Hi,
So far, only two responses in the Acronis forum. Neither provided any elucidation, both seems to misunderstand the situation. The second seemed to think I had a hard drive of only about 83 GB! He thought that was kind of tight for an 81 GB IMage.
:) Somehow he completely misread and didn't even see 99.5 GB of free space. So he wrote a long thing about too tight a space. I had to point out that even after adding the 72 GB Image from maximum compression, I would still have 9% free space left over.
And I'm not booting the drive, it is only for storage.
Neither of the two have mentioned anything about True Image holding temp files on the partition until after it writes the Image.
Below, my responses in capitals:
I considered the idea of deleting #1 and #2 and moving the 128MB partition to the very beginning of the drive... The problem is that I have never done that, and don't know if that is OK, or if there would be some type of adverse consequences...
The safest thing to do is leave it alone...
YES, BETTER TO PLAY IT SAFE THAN SORRY. AND THE SPACE INVOLVED IS IRRELEVANTLY SMALL. ITS JUST A HOUSECLEANING THING.
That is correct that the File Table needs to be there... or somewhere...
Most GPT drives I have seen usually have it at the very start or end of the drive... Then everything in between is free to be manipulated... For some reason Gateway didn't see fit to do that... I don't have a clue as to why...
OK IT IS ALWAYS THERE. SO EVEN IF I WERE TO GET A BRAND NEW BLANK DRIVE AND PUT ONLY A SINGLE A PARTITION ON IT, THERE WOULD SECRETLY BE THIS SECOND HIDDEN PARTITION ADDED BECAUSE IT IS NECESSARY. OK. SO TECHNICALLY, YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ONLY ONE PARTITION.
I don't know how Partition Wizard rearranged your partitions either... Again, I can't duplicate that... That is why I suggested to Delete the partitions and then expand the #3 into the Unallocated free space, or manually resize the partitions one at a time
as I had mentioned... It is too late now to do anything about it...
YES, IT US ANOTHER OF THE MANY UNKNOWNS.
My guess is that whatever Partition Wizard did may cause a problem if you try to shuffle things around some more... My thinking is that if you delete #5 first it will undo anything that could be a problem... Delete the link or whatever... Then #3 would hopefully
be back to normal, or at least in a condition it can be resized again without issues... Obviously, #4 would need to be deleted as well...
GOOD POINT! I WAS NOW THINKING OF MAYBE DELETING (I GUESS I TEND OT SAY KILL RATHER THAN DELETE -- KILL IS MY TERM) PARTITION #4 FIRST, TRYING TO IMAGE AND SEE, AND ONLY IF I COULD NOT IMAGE WOULD CONTINUE AND DELETE #5 TOO. I WAS THINKING THAT WITH
#4 NO LONGER THERE, IT WOULD NOT INTERFERE WITH ANY FREE FLOW BETWEEN #3 AND #5, WOULD NOT BE THERE TO LEAP OVER. YOU NOW SEEM TO THINK IT BEST TO FIRST DELETE #5. DOES WHAT I JUST SUGGESTED ABOUT ELIMINATING A LEAP MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO YOUR THOUGHTS
ABOUT THAT? LET'S FIGURE OUT THE BEST TO DELETE FIRST, I'LL DO THAT, SEE IF I CAN DO THE IMAGE, AND IF NOT THEN DELATE THE OTHER -- ALTHOUGH THE MB SIZE OF #4 SURELY WON'T SATISFY ACRONIS' LUST FOR SPACE, SO IF I CNAT;DO IT AFTER DELETING #5, I DON'T
SEE WHY DELETING #4 WOULD GET IT DONE -- EXCEPT THAT THAT'S WHERE IT KEEPS CRAPING OUT.
You use the term KILL a lot... is that term that Partition Wizard provides as an option, instead of Delete, or is that a Mac term ? I wouldn't want to confuse them...
The reason for Deleting\Killing the partition rather than Expanding, is that Partition Wizard may try to keep the files that are already in the partition.... OR simply not allow you to expand because there is a file there...
OK. I THINK IT IS EASIER TO JUST DELETE IT ANYWAY, SO IF YOU THINK THAT MIGHT PROVE TO BE A BETTER APPROACH, I'M ALL FOR IT.
I ALSO AM THINKING THAT IF I IMAGE THE FIRST THREE PARTITIONS, AND THAT WORKS, I WOULD SEE IF I COULD IMAGE EITHER OR BOTH OF THE OTHER TWO -- WHO KNOWS,MAYBEE THAT WOULD WORK. IF IT DID,CAN BOTH OF THOSE BE USEDTO RESTORE A HARD DRIVE, THE LAST TWO
PARTITIONS BEING ADDED AFTER THEE FIRST THREEE ARE ALREADY ON THE DRIVE? I ALSO COULD DO THOSE LAT TWOTO DVDS, IT WOULD BE ONLY 4-5 DVDS. AND YES, I KNOW YOU POINTED OUT I ALREADY HAVE THEM ONTHE 8.1 IMAGE -- ALTHOUGH SINCE I HAVEN'T RESTORED FROM
AN IMAGE YET, I'M NOT SURE HOW ONE ACCESSES ONLY PART OF THE IMAGE FILE RATHER THAN ALL OR NOTHING, BUT MAYBE THAT WOULD BE OBVIOUS WHEN I DID IT.
As far as Acronis goes... I doubt that Acronis Backup does anything when you are booting from a CD... Acronis Backup won't do anything regardless, if you haven't turned it on and set it up...
Acronis Backup makes Incremental Images... In other words, it only reimages the part of the HDD that has changed... Somewhere along the line if you want to restore an image, or save the image to a external drive or something, Acronis needs to assemble all
of the pieces... That is probably the reason for Acronis Backup using extra space...
That is also the exact reason I don't use Acronis Backup, Windows File History, System Restore, or anything similar... I have only installed Acronis on a OS that I was going to delete anyway... Just long enough to create the bootable CD and Flash Drives...
WELL, THAT'S WHY I EMPHASIZED THAT INFO WAS FOR BACKUP, NOT FOR TRUE IMAGE. IT APPEARS I WILL HAVE TOTROL SOME MORE AT ACRONIS TO FIND ANYTHING ABOUT THAT WITH TRUE IMAGE.
I invest in external HDDs, or extra internal HDDs to do FULL IMAGES... I do them at my convenience, rather then when something else decides to use resources I need elsewhere... It requires that I keep a close eye out for deals on HDDs !!!
As an example using what you have done so far, I would have a minimum of six, and possibly more...
Win 8 before updates,
Win 8 after updates and before Win 8.1,
Win 8.1 immediately after the upgrade completes,
Win 8.1 after updates,
Win 10 immediately after the upgrade completes,
Win 10 after any updates...
Sorry about the rambling... Just wanted to mention my method, as opposed to what you read on the forum...