cloning 2tb drive to a 500gb one?

[76561198285398721]

the 500gb one is the one i replaced but kept as a backup, now its not very good as a backup anymore, because ive changed so much stuff that i couldnt possibly remember, all kinds of updates, programs, drivers, obscure settings and optimizations are different and i want to apply those to the smaller backup drive

i vaguely remember from the last time i cloned that its a bad idea to clone to a smaller drive for some reason, also im way over 500gb used now. how can i do this while leaving out all my games and stuff?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Why do you need to clone the whole OS?
It takes very little time to wipe an entire PC clean and install OS + Drivers + all your Apps.
Games you generally never have to reinstall if you have a copy of them elsewhere, as you can usually just drop those in, then verify them once the game client is up and running.


What might be more useful is wipe the 500GB completely clean. Then use as a file storage type of backup. Where you copy over files and such you deem important.

It's rather pointless to keep cloning an OS drive if it's not used for extremely important work stuff.

You also shouldn't have OS + all apps & games all on a single drive. Have at least 2 drives within the system.

[76561198285398721]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Bad 💀 Motha:

Why do you need to clone the whole OS?
It takes very little time to wipe an entire PC clean and install OS + Drivers + all your Apps.
Games you generally never have to reinstall if you have a copy of them elsewhere, as you can usually just drop those in, then verify them once the game client is up and running.


What might be more useful is wipe the 500GB completely clean. Then use as a file storage type of backup. Where you copy over files and such you deem important.

It's rather pointless to keep cloning an OS drive if it's not used for extremely important work stuff.

You also shouldn't have OS + all apps & games all on a single drive. Have at least 2 drives within the system.

1 - because i have so many updates, programs, drivers, obscure settings and optimizations which i dont remember or cant get, it would be a huge task getting it all from scratch. i want to basically have my backup drive be a fully functioning backup minus games
it really is more like an os backup, rather than for files

2 - i know 2 drives is the meta, but that costs money and i dont want to use the old drive constantly because its a hard drive, i think it would get worn out unnecessarily, then im left with no backup

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The way you have it all setup, no you can't clone over the OS + User Config + Apps without your Games.

You do not have to have the 500GB HDD connected at all times, powered on all day just sitting idle. You can turn that into an External Drive by buying an external caddy or adapter. Making any SATA drive run off USB.

[emoticorpse]

Obviously gonna have to delete stuff to make the drive equal in size or smaller than the 500gb one. Then just resize it to a 500 gb partition and clone or something to the smaller drive. I say resize to 500gb just to avoid any hassle in case some software complains about thr drive size issue even though the 2tb would be mostly free space.

[PopinFRESH]

Would help to know what drives they are, which OS you are using, what partition layout & filesystems you are using for the disks, etc.

You obviously can not do a 1:1 block-level clone from a larger disk to a smaller disk if you have more data on the larger disk than will fit on the smaller disk.

You could potentially do a file-level clone while omitting certain things depending on the OS & filesystems being used; however, this can be a fairly complex topic with many variables.

Some backup & cloning utilities, such as Acronis, can do a "System Backup" to another backup disk; which you can also omit certain paths or folders from the backup. Then you can use their bootable utility to restore from the system backup to the smaller disk as long as the system + data you've selected for backup will fit within the capacity of the smaller disk. The would however require you to get a 3rd disk to use for the backups.

[Crashed]

Remember, once you crunch down the contents of your drive to under 500GB, you need to use a third party partition editor to shrink it down, if Windows finds "unmovable" files past that limit.

[76561198285398721]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von PopinFRESH:

Would help to know what drives they are, which OS you are using, what partition layout & filesystems you are using for the disks, etc.

You obviously can not do a 1:1 block-level clone from a larger disk to a smaller disk if you have more data on the larger disk than will fit on the smaller disk.

You could potentially do a file-level clone while omitting certain things depending on the OS & filesystems being used; however, this can be a fairly complex topic with many variables.

Some backup & cloning utilities, such as Acronis, can do a "System Backup" to another backup disk; which you can also omit certain paths or folders from the backup. Then you can use their bootable utility to restore from the system backup to the smaller disk as long as the system + data you've selected for backup will fit within the capacity of the smaller disk. The would however require you to get a 3rd disk to use for the backups.

