I want to replace my Inspiron laptop 80 gig drive with a 320. I created an image of the 80 with Acronis True Image 2009, swapped the 80 with the 320 in the laptop, rebooted with the Acronis CD, and Acronis couldn't see the new drive. So, I booted the laptop with an XP CD and stopped the loading of XP after it formatted the 320 drive. After a couple of frustrated hours with Acronis, I put the 80 gig drive back in the laptop and attached the 320 via hard drive enclosure to the usb. The 320 gig drive is recognized by XP with 80 gig. I ran the WD Data Lifeguard Tools and even Easeus Partition Manager. They all say that the drive attached on the usb is 80 gig with NO unallocated space.

I'll appreciate any insights into this dilemma. This is the first time I'm trying to upgrade to a larger gig drive. I need advice.

This subject has been discussed many times already, read forum.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

Formatting won't change the size of the partition which is what I think your problem is here.

I'm not familiar with Acronis but maybe you need to change the imaging option. You don't want to keep the original boot track.

I have used Norton (Symantec) Ghost and with that you can restore an image to a larger drive and keep the larger size (it resizes the partition for you).

It just seems odd that 240 gig just vanished.

It didn't "vanish". If the partition table says it's got one 80GB partition then that's what will be available. Wipe the partition table (LBA 0) and then try formatting under Windows. 320GB will be back again...