Cloning a boot disk to a different size

[Out Of Bubblegum]

What do you use? I want a program that is bootable from a USB or CD.

I have used CloneZilla for years for backups but it does not like to clone or restore to a different size. It can do it if you use the command line but I think it leaves unpartitioned space when going to a bigger drive.

I prefer to make a backup of the current OS boot drive then restore that image to a different size drive. Instead of cloning the drive directly. Locally. No cloud storage.

I will need to clone to a PCI express version someday. Is there anything different how a boot drive works from those?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Cloning what boot disk? An OS Drive?

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Цитата допису Bad 💀 Motha:

Cloning what boot disk? An OS Drive?

Yes. With Windows 10 installed. It has several partitions.

[[N]ebsun]

I would just boot into linux, then use dd to clone the drive / partition to wherever

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Your HDD/SSD maker should offer a free disk clone app that will do everything you need in order to clone an OS drive.

[Iggy Wolf]

I think I used Acronis True Image Cloning Software when I cloned my old 1 TB HDD to my current 3 TB HDD. It was flawless too. Just make sure you don't tell it to format the previous drive or you'll lose all the data on the old drive while having no guarantees it smoothly transferred to the new one.

[MonkehMaster]

you can buy small "gadgets" that will do that for you outside of your pc, the one i have is called a "duplicator dock", basically it clones w/e "source drive" you want cloned, to a "receiving drive" that you want the clone to be added too, works quite quick and painlessly.

or you can search for programs that might do that (one example being samsung data migration).

side note, make sure the drive your putting the clone on is the same size or bigger, if its smaller you will run into issues.

[Adelin]

Hello,

I don't use a usb key to clone my two firecuda, but another hard drive with a partition assistant.

They offer a way to resize partition before cloning.

The docking station would be a cool idea.

You can still expand C:\ once cloning is done as you won't risk data loss like resizing a partition from the begin

I'm not sure how docking station work in detail bit the thing i know is when i clone an operating system drive, cloning will even clone the UID /UUID ( can't remember the right term) of the harddrives.

Windows will then attribute a new UID / UUID to one of the hard drive, making it impossible to boot without a bsod after a winre repair try

Then it need to have EFI partition recreated if using gpt
With Secure boot on updating boot info is not possible, so recreating EFI part is the only solution

Then you have to make the WINRE partition online as it has been disabled, and in the worst case, in case of an old windows install where the WINRE environment partition was put just after the EFI partition, if the new WINRE image is too large, WINRE will be runed from C:\xxxxxxxx

You would have to recreate at end of C:\ partition a win re partition

Thing with new windows 10 install versions, with Winre part at end of hard drive after C: Windows can resize this partition at will in case of future expand in size.


Re creating EFI partition and WINRe partition is easy to do with guides, but it would be better to use a docking station, and not boot the two hard drives at same time if not wanting to recreate efi partition.

Thing with dock clone , is to check multiple time, the drive you want to clone and the one that is the host, especially if the two hard drives are similars.

Same thing with partitions managers like aomei, is to double check or triple check you are not cloning on the wrong hard drive, as it"s easy to be tired and do a wrong thing.

MonkeyMasher had a good idea there :)

[MonkehMaster]

Цитата допису Adelin:

Hello,

I don't use a usb key to clone my two firecuda, but another hard drive with a partition assistant.

They offer a way to resize partition before cloning.

The docking station would be a cool idea.

You can still expand C:\ once cloning is done as you won't risk data loss like resizing a partition from the begin

I'm not sure how docking station work in detail bit the thing i know is when i clone an operating system drive, cloning will even clone the UID /UUID ( can't remember the right term) of the harddrives.

Windows will then attribute a new UID / UUID to one of the hard drive, making it impossible to boot without a bsod after a winre repair try

Then it need to have EFI partition recreated if using gpt
With Secure boot on updating boot info is not possible, so recreating EFI part is the only solution

Then you have to make the WINRE partition online as it has been disabled, and in the worst case, in case of an old windows install where the WINRE environment partition was put just after the EFI partition, if the new WINRE image is too large, WINRE will be runed from C:\xxxxxxxx

You would have to recreate at end of C:\ partition a win re partition

Thing with new windows 10 install versions, with Winre part at end of hard drive after C: Windows can resize this partition at will in case of future expand in size.


Re creating EFI partition and WINRe partition is easy to do with guides, but it would be better to use a docking station, and not boot the two hard drives at same time if not wanting to recreate efi partition.

Thing with dock clone , is to check multiple time, the drive you want to clone and the one that is the host, especially if the two hard drives are similars.

Same thing with partitions managers like aomei, is to double check or triple check you are not cloning on the wrong hard drive, as it"s easy to be tired and do a wrong thing.

MonkeyMasher had a good idea there :)

Spelled my name wrong

That being said, I love the dock, works great, haven't had an issue using so far, but I never checked the stuff you mentioned.

Last time I used it was cloning an OS hdd to a msata ssd, tho the hdd was bigger than the msata storage wise, but that data used was smaller than the amount on the msata, so had no issue cloning.

That was on a laptop I was using before the mobo shorted out, anywho... now I'm using that msata in my desktop (had to use a 3.5in drive enclosure) as a paging file drive (disabled paging file on the OS drive which is an m.2 nvme to save wear and tear).

[Azza ☠]

I personally like Samsung 980 Pro or similar, which has the tool "Samsung Data Migration"

It will happily clone the boot and Operating System across to a new drive, so long there's enough space on the drive. Making the boot partition for you, no hassle. After the clone, it will shutdown the PC. You just move the old drive away, putting the new drive in it's place to take over the C:\ letter and boot from that instead upon the next boot.

I used CloneZilla back in the days, but it's super dated now. So much easier to do these days.

The booting process of NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) SSD is the same, no matter if it's a drive, M.2, or PCI-e.

M.2 slots also shares the PCI-e slot bandwidth these days, so just a much smaller size. PCI-e slot is only for faster data transfers, which M.2 can get these days anyways (depending on your motherboard).

Since PCI Express 3.0 has an effective transfer speed of 985 MB/s per lane, we are looking at potential transfer speeds up to 15.76 GB/s. However, when using M.2 for a PCIe SSD, all you get is between 2x and x4 lanes, which translates a maximum transfer speed closer to 3.94 GB/s. Yet we have PCI-e 4.0 and 5.0 on newer motherboards now. So you can easily get higher GBs rates, unless you want really insane and transfer massive amounts of data all the time?

[Adelin]

Cloning to a SSD from A HDD, i have read somewhere that it need to be optimised for 4k sectors advanced format.

This is where some softwares are good at it, but never had the need.

Better to check on the web for those type of informations.

MonkehMaster, does your dock optimise SSD for 4k Alignment ? maybe you have one of those few 4K sectors alignment HDD.

Partition realign, on large disk take a while to complete.

Nevermind i'm out of knowledge about cloning stuff.
I'm also questioning about best way to clone, and other stuff like that.

As it can be handy in some situations.