Solved Can't clone a new drive; can copy and rename drive letter work?

[rzn6jw]

I recently bought a faster 2TB hard drive to replace my old 1TB 'games' hard drive. Unfortunately, the software that came with the drive (Seagate Disc Wizard) will not clone my 'games' hard drive onto the new hard drive. Every time I try the clone, the software tries to reboot the PC, thinking that I'm trying to clone the OS onto the new drive, and I'm not.

Will copying everything from the old drive onto the new drive and then renaming the new drive letter (I to the old 'games' drive letter (E (after removing the original 'games' HDD) work the same?

 

[bobafetthotmail]

When cloning software asks you to reboot it's because they notice that some of the stuff you want to clone is used by Windows somehow. Even if you were just copying files or whatever. Maybe Steam was active or some kind of background program.

Anyway, in case that utility is just dumb, you can try with the program I use all day, EaseUs Partition master. Once installed, just clik on Wizard and then on Clone disk wizard, follow the wizard and you're set. Click on Apply when ready.
In case it asks for a reboot, let it do so (it takes a bit of time for so big drives though, so do it when you have something to watch on TV or whatever). If you selected the right drives in the wizard it won't screw with C, maybe it just needs everything to be sleeping while doing its job.

Will copying everything from the old drive onto the new drive and then renaming the new drive letter (I to the old 'games' drive letter (E (after removing the original 'games' HDD) work the same?

Yes it will work fine. FastCopy is an utility that will help you transfer so much data quickly and efficiently (more than copy-paste), and can check that all files were copied successfully (just to be sure), and stop/begin again the transfer without a lot of fuss.

 

[rzn6jw]

Thanks. According to Seagate Disc Wizard, if I'm not cloning a disc with the OS on it (ie. C then the cloning process should start without a reboot. I've tried everything, formatting the new drive without a drive letter, cloning the new drive as a non-system GPT style, etc and it still asks for a reboot.

I'm going to give EaseUs Partition Manager a try later today and will get back to you as to success or failure.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hiyya rzn another app you might try (I have used both this one and the EasUS to do one) is the Partition Wizard it will clone wipe partition and just about anything.

Now the problem I found with the EasUS app was that you could clone from small to lareg but not the other way - unless they have changed it recently.

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

another I use is this Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download < but I prsonally prefer the Partition Wizard.

 

[rzn6jw]

Thanks bobafetthotmail and ICit2lol!

I used the EasUs Partition Manager's clone wizard and was able to clone my 1TB to a new 2TB drive. The only thing...you know the Windows disc display in My Computer that shows the drive status (blue if OK and red if capacity is <10%)? It also copied that information, so now my new drive shows red, too.

But I can live with that as long as I'm up on the new drive.

Thanks again and I hope you both had a good Christmas.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

You sure the cloned disk says it is 2 TB in My Computer? If not use the partition manager to increase the partition size of that disk to 2 TB (using the whole drive's capacity, not just 1 TB and leaving 1 TB unallocated). Should be quick to do this time.