Cloning

[cobramonkey]

Quick question: Can I clone to a drive that isn't a virgin drive? Like a 3TB external that has more than enough free space?

I want to clone my laptop HDD to an SSD. I want to pull it from my laptop, and clone it on my desktop PC. Before when I have cloned I have used a completely virgin drive to clone onto. However, for simplicity on my part, I want to connect the current laptop drive to my front molex and SATA connection on my case, clone the current drive to the external, then disconnect the laptop drive, hookup the SSD and move the cloned drive onto it.

Or is my only option imaging?

 

[staticlag]

Yes. Most programs allow you to create an image file on another drive that is in use, and then restore from that.

I only have experience with clonezilla, but it works well for me.

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/03_Disk_to_disk_clone/advanced/05-advanced-param.php

 

[cobramonkey]

I know I can image, but cloning specifically.

 

[drescherjm]

Are you trying to overwrite the destination drive with the clone wiping out whatever was originally on the destination disk and replacing it with an exact copy of what is on the source disk?

 

[cobramonkey]

No, I want to use part of my destination disk, and leave the rest in tact. Can I set up a partition?

Are you trying to overwrite the destination drive with the clone wiping out whatever was originally on the destination disk and replacing it with an exact copy of what is on the source disk?

 

[drescherjm]

You can do this with command line tools dd / ddrescue (available on any linux livecd) by specifying the destination for your bit for bit copy being a partition. I do not expect you to be able to boot to this however so I do not see this as a gain over an imaging file.

 

[cobramonkey]

Well, as I said in my original post, my destination drive in question is just an intermediary because I'm immediately plugging in my SSD and moving that entire partition over to it. Just didn't know if I could clone to a partition on a disk, and leave the rest of it alone.

You can do this with command line tools dd / ddrescue (available on any linux livecd) by specifying the destination for your bit for bit copy being a partition. I do not expect you to be able to boot to this however so I do not see this as a gain over an imaging file.