Looking for a "particular" hard drive cloning app

I have been looking far and wide for a hard drive cloning/copying program that will copy a large drive to a smaller drive. For example: if I have a 500gb drive with only 80gb of data on it, I should be able to copy it to a 160gb drive. I have tried MANY different cloning programs, and NONE will clone if the source drive has a larger capacity than the destination drive. Seems to me that if the program sees the source capacity as being larger than the destination capacity, it would then look to see if the data on the source drive is smaller in size than the capacity of the destination drive, and if it is, it should copy the data. Yeah, I know there's ways around this like resizing the source partition, or booting to PE and using a file copier (which is CRAZY slow but it works)..... I've tried just about every free cloning program here at MG, I've tried Ghost, and one or two other paid cloning programs, and none will copy the data if the source drive's capacity is larger than the destination drive's capacity regardless of the actual quantity of data on the source drive.

 

If you create an image file rather than trying to clone I think you will have more success. Acronis can certainly do it.

 

As Earthling said an image file will probably work. when cloning you can only clone to a same size or larger drive, as the cloning process clones the entire drive or partition so the receiving drive or partition must be the same size or larger. If that makes any sense.

 

I think HDclone can do the job. There is a free version that is speed limited.

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

 

Todo Backup's clone operation will do it also if Sector by Sector copy is not checked. But, if there are partition errors, it reverts to a sector by sector clone and then it will fail as the source drive is larger than the target. It is free for commercial use.

One more note: As Earthling said, Acronis can also do it. If one of the drives it a Seagate or WD, then they offer free disk imaging software based on Acronis.

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

 

I used the seagate tool to copy my 1.5 tb drive, with all partitions (8) and it copied faultlessly to a 1tb hard drive, strinking partitions at the necessary ratio , and they all work as they should- works the other way too, but I did not have to do that, as I only wanted a backup of my total system. Only thing is that it states that
It needs 'At least one Seagate Technology or Maxtor disc drive'
http://www.seagate.com/support/discwizard/dw_ug.en.pdf

This included XP, VISTA, Windows 7, and data drives

 

Miray does sound very capable but the free version is limited in more ways than speed. The blurb on the site says

The Free Edition of HDClone clones an entire hard disk to another, larger medium. Use it for migrating an existing installation to a new hard disk or for rescuing data. The Free Edition is real freeware without obligation to buy and is intended for the short-term usage at no cost.

However I'm sure dlb can solve his problem using one of the suggested imaging programs.

 

Oops, thanks for pointing that out Earthling. :-o

 

Yeah - I tried the HDclone before and it doesn't do what I'm looking for. I have also tried the free Easeus Drive Clone and that won't do it either. I hadn't thought of using ToDo Backup though... I've used it for scheduled backups of "My Documents" to an external drive, but hadn't thought of using it to clone the whole drive. Earthling's suggestion of using something like Acronis and creating an image, then cloning the image is a good one! I hadn't thought of that either. It involves an extra step (and I'm trying to make the process as streamlined as possible), but if it works, what the heck, right? I also did not try using the Seagate tool, mainly because neither drive was a Seagate, but I'll try to remember that in the future.

(I'm adding this thread to my bookmarks so I'm prepared next time - I'm likely to forget everything I just read rolleyes LOL )

 

Most hard drive manufactures have on their sight. I free tool to transfer from the old drive to the new one. You didn't list what kinda drive you have original, and what your replacing it with. So I could of did a little research on how to do. You didn't list the op system you are trying to do it on.

 

Actually, the make/brand of the drive(s) really doesn't matter since I deal with so many different makes and models and types on a daily basis. It would be nice to have a single all-purpose cloning app that would copy any make/size to any other make/size as long the source data will fit on the destination drive. And, as always, freeware is preferable. I suppose I could build an all-in-one boot CD with all the utils from the various drive makers on it, (or maybe the UBCD has all the tools? I know it has all the diagnostic programs, but I don't think it has the full utils from each drive maker? I'll have to check it out in detail).

 

Hi,

Did you look at Easeus Partition Master? I was just reading this guide and came across this quote:

They are using the words "cloning partition" but it sounds like they mean you could clone a larger HD to a smaller one and each partition would be resized accordingly. It might be worth a look.

 

I actually have the free Easeus Partition Master (or "Manager"), but I haven't used it for cloning, only for partition creation and resizing.... the next time this situation of copying 80gb of data from a 500gb HD to a 250gb HD comes up, I'll try Easeus. Thanks sach2!