Aspire Switch 12 SW5-271-69LN Disk Upgrade & Recovery Partition Problem

TechWizard
TechWizard Member Posts: 3 New User
in 2016 Archives

In this post, I'm going to briefly describe some of the processes I went through to upgrade the SSD in this Windows 10, 64-Bit system. Unfortunately, I had to remove the recovery partition in order to complete the process, so if anyone can provide any advice to avoid having to do this, it will be a great help to me, and others. If anyone has any additional questions about upgrading this unit, do not hesitate to post here or contact me directly. 

 

Hardware

I successfully replaced the stock - 64GB Lite-On L8H-64V2G M.2 (SATA bus) SSD with a Crucial MX200 250GB m.2 SSD. For info on how to unassemble the unit, @padget briefly describes the process here: Aspire Switch 12 disk upgrade.

*You will need suitable plastic spudgers, and proceed carefully with caution so as not to break the plastic clips. Also, don't forget to disconnect the battery connector from the base unit (you'll see a white plastic connector which provides power to the top part of the unit, simply disconnect this), otherwise you'll be in for a nasty shock if you touch the LCD inverter!

 

Software - Disk Cloning

I used a live version of CloneZilla on a Bootable USB Stick to clone the disk. As I could only use one of the USB ports to save the cloned image to an external hard drive (I didn't have a USB 3 micro B adapter at the time), I used the version that loaded CloneZilla into RAM allowing 'hot swapping' of the boot USB stick with the external drive. Then I swapped the drive over and restored the image, happy days. 

 

Problems

Now, this was all well and good, but due to the recovery partition being at the end of the disk, it became problematic to expand the system drive into the empty space. Here's how the disk structure looks:

 

Partition 1: EFI 

Partition 2: MSR

Partition 3: Data

Partition 4: Recovery

 

So when I restored this to the new drive, I ended up with unallocated space after partition 4, meaning I couldn't expand the Data partition into it. I tried using Clonezilla to dynamically resize the disk, but ended up with all partitions being 4 times larger (to account for the new drive being 4 times larger), and the system wouldn't boot. There were various other scenarios I encountered where Windows wouldn't even detect the extra 'unallocated' space, the filesystem thought it was a 64GB drive, but the drive was still registering as a 250GB disk. After booting into linux, I could assign the unallocated space. I also tried moving the recovery partition to the end of the disk, but then the system wouldn't boot.

 

I tried disk checks, repairing the MBR and the EFI boot manager, but I had no luck. I tried other cloning software - Macrium Reflect, but inevitably ran into the same problem, the recovery partition was hindering the process, and after an entire day trying to find a solution, I gave up and just deleted the recovery partition. I still have it imaged should I ever need it... but I think I'll just use the Windows 10 recovery system should a problem occur.

 

So, my question is, out of curiosity; is it possible to clone a disk to a larger disk and expand a single partition that doesn't reside at the end of the disk? 

Answers

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    If you use Windows 10 to create a recovery flash drive, at the end of the process you should be given the option to delete the partition (same thing is now on the flash). Then pull a system inage and you can use use the recovery flash to boot and the image to load the new drive. Only caveat: the new disk needs to be as large or larger than the image you pulled. (Replacing the 64GB with a 250 should not be an issue. Never say never).

     

  • TechWizard
    TechWizard Member Posts: 3 New User

    Thank you for the reply.


    I created a recovery flash drive as you suggested, but I didn't get the option to delete the partition afterward; I don't think it pulled the data from the recovery partition. Upon doing some research, I noticed that there should be a checkbox asking whether I wanted to create it from the recovery partition, but I only got an option to "Backup System Files to the recovery drive".


    Thanks,

    Richard.

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    OK then pull the system image to a backup drive and use the two together to load the new and larger drive

     

    I believe you have an mSATA drive in there now but best to check and make sure. If I were going to upgrade mine (unlikely since the R3 is "better"), I think a Samsung Evo would work.

  • TechWizard
    TechWizard Member Posts: 3 New User

    As discussed in my post I'm using an M.2 drive and the problem is having the recovery partition at the end of the drive (4th partition). When transferring my system image across to the larger disk, the unallocated space is logically added after this recovery partition, meaning I cannot extend the data (3rd) partition into it. I was wondering if there was a way around this.


    Thanks,

    Richard.

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