How is cloning a disk different from copying a partitiion?

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I just got a new 512 GB SSD, and discovered that I had to "clone" the drive containing the C: partition instead of just copying the C: partition. What's the difference?
 
do you mean drag and drop copy? if so, sometimes there are hidden files that do not get copied, as well as files with file names that are too long to copy (in a windows environment). However, you could clone a partition instead of the whole drive, though if the drive contains 1 partition, its moot.
 
Files relevant to loading and starting the Windows kernel may not necessarily reside on 'c'. Bios might not even find 'c' without the whole original partition table structure.
 
Various folders have different permissions, and the symbolic links may not be created with a regular file copy. There are ways to maintain permissions and symlink structure, but not in a simple copy. Plus there's the boot sector and related files as mentioned above.
 
Copying C: partition does not copy mbr or the hidden system partition Microsoft puts there. It won't boot without the mbr. Cloning the disk copies everything.
 
pxc said:
Various folders have different permissions, and the symbolic links may not be created with a regular file copy. There are ways to maintain permissions and symlink structure, but not in a simple copy. Plus there's the boot sector and related files as mentioned above.
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This was not a regular file copy. I copied over the entire partition as a single entity.

Another person mentioned the hidden systems partition. Actually I always install Win 7 using the hack where the hidden systems partition is not created.

So maybe I should be asking this question: how does the disk clone operation modify the programs partition?
 
I also said mbr (master boot record) which is not copied when you copy just the partition.
 
rezerekted said:
I also said mbr (master boot record) which is not copied when you copy just the partition.
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So if I had copied over the MBR as well as the Windows partition, that would have effectively cloned my HDD?
 
I'm not 100% sure, but I'd lean towards a yes.

If you have a boot record in the 'expected' place (the first sector) on the drive, which in turn contains a valid partition table, and a corresponding partition exists and is accesible by the initial bootstrap code (FAT or NTFS) with the bootloader in it ('ntldr'), it should boot - probably beginning with locating the windows directory.

I might be wrong but if you ran the installation media having just copied the partition, and then executed 'fixmbr' and 'fixboot' from it, BIOS would be capable of running Windows from said copied partition.

For example, bootable tool-belts like Hiren have options such as 'boot partition 1', 'boot partition 2' and so on. They do the heavy lifting so that you're not limited to just the hardcoded first boot record. In effect, each partition can have its own boot record, launching its own copy of ntldr and the first \windows\ directory it finds.

Anyway that's what my ass says about the issue, someone correct me if I'm wrong. Also there's the whole GPT thing...
 
Also another caveat - the new drive might be using different sized 'blocks'. When I run fdisk -l from a Linux distribution it will sometimes state that 'partition 0 does not end on cylinder boundary'. This causes performance issues, because adjacent locations have to be read to obtain all original data.
 
michalrz said:
Also another caveat - the new drive might be using different sized 'blocks'. When I run fdisk -l from a Linux distribution it will sometimes state that 'partition 0 does not end on cylinder boundary'. This causes performance issues, because adjacent locations have to be read to obtain all original data.
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All of these points are why it's best to use the right tool for this job, instead of trying hacks. I always prefer tools to hacks, but I was just wondering what is involved in cloning a disk. I appreciate all the responses. :D :D
 
Sadly cloning is also kind of a hack. The best tool here would be the Windows installer.
 
michalrz said:
Sadly cloning is also kind of a hack. The best tool here would be the Windows installer.
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No doubt :(, but the Samsung SSD I just bought came with a data migration tool that was, no doubt, just a cloning tool. Same with the Corsair SSD I bought in 2012. (also got a great USB to SSD data and power cable with that drive. :) )
 
Congrats to both of you for getting solid states. I am blown away by how I can fire up 4 software suites at once and have them load in seconds.
Just be sure TRIM (erasing of blocks marked for deletion) is enabled - it's one of the things the installer does.
Get a command prompt going and type:

Code: 
fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0
 
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