Cloning a hard drive...how?

February 11, 2011 10:25 PM

Using clonezilla, I cloned my 80gb Maxtor SATA hard drive. Now my new Western Digital 500gb SATA hard drive reads as identical but only 80gb. What did I do wrong?
posted by Mike Mongo to technology (7 answers total)

Clonezilla doesn't have the capability to extend the partition* on a cloned disk; you will need another tool to do that. I have had success with GParted.

* Best analogy? A "filing cabinet" for hard drives. If you're unsure about partitions, file systems, etc, be careful extending the partition yourself. GParted is fairly bullet proof, but you can lose data. If you still have the original 80GB drive as a backup give extending a whirl.
posted by fireoyster at 10:35 PM on February 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, roughly your old hard drive looked like this:

Disk: 80GB
Partition 1: 80GB C:
Partition 2: 0
Partition 3: 0
Partition 4: 0
Empty Space: 0

And when you cloned it, the new disk looks like this:

Disk: 500GB
Partition 1: 80GB C:
Partition 2: 0
Partition 3: 0
Partition 4: 0
Empty Space: 420GB

So you can use a program like GParted to extend that first partition to the full 500GB using the left over empty space, or you could add a new partition using the empty space and give yourself a D: drive in addition to your 80GB C: drive.

Disk: 500GB
Partition 1: 500GB C:
Partition 2: 0
Partition 3: 0
Partition 4: 0
Empty Space: 0

or

Disk: 500GB
Partition 1: 80GB C:
Partition 2: 420GB D:
Partition 3: 0
Partition 4: 0
Empty Space: 0

posted by zengargoyle at 11:31 PM on February 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Don't forget that if you're running Windows 7 then it has the functionality to increase the size of your partition. I think the option is called "expand" in Disk Manager.

Still worth backing up important data before you do this though as there is the risk it could go horribly wrong.
posted by mr_silver at 1:09 AM on February 12, 2011

You cloned it successfully! 80Gb indeed.

Non-technical advice: using cloning and copying tools like this isn't my favorite practice. A new hard disk is the perfect opportunity to slowly and carefully back up, sort and organize your files freshly, one by one. You'll be shocked at how much you don't actually need.

If you bought a new filing cabinet, you wouldn't just dump the old one into it, right?
posted by rokusan at 2:45 AM on February 12, 2011

That would be "Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management"

This will graphically represent the drives, and you can change sizes from there.
posted by TomMelee at 5:47 AM on February 12, 2011

That would be "Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management"

This will graphically represent the drives, and you can change sizes from there.

Got it. I'm there. I see the option for me to partition the unallocated space but how do I change sizes when I get there?
posted by humannaire at 8:18 AM on February 12, 2011

Clonezilla doesn't have the capability to extend the partition* on a cloned disk; you will need another tool to do that. I have had success with GParted.

I see the option for me to partition the unallocated space but how do I change sizes when I get there?

Used GParted. Worked like a charm. Thanks all!
posted by Mike Mongo at 9:39 AM on February 12, 2011