Cloning hard drive question

massahwahl

massahwahl

VIP Member
Ive never done this before and didnt want to hijack a different thread to ask, but is it possible to clone a hard drive to a larger drive? When I installed Ubuntu on my server machine I did not have my terrabyte drives available at the time but they are now so I want to copy everything to the new larger drive but curious how.
 
Yes, cloning to a larger drive works fine. Cloning to a smaller drive usually isn't supported.
 
Cloning one HDD to other HDD is always possible AS LONG AS the destination HDD has enough space for all the data from the source HDD.



Cheers!
 
Sweet! Never done it and wanted to make sure I wasnt going to mess anything up with my server settings. What programs you recommend?
 
You do not need to use any programs to clone the HDD lol.
I use simple Linux Ubuntu to make a full copy of ALL the data from my source HDD (the HDD I am cloning) to my destination HDD (the one I am cloning to).
And as for the MBR you do not have to worry about that since it's invissible.
So just make a FULL copy of your entire source HDD to your destination HDD.
And in the future if something goes wrong with your OS wether it is Linux or Windows,just delete all the corrupted OS DATA and then copy everything from your destination HDD back to your source HDD.
As for the MBR,that gets corrupted so damn rarely,but if even that happens to you,you can always recreate it by using commands for that or by simply reinstalling OS and then replace it with yours from the DESTINATION HDD and you will again have a fully operatinal OS together with all the installed programs or/and games and all the adjusted options and all the data 100%.In short it will be completely 100% the same just the day you cloned the HDD.

This is little hard to explain since I do not use ANY programs to clone the HDD.I rather use Linux Ubuntu to do that manually,but I have taken pictures with my sellphone of every single step and in the next few weeks I will make a video on how to clone the entire HDD to ANY type of removable media (including CD-ROM disk and DVD-ROM disks).
I am also going to make a video on how to transfer the entire OS together with all the installed programs and settings and games and everything else 100% from one computer to a completely different computer with a completely different hardware and make that work perfectly without the need to readjust and reinstall anything.

But like I said.That is a little hard to explain here so when I make a video about it,I will let everyone know.

Who needs programs when you can do it yourself!:D






Cheers!
 
so wait, I can just plug in my bigger hard drive and copy everything over from the home directory? That seams to good to be true...
 
So if i do this and remove the original source drive the bootloader and everything is still going to function properly?
 
Everything will work properly if you do it properly lol.
Your goal is this:

Create the MBR on the new drive using the OS disk and then install the SAME OS on that new disk as the old one contains.After that just copy and replace every single file from your old HDD to your new HDD and that's it.Just pay a GOOD attention on the partition drive letters.They must always match (be the same as on the old drive) otherwise things will not work properly from the new (cloned) drive.
For example if OS (on old drive) is on drive letter "E:" then you must also have "E:" partition on your NEW drive and copy all the data from your old HDD on that "E:" drive on the NEW drive and NOT on let's say "C:".Because if you do,most of the things will not work properly.So pay a good attention on that.
You now have a cloned HDD or a spare copy or however you call it lol...
You can do this on as many hard disk drives as you want.I have made 3 safe cloned copies this way.Maybe it's a little too much since 1 cloned copy is usually enough,but I guess I am just too careful:D

The point is...this way may be a little more complex instead letting the program(s) to do all that automatically,but it's 100% free and always works perfectly without ANY SINGLE RISK.And that's the point :P




Cheers!
 
Last edited:
yeah, i think im just going to use a tool to be sure its done right. Ive spent far to much time getting this server setup the way i want to risk it :)
 
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