TeraByte Unlimited

There are two drives on this PC - W7 on one (the O/S partition + SYSTEM), W8.1 on the other (the O/S and a data partition).
For many years, while booted into the W7 drive, I could both image and restore the other drive's 8.1 operating system from and to that drive's second partition.

Now, after upgrading the W8.1 drive to one with larger capacity, an attempt to restore warns "unable to obtain lock on drive J, the volume is in use."
** This also occurs when attempting to restore an 8.1 image from the external DRIVE F...so NO restoration is possible. I have reinstalled the copy of IFW that's in use on the Win 7 drive. **

Drive letter J is the 8.1 O/S partition, successfully imaged to drive K, which is that drive's second partition.
So now I want to restore the W8.1 O/S partition from its K second partition while booted into the other W7 drive.

Other than the larger 8.1 drive, the only change was a rebuild of the dual boot MBR, which altered it a bit. Bear with me.

WHEN BOOTED INTO the W7 DRIVE...
The W7 drive SYSTEM RESERVED partition is shown as "active, primary partition."
The W7 drive W7 O/S partition is shown as "boot, page file, crash dump, primary."
The W8.1 drive W8.1 O/S partition is shown as "system, active, primary partition."
The W81. drive second partition is shown as "logical drive."

WHEN BOOTED INTO THE W8 DRIVE...
The W7 drive SYSTEM RESERVED partition is shown as "active, primary partition."
The W7 drive O/S partition is shown as "primary partition."
The W8.1 drive W.8 O/S partition is shown as "system, boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary."
The W8.1 drive second partition is shown as "logical drive."

I have not clicked IGNORE, to force a dismount. This was never needed in the past and I fear it will foul the MBR.
If assured that this will do no harm I will give it a try.

What needs to be done to fix this, so I can image and restore 8.1 while in W7 ... and vice versa.

Thanks.

Ignore will simply try to force the open handles off of it like chkdsk /x
would.

If you want to see what has the open handle on the drive - get process
explorer and run it as administrator then click find - find handle or dll,
then enter X: where X: is the drive to find.

"borate" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

There are two drives on this PC - W7 on one (the O/S partition + SYSTEM),
W8.1 on the other (the O/S and a data partition).
For many years, while booted into the W7 drive, I could both image and
restore the other drive's 8.1 operating system from and to that drive's
second partition.

Now, after upgrading the W8.1 drive to one with larger capacity, an attempt
to restore warns "unable to obtain lock on drive J, the volume is in use."
** This also occurs when attempting to restore an 8.1 image from the
external DRIVE F...so NO restoration is possible. I have reinstalled the
copy of IFW that's in use on the Win 7 drive. **

Drive letter J is the 8.1 O/S partition, successfully imaged to drive K,
which is that drive's second partition.
So now I want to restore the W8.1 O/S partition from its K second partition
while booted into the other W7 drive.

Other than the larger 8.1 drive, the only change was a rebuild of the dual
boot MBR, which altered it a bit. Bear with me.

WHEN BOOTED INTO the W7 DRIVE...
The W7 drive SYSTEM RESERVED partition is shown as "active, primary
partition."
The W7 drive W7 O/S partition is shown as "boot, page file, crash dump,
primary."
The W8.1 drive W8.1 O/S partition is shown as "system, active, primary
partition."
The W81. drive second partition is shown as "logical drive."

WHEN BOOTED INTO THE W8 DRIVE...
The W7 drive SYSTEM RESERVED partition is shown as "active, primary
partition."
The W7 drive O/S partition is shown as "primary partition."
The W8.1 drive W.8 O/S partition is shown as "system, boot, page file,
active, crash dump, primary."
The W8.1 drive second partition is shown as "logical drive."

I have not clicked IGNORE, to force a dismount. This was never needed in
the past and I fear it will foul the MBR.
If assured that this will do no harm I will give it a try.

What needs to be done to fix this, so I can image and restore 8.1 while in
W7 ... and vice versa.

Thanks.

TeraByte Support wrote:
> Ignore will simply try to force the open handles off of it like chkdsk /x would.

That worked. Incidentally, restoring W7 from the W8.1 drive/second partition - while booted into W8.1 - succeeded, as it always had, without the "unable to lock" warning.

UPDATE...I unwittingly complicated the issue by doing the following...
As noted above, I had restored an image of that W8.1 O/S partition made from the _new_ drive, and got the "lock" warning. At that time, the new 2Tb drive had only two same-sized partitions.

