Hello, I just did the Z1/Z2 to Z3 upgrade (awesome write up and support BTW) with no real problems. I have encountered one thing though (kinda minor I guess), anyway, I am using a Toshiba 5400rpm 80GB Hard drive (can't remember the model number). When I upgraded my Z1 to the Z2 image last fall I was able to partition the User area form 9GB to the remaining drive (approx 50GB). Now when I did the Z3 image on the same drive, I am stuck with the standard partitions like it is a 30GB Hard drive. I have tried Partition Magic, the Acronis Disk Director 10, and even Vista's disk manager and none of them are able to create a partition, or enlarge/extend the 9GB user partition. When I try to use the Windows Drive manager, I am able to create a partition in the unallocated area, but it converts the disk to Dynamic disk warning that the drive will not be bootable and the like. I haven't tried making it a dynamic disk and installing in the Avic (maybe this evening). Anyway, anyone have any ideas on how to recoup the unallocated area on the drive? I have tried creating 4 partitions separately (18gb, 580MB, 50GB, and 580MB) then had Acronis True Image dump the image files on there, keeping the partition sizes, and received a disk/info corruption message and Windows not seeing the drive(s) Thanks!

dc

I believe I came across a thread a little while ago that mentioned something about the drives becoming unstable after a certain amount of gigs was used for user data. I can't find the thread now, so I can't give you a link but try doing a search on it. I'm sure other forum members could probably chime in too if they know about this off the top of their head.

Have you tried booting to a Vista cd and opening up a command line in the Vista recovery console and then using the diskpart tool? It may work. Its a little tricky though. When you open diskpart you will need to identify the drive, then select the drive and then select the partition and then expand it.....

Try the Sticky Z1 HDD FAQ by Pulp Fiction