1 - the old backup drive is a 500gb wd blue, the one im actually using is a 2tb wd black, both are disk drives, windows 7, no separate partitions (at least not for now, that is another thing im researching and might mess with lol, ill try to do this first), ntfs

2 - yea i figured that but i dont think that matters

3 - "system backup" is gonna be a keyword ill look for from now on, sounds about right. maybe i can find some other way to do that
actually i just remembered i have a laptop thats super broken somewhere, if i can find it maybe i can use its drive

[76561198285398721]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von emoticorpse:

Obviously gonna have to delete stuff to make the drive equal in size or smaller than the 500gb one. Then just resize it to a 500 gb partition and clone or something to the smaller drive. I say resize to 500gb just to avoid any hassle in case some software complains about thr drive size issue even though the 2tb would be mostly free space.

yea that was my first thought then i saw i already used another 1tb lol
them gmod addons

[emoticorpse]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 76561198285398721:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von emoticorpse:

Obviously gonna have to delete stuff to make the drive equal in size or smaller than the 500gb one. Then just resize it to a 500 gb partition and clone or something to the smaller drive. I say resize to 500gb just to avoid any hassle in case some software complains about thr drive size issue even though the 2tb would be mostly free space.

yea that was my first thought then i saw i already used another 1tb lol
them gmod addons

Well, I suppose I'd like to ask "exactly how much of that 2TB drive is being used?".

If it's like less than 1 TB you could partition/shrink the partition now leaving the free space totally unallocated. Then create a new partition in that unallocated area. If it's 1 TB, you can simply cut your entire Steam library to there (assuming that's the fattiest part of your drive usage).

So if you were to cut out the Steam library and any other huge chunks of data that aren't system related, then you should be left with the core os stuff which really should be less than 500 GB.

Then you can actually just keep using your drive as it is maybe and if you want just back up that partition to the 500 GB drive you have all over again. Should be same end result except now you have an actual current backup of your stuff.

Or yeah, clone that 500 GB partition to the 500 GB HDD and then you'll after you can delete that 500 GB partition and expand the partition where you shifted the large files and just use that as a separate drive and point Steam to it and other programs if you want.

Except then you won't have a backup.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

So you're running OS + Apps + Games all of a single HDD?

Plus why still on Win7? It's dead, time to move on away from that.

Get a couple SSDs or at least an ssd to house the core OS × Apps. Keep games on separate drive.

[76561198285398721]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von emoticorpse:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 76561198285398721:

yea that was my first thought then i saw i already used another 1tb lol
them gmod addons

Well, I suppose I'd like to ask "exactly how much of that 2TB drive is being used?".

If it's like less than 1 TB you could partition/shrink the partition now leaving the free space totally unallocated. Then create a new partition in that unallocated area. If it's 1 TB, you can simply cut your entire Steam library to there (assuming that's the fattiest part of your drive usage).

So if you were to cut out the Steam library and any other huge chunks of data that aren't system related, then you should be left with the core os stuff which really should be less than 500 GB.

Then you can actually just keep using your drive as it is maybe and if you want just back up that partition to the 500 GB drive you have all over again. Should be same end result except now you have an actual current backup of your stuff.

Or yeah, clone that 500 GB partition to the 500 GB HDD and then you'll after you can delete that 500 GB partition and expand the partition where you shifted the large files and just use that as a separate drive and point Steam to it and other programs if you want.

Except then you won't have a backup.

out of my 2tb drive i have 500gb free so it doesnt sound like thats an option, unless maybe i complicate things further by moving some of that stuff onto the drive i dig out from the pile of broken plastic and metal that used to be a laptop i said about. depends how big it is, idk

[76561198285398721]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Bad 💀 Motha:

So you're running OS + Apps + Games all of a single HDD?

Plus why still on Win7? It's dead, time to move on away from that.

Get a couple SSDs or at least an ssd to house the core OS × Apps. Keep games on separate drive.

yea that costs money tho
but if i can get my backup drive up to date i have better insurance in case my current drive dies so i can continue using my pc for a while, while i figure out a way to replace it

[[☥] - CJ -]

Might be best to just save up for a 2TB SSD

Or suck it up and only save SPECIFIC things to the new drive instead of the whole thing.
Obviously transferring 1.5TB of data to a 500GB drive isnt possible, so pick and choose or save up for an adequate drive.

Or you could transfer most of the games to the other drive and use it just for games which would lessen the space of the main drive which would then let you buy a different drive to clone the OS to.

[Pocahawtness]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 76561198285398721:

the 500gb one is the one i replaced but kept as a backup, now its not very good as a backup anymore, because ive changed so much stuff that i couldnt possibly remember, all kinds of updates, programs, drivers, obscure settings and optimizations are different and i want to apply those to the smaller backup drive

i vaguely remember from the last time i cloned that its a bad idea to clone to a smaller drive for some reason, also im way over 500gb used now. how can i do this while leaving out all my games and stuff?

I have no idea.

However, what I would think of doing is using a free disk manager to shrink the partition your operating system is in, to be the same size or smaller than the target drive. Then perform the clone. Then increase the size of the newly cloned partition to occupy all of the new disk.

[jsy47889]

Remember, once you crunch down the contents of your drive to under 500GB, you need to use a third party partition editor to shrink it down, if Windows finds "unmovable" files past that limit.