Current Events > Question about cloning hard drives

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I understand the concept of cloning, and partitions. I assume that when you upgrade to a larger hard drive, you need to resize the partition that contains the actually useful storage to include the extra space in the new hard drive.

The question I have is, once you clone a drive and partition it correctly, can you just put it in the computer and boot from it like it's the old hard drive?


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I assume someone here has at least done this before

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I've cloned a drive and inexplicably had it not boot like it was the old hard drive, but I can't remember what I had to do to fix that.

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Yeah, it'll clone the partition, you just need to expand the partition afterwards

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pogo_rabid posted...

Yeah, it'll clone the partition, you just need to expand the partition afterwards

I'm using some software that lets you change partition size before you actually clone, but I assume as long as the contents of every partition remains the same it essentially works

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DarkRoast posted...

So I understand the concept of cloning, and partitions. I assume that when you upgrade to a larger hard drive, you need to resize the partition that contains the actually useful storage to include the extra space in the new hard drive.

The question I have is, once you clone a drive and partition it correctly, can you just put it in the computer and boot from it like it's the old hard drive?

If it's the same computer, yes. If it's not there a good chance your Mobo drivers are all fucked.

Note that cloning is different from copying / replicating / etc and sometimes people will use the words interchangeably. Use a clone tool like clonezilla. If you don't clone the MBR which only a cloning tool will do, then it definitely won't work.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

If it's the same computer, yes. If it's not there a good chance your Mobo drivers are all fucked.

Note that cloning is different from copying / replicating / etc and sometimes people will use the words interchangeably. Use a clone tool like clonezilla. If you don't clone the MBR which only a cloning tool will do, then it definitely won't work.

My new SSD and the USB enclosure comes tomorrow

My setup is going from a Samsung NVME m.2 500 GB to a Samsung Pro Evo NVME m.2 2 TB

I got Macrium Reflect, which seems to be popular for free software to clone. Looks pretty easy to use too.

So I'm going to clone my internal SSD to the other one, increase the partition size of C:, then use my old SSD as an external drive

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Using NVMe drive as external completely ruins the point of having an NVMe drive in the first place FYI. You can probably walk out a bit richer by selling the old drive and buying a regular external HDD.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Using NVMe drive as external completely ruins the point of having an NVMe drive in the first place FYI. You can probably walk out a bit richer by selling the old drive and buying a regular external HDD.

I'll probably just sell it


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