cloning drive with Hidden Partitions, any solutions?

[TerraNova]

Quiet often pc or laptops with Hidden Partitions like DELL, HP etc....when cloning drive from 80G to 300G it only clone the 80G and left the 220G unallocated. therefore when windows boots you have drive C:\ with 80G and D:\ with 220G unallocated/unformatted.

Is there any sotware that can clone Hidden partitions and expand the unalocated space to full?

thank you.

[thatdellguy]

Hiren's Bootcd

[rchadwick]

Depending on the circumstances, you could probably use Ghost, with the right command line parameters.

[shahij]

use Acronis True Image...
it will help you to do the job.

[koala]

as i know, in some points, the cost is the same both in 80G or 220G when a factory produce the hard drive. but for the different demand of the marketing, the factory open the different content.

just in my opinion, it need to modify some information in the FW after calibrating.

[TerraNova]

i dont understand what you're trying to explain koala.

[koala]

maybe i make a mistake.

i mean: some times, a hard drive which marks 80G may is 200G in fact. because it takes the same cost to produce them,80G or 200G.

but for the different demand, they mark the different content in the HD.

[BlackST]

@TerraNova,

GHOST works, you have to deal with command line. You can then use the remaining space for making another partition after the drive gets recognised, just in case the new drive is bigger than the source.
It worked for me with HP and TOSHIBA with recovery partition(s), also for backing up.

[BlackST]

@Koala, please check the facts before posting : Drives ARE NOT all equal, your opinion applies only with drives made with excess inventory parts. On the contrary, drives originally meant to be i.e. 200 GB and with excessive errors can be fully requalified and downsized/downgraded for a lower capacity.
If you were right, simply changing the geometry and eventually the firmware and with some defect scan you can get 200 GB drives for the price of 80... (never happened).
For some brands, all drives with same physical specs are IDENTICAL after STW then heads /zones/etc. are disabled accordingly to the quality of the surface.

[TerraNova]

thanks all for your replies