Clone data to bigger harddrive

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Clone data to bigger harddrive

ajobbins

5053 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1279

Trusted

#63427 26-Jun-2010 12:31

I want to upgrade the hard drive in my laptop to a bigger drive. The current drive has two partitions, a Windows XP partition and one for Windows 7.

I want to copy the data across to the new drive, but also extend the Windows 7 partition to fill up the additional space in the new, bigger drive. What is the best way to approach this?

Twitter: ajobbins

kontonnz

137 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 20

#345503 26-Jun-2010 13:33

If I was going to do this, I would image the drive with Arconis True Image, and then reapply that image to the new hard disk; during the boot/reimaging process I would look for the bit for disk/partition selection and from here customize the destination to my requirements; Most reimaging have issues on downsizing as well so I would avoid this if possible.

VEB

17 posts

Geek

#346188 28-Jun-2010 22:33

+1 for Acronis TrueImage. Used it for years. Outstanding quality and functionality for a reasonable cost. It has exactly that function - moving from old HDD to a new one adjusting partitions' size. You will have 3 options for cloning the disk:
1. "as is" - transferring partitions to a new disk in their original sizes; new disk will have free unpartitioned space;
2. proportional - size of partitions will be proportionally increased to save the ratio to the physical disk size;
3. manual - you can configure the size of partitions on the new disk.
The last one is what you need.

marpada

487 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 182

#346199 28-Jun-2010 23:16

There are some open source tools you can use if you don't want to buy a commercial tool. For instance the PartedMagic Live CD comes with several tools you can use to clone/resize partitions.