Migrating from 1TB HDD to 4TB

Hello fellow tenforums users, I am having a bit of a dilemma. I have a 4TB HDD that I want to install in place of my current disk and I am not sure how to make an exact clone of my C drive. I have an external usb 3.0 docking station for sata drives and was going to just use that for the extra space(no room inside my tower to install both internally) but found that after formatting, the speed of data transfer is sub-par. So I decided I want to swap the 4tb with my internal 1tb. That way I can have the benefit of optane on the new drive. I looked this up and see that there are many different solutions but the most ideal method seems to differ on a case by case basis.
Here's my sys specs:
Attachment 269490Attachment 269489

Can you post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management showing the partition layout on the disk containing C--which I assume is the 1 TB drive?

How much total space is occupied on this 1 TB disk?

ignatzatsonic said:

Can you post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management showing the partition layout on the disk containing C--which I assume is the 1 TB drive?



How much total space is occupied on this 1 TB disk?

Sure, roughly 3/4 of it is occupied. I was thinking a cloning tool should work actually. I'm trying EaseUS todo backup right now. I also created a backup iso and put it on an external SSD I have as well as in Onedrive. I'll see how it worked once it's done. It's taking quite a bit of time. I imagine I'll have to extend the volume on the new drive if it works though. I started the clone after wiping the 4TB drive and didn't allocate and space. My guess is that if it works it will only have that same space as the 1TB allocated when I first boot.
Attachment 269546

That may work.

You could also try imaging if the cloning fails.

Something like this:

Make an image file of the partitions on the 1 TB. That file might be 400 to 500 GB. Save it on any external drive you may have, maybe the SSD you refer to.

Remove the 1 TB from the case. Install the 4 TB in its place.

Boot from recovery media and restore the image from the external drive to the 4 TB internal.

No dock involved. No cloning. Use something like Macrium or Aomei to make the image file and the recovery media and restore the image file.

ignatzatsonic said:

That may work.

You could also try imaging if the cloning fails.

Something like this:

Make an image file of the partitions on the 1 TB. That file might be 400 to 500 GB. Save it on any external drive you may have, maybe the SSD you refer to.

Remove the 1 TB from the case. Install the 4 TB in its place.

Boot from recovery media and restore the image from the external drive to the 4 TB internal.

No dock involved. No cloning. Use something like Macrium or Aomei to make the image file and the recovery media and restore the image file.

Thanks, I had meant that's what I did, I put the image on the external but I only have at as a backup. Ideally, I want to avoid having to reinstall windows. I'm hoping the cloning allows me to just boot up like normal on the new drive. We shall see, says there's about another hour est. time left on the clone process.

Macrium Redlect Free can clone the drive and resize the c: drive partition at the same time.

I see that the 1T drive is encrypted.

Don't know if you can clone a encrypted drive resizing partitions.
I would decrypt it first and then clone. When done, encrypt the new drive
Does anyone know the way to proceed on an encrypted drive?

Megahertz said:

I see that the 1T drive is encrypted.

Don't know if you can clone a encrypted drive resizing partitions.
I would decrypt it first and then clone. When done, encrypt the new drive
Does anyone know the way to proceed on an encrypted drive?

I thought the same thing after starting it. But the cloning process worked just fine, at least everything seems to be functioning properly. The only thing is that it didn't clone the 1GB recovery partition on the old drive. I also can't seem to wipe it from the old drive either, even after decrypting it Which I was planning on