Solved Problem cloning hard drive

[szszo]

i'm trying to clone a 500gb hard drive to another [external] hard drive. windows 7 laptop, etc.
so i've tried 4 programs which have the same limitation:
the internal hard drive [the cloner] to the external one [the clonee] are both marked at 500, but the internal drive [cloner] shows as being about 10gb larger than th.e clonee.

however, there are less data in the [cloner] [ok, the source] then to the object drive. none of programs will even allow one to clone and almost empty 500GB drive to a 250GB formatted drive. thanks for your understanding and help.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I'm not highly familiar with cloning and tend to use imaging instead, but:

I think it's normal for a cloning program to demand that the destination drive be as large as the source drive, even if the source drive is nearly empty.

And I'm not sure that cloning moves EVERYTHING on the source to the destination, so I wouldn't expect the occupied space on the source to match the occupied space on the destination.

Let others give you more comments.

 

[jumanji]

Can you please post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management showing both your internal and external drives? Follow the guidelines here to post a full screenshot with all the information. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

Also tell us why you want to clone the internal drive to another external drive.

Is your internal drive a system drive or data drive?

 

[szszo]

i'm trying to clear a hard drive to be used elsewhere.

 

[szszo]

i'm having trouble [not related] and i'll be back atcha tomorrow.

the internal drive is systems/data.

 

[jumanji]

That doesn't answer all the queries.

Where is the screenshot of Windows Disk Management asked for?

If you want to clear a HDD, you can as well copy all data in it to another drive and wipe the HDD clean.

Where is the need for cloning?

You are welcome any day but give proper answers to the queries so that we can help you..

 

[Ztruker]

What cloning programs have you tried? Macrium Reflect Free allows you to clone to a smaller drive, as does Clonezilla.