But, not leaving well enough alone, I thought I'd test a restore I had on hand of the W8.1 O/S when it resided on the _old_, smaller drive. That drive had equal partitions of about 57Gb.
Bad idea. Hosed the MBR, which resulted in a failure to boot the Win 8.1 drive: "mismatched O/S." Wouldn't repair itself either.

So I reformatted the W8.1 O/S partition on the new 2Tb drive as a Simple Volume and made it "active." And then restored the image that was created from the _new_ 2Gb drive. And it booted into W8.1.
But before I could raise the glass, I saw that the new drive now has 57Gb of unallocated space (same as one of the old drive's partitions) and that space is shown as PROPERTIES|VOLUME|partition type:MBR.

Obviously, I'm way beyond my scope here. But perhaps someone has a suggestion on how to recover that unallocated space without going through MBR purgatory again. Or is it just best left alone?
"Extend volume" isn't available for either partition on the drive. It was earlier, but I cancelled because of a warning to the effect that booting would be lost.

Appreciate your courtesy and patience.^_^

It sounds like you'd just need to resize it - you can do that in BootIt BM
(BIBM) Partition Work (or partwork on the IFL boot disk if you have a BIBM
product key).

Also if you want to restore, there is an option for a new size box where it
will resize after restore.

"borate" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

And it booted into W8.1. But before I could raise the glass, I saw that the
new drive now has 57Gb of unallocated space (same as one of the old drive's
partitions) and that space is shown as PROPERTIES|VOLUME|partition type:MBR.

Obviously, I'm way beyond my scope here. But perhaps someone has a
suggestion on how to recover that unallocated space without going through
MBR purgatory again. Or is it just best left alone?

TeraByte Support wrote:
> It sounds like you'd just need to resize it - you can do that in BootIt BM
> (BIBM) Partition Work (or partwork on the IFL boot disk if you have a BIBM product key).

Don't have that.

> Also if you want to restore, there is an option for a new size box where it will resize after restore.

OK. I used that handy option, and it got rid of the unallocated space.
The remaining issue is the "lock, volume in use" message that began when the new, larger Win 8.1 drive was installed.
I mistakenly thought it had been licked, but no. "Ignore" is a viable workaround.

Below, the Process Explorer screen for the target J drive...
Thank you again for humoring a neophyte in partitioning/MBR matters, and following all the revisions here. ^_^
TB's courteous and prompt feedback is a prime reason that I have stuck with IFW for these many years.

[attachment=0]process_J.JPG[/attachment]

Clearly Windows has some files open on the J: drive (also looks like you had it open in explorer). The BCD is probably open because you have that hive attached to the registry - you can open regedit, then find it (typically BCD00000000 type entry under local machine) highlight it, choose file from menu bar, then the option to unload hive.

TeraByte Support wrote:
> Clearly Windows has some files open on the J: drive (also looks like you had it open in explorer). The BCD is probably open because you have that hive attached to the registry - you can open regedit, then find it
> (typically BCD00000000 type entry under local machine) highlight it, choose file from menu bar, then the option to unload hive.

You nailed it. Must be nice to know what you're doing. ^_^
While in the W7 O/S, I unloaded the BCD00000000 hive. The image restore of 8.1 to the other drive then proceeded without error. If that must be done each time, then to IGNORE the "lock" warning is easier...

**Or, perhaps THAT hive can be deleted from the Windows 7 registry, to banish the error evermore??**

Here's what the J: (Win 8.1) Process Report looked like after the hive was unloaded. Have a good day.
[attachment=0]process.JPG[/attachment]

Tested it: no, W7 will not allow deletion of that registry entry. So the underlying question remains...
Why, now, does the W8.1 O/S on the other drive have files open when using W7 to restore it, prompting "volume in use?"

A larger capacity drive was swapped for the 8.1 system, and that drive was cloned from the original in its entirety.
Nothing else was purposely changed. Yet, apparently, something was.

When you unload a hive, it usually stays unloaded. If that is the boot
drive you're using to boot W7 then perhaps that is why?

"borate" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

Tested it: no, W7 will not allow deletion of that registry entry. So the
underlying question remains...
Why, now, does the W8.1 O/S on the other drive have files open when using W7
to restore it, prompting "volume in use?"

A larger capacity drive was swapped for the 8.1 system, and that drive was
cloned from the original in its entirety.
Nothing else was purposely changed. Yet, apparently, something was.

You led me to the fix. Boot order had been changed when the new drive was installed. Flipping the order banished the error.
Perhaps if W7 is restored while booted into 8.1 the "lock" warning will reappear, but that's done infrequently. No problem, now that I understand the cause.

Gracias