Copy or Clone my "game" hard drive?

[[DisZeLegend]]

I have a second 1TB drive in my PC dedicated to steam games and shadowplay recordings. Today I picked up a 3TB drive and drive enclosure to transfer the files from my second 1tb to the new 3tb drive. My question is, should I clone the 1TB into the 3TB or simply just copy and paste the steam apps folder into the new 3TB drive?

edit. I forgot to mention the second drive doesnt have an OS installed and simply acts as storage for my games and such.

[Azza ☠]

You don't need to clone, because it's not the Operating System.

You can simply copy/move, then verify your game(s) cache files to update the Windows registry of their new location.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

[_I_]

you can do either way

clone will verify data as its written to the new drive

copying will do the trick unless its interrupted

[Sandman]

Copying is going to be easier if your new drive is GPT and not MBR. Windows only recognizes up to 2TB for MBR drives and will force you to create a new partition.

So you need to convert your new drive to GPT and then you can copy over, swap the drive letters, and in theory it should all work correctly.

With cloning, which is more reliable, you would need to convert to GPT after the cloning is complete because it will clone to MBR. However, there are utilities that allow you to swap from MBR to GPT without reformatting.