." My new HDD was volume 1, with only 289 GB as the size. Then I ran "select volume 1". Then I entered "extend" and the volume extended. I re-ran "list volume" and now volume 1 was showing 457 GB. I then closed the CMD window and was presented with a black screen with "safe mode" in each corner. Unsure of what to do, I relied on the old "CTRL-ALT-DEL" at which point I was able to select "restart." My system rebooted and I waited to ensure everything was completed (about 6 minutes). I opened "my computer" my drive C was now at 457 GB. I am now "happy," but still wish there had been a better description of what steps are required for upgraded to a larger HDD (and having rebit recognize it).
But now I have just one question for Rebit Technical Support. Do I keep my Rebit USB drive "as is?" I'm afraid that it may still retain the 289 GB HDD Volume. So should I keep and reuse the old rebit back-up or delete it and create a new one to ensure it recognizes the 500 GB HDD? (knowing that the first recovery point and back-up takes "FOREVER.")
Posted 11 months ago # -
Thank you for your detailed observations and suggestions. You should follow the reset Rebit instruction that are part of the sticky above.
In Rebit 5 there is a step to take advantage of a larger target disk during the recovery process.
In Rebit 3, the partition extender that is built-in to Windows Vista and Windows 7 works well.
Posted 11 months ago #
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