Need help after Samsung series 9 ssd upgrade (crossposted with the ssd forum)

I have a Samsung Series 9 NP900x3c, Windows 8.1, that came with a sandisk u100 128gb ssd. I recently purchased a mydigital b4 bulletproof 256 gb ssd to upgrade my current ssd. When I was planning my upgrade, I had an external with a system image I created using Windows system image backup tool. I then created a bootable windows 8.1 usb drive using the 'Install windows without product key' page, and the trick which allowed you to use a windows 8 product key to get the windows 8.1 iso on there (because microsoft does not allow the win 8 key to work with 8.1 by default). My thought process was, I would install the new hd, load up the bootable usb and then install the windows 8.1 backup image I had stored on my external harddrive. Unfortunately, that did not work. So I installed a fresh install of 8.1 and then ran a system recovery and recovered my image and installed it onto my laptop.

I thought everything went ok, but unfortunately, my drive copied the same exact partition size as my old 128gb ssd. This meant that I had 104gb of unallocated space. I opened up up windows disk management and tried to extend my partition using windows built in tool, however, the extend option was grayed out. Only the shrink option was available, but windows was displaying the 104gb of unallocated space. Since the windows tool didn't work, I decided to use the 3rd party tool gparted to try and get the partition expanded.

I used a usb bootable drive to launch gparted, but when I loaded it up, I could not expand the c drive to include the unallocated space. After reading a couple of guides, I realized that the 2 partitions needed to be next to each other in order to be able to expand them into each other. The only problem was that there was 4.7gb partition between the c drive and the unallocated space. I believe this drive was called hibernation something, not sure exactly its name. I could not move this partition, so I just deleted it. Upon deleting it, I was able to expand the c drive into the unallocated space, and now my entire drive seemed like it was usable. Unfortunately, after I rebooted my pc, it would automatically shut down after the samsung screen came up. I then reinstalled windows and then reinstalled the image again.

I am basically right back where I started with only 114gb usable and 104 gb of unallocated space. Can someone please explain to me what I am doing wrong? I am willing to start from scratch and redo the entire image backup a different way if there is something better, but I just don't understand why my method is not working and why the drive is not being repartitioned.

 

Have you looked through the the thread about mSATA upgrades on the Series 9?

Provided you keep the original SSD with the recovery partition then it should not be critical to keep the recovery partition and structure on the new SSD. Also, it is possible to rebuild a hibernation partition as discussed in the IRSTRT thread.

We have had good experience with Minitool Partition Wizard in doing the partition management that Windows disk manager won't do.

However, there's also the easy route of just making the unused space into a second partition. I like to keep all my user files in a separate partition. Then, if there is a serious problem with Windows and C: has to be wiped and rebuilt, I don't run the risk of losing my user files.

John