My PC primary HD (“C:”) is almost full and I need to replace with a larger HD.
Current drive is 1TB. Want to replace with a 2TB drive. I need to “clone”
the 1TB drive to the 2TB drive so I don’t loose my system/program files etc.
My question is can I “clone” a 1TB drive onto a 2TB drive or does clone software
only work on same size drives?? Recommendations on cloning software
would be appreciated!!
You can always clone to a bigger drive but not a smaller drive. There’s lots of gotchas like if block sizes are the same and aligned. If the partition scheme is one that can be expanded how you want. Ideally install the OS and applications again and transfer documents but cloning can work most of the time.
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Thanks! Unfortunately, I’ve collected a lot of programs for which I have lost or misplaced the software key. I could probably go to each vendor and get the key if I can show proof of purchase.
Guess it wouldn’t hurt to try the cloning and if it fails, the “C” drive will still work, just degraded!
Always also the option of just adding a 2tb D: drive. Pretty much any modern motherboard supports more than one sata.
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If you buy a Samsung SSD you can use their software to clone your old drive to the new one.
Once all is good, buy an external enclosure for your old drive and use it as a portable or for backups.
I did this recently. Used Clonezilla; “expert” mode handled it cleanly, including the partition and filesystem resize.
edit: Looks like they have a walkthrough for how to do that here: Disk to disk clone ; that walkthrough mentions having to use expert mode for Clonezilla to resize your partition, and how to change the setting for that specific task is documented here: Clonezilla - Advanced Mode
I tried this lately. Something about the partition layout did not allow me to grow the boot partition when I doubled my space last year. But I have one out of place folder with the vast majority of my working files. I just mounted the extra space as that folder on C, and is working well enough for me so far.
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I went with Clonezilla. The clone process worked “as advertised”.
No issues. Thanks to ALL who offered suggestions!!
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