Submitted by Sean Wingert on Tue, 02/25/2014 - 10:10
Here are the steps to easily clone a larger hard drive (Drive1) to a smaller SSD hard drive (Drive2) for free--something I do frequently to speed up a PC without purchasing a new one.
Assumptions
- You know the basics of Clonezilla, GParted, and partitioning.
- You want to clone locally--that is, disk-to-disk (though this procedure likely works with images too)
- You've already connected Drive1 and Drive2 to the computer (e.g., use the CD-ROM's SATA and power cables)
- You're cloning Windows XP (though this probably works on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8)
Requirements
- USB drive, preferably a pen drive or similar.
- YUMI, allows your USB drive to run multi-boot Clonezilla and GParted
- Clonezilla ISO
- GParted ISO
- Follow the instructions on YUMI's website to load Clonezilla and GParted to your USB drive
Shrink Drive1
- Boot your PC to USB drive and select GParted
- Select Drive1 (upper-right corner of GParted's window)
- Right-click Drive 1's largest partition and select Resize
- If Drive2 is 128GB, resize Drive1 to, say, 100GB
- Reboot using Drive1 and let Windows finish chkdsk (this MUST complete successfully to continue!)
Clone Drive1 to Drive2
- Reboot to YUMI and select CloneZilla
- Select local disk to local disk and then EXPERT mode
- Tick the icds option
- Don't select the k1 option (as suggested elsewhere online--see credits), as this created a partition too small (50GB) to continue
- Select your favorite CloneZilla options and reboot
- Unplug Drive1 and voilà!
Credits
Comments
Sam (not verified)
Sat, 09/06/2014 - 00:37
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Excellent Tutorial
Thanks heaps Sean,
I've been wanting to do this for a while and your tutorial worked perfectly.
I confirmed it all in a Virtual Box environment going from a 50GB Win 7 machine to a 30GB Win 7 machine.
It worked flawlessly.
The disk to disk and the -icds option were the key steps.
Just curioius: Do you think you can do it via a disk to image first then back?... I couldn't see the icds option when considering this possibility.
Many thanks
Sam
samrusso4 _AT_ gmail.com
Brian (not verified)
Sun, 12/07/2014 - 06:38
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perfect
This worked perfectly for Win7 x 64 - thanks for posting this!
Michael (not verified)
Thu, 04/16/2015 - 08:13
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3.Tick the icds option
Thanks for this, appreciate you putting it online.
Rafael (not verified)
Wed, 11/04/2015 - 02:44
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The icds option is the gem
Thank you for posting this. I tried many solutions (Acronis, EasyUS) with varying degrees of failure and I had hopes Clonezilla would do the job. After a couple of failed attempts, I found your post and the tip to use the icds option sealed the deal.
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