Solved Best way to duplicate contents of a hard disk

[netadict]

I have a portable USB hard disk that I put all my documents and photos on for years, now I bought another portable HD and want to copy all that's on the first onto the new one, do you recommend Windows copy/paste or is there a better way od software to do this?

 

[Brink]

Hello netadict,

Sure, a simple copy and paste of all content to the new one would work great. The easiest way would be to right click on the old drive's icon in "Computer", and click on "Copy", then paste on the new drive's icon.

Be sure to only "copy" and not "move". This way if something (ex: power failure) should interrupt the file transfer, it will not potentially corrupt the files.

Hope this helps.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Brinks method is fine (cheap and simple) but if you have a lot of files / directories it's easy to miss something.

I'd recommend getting some decent backup software (you should always have some mechanism for backing up and restoring your computer in case of system failure / hard/software failure / spy / malware removal etc etc).

Then just use "Clone disk" - these software packages usually have a Disk cloning option on them.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[netadict]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Jimbo, yes I use Macrium Reflect to clone my PC hard disk and restore whenever problems occur. It's great! But can I clone a portable HD onto a different sized portable HD?

 

[patio]

Yes...

 

[SIW2]

Depends what you mean by clone. It used to mean a direct sector by sector copy, in which case the destination has to at least as big as the source. If you mean a copy of the used sectors, then the destination only needs to be at least as large as the used space on the source. Most partition managers will do a copy of that kind for you. There are a few good free versions, Aomei Partition Assistant, MiniTool Partition Wizard, Easeus partition master, paragon pm free, Eassos partition Guru ( bit complex for beginners) etc.



Free Partition Manager - AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard

 

[kado897]

Macrium is the same. The target partition only needs to be big enough to hold the data.

 

[netadict]

So Macrium will do the job, great! Thank you all for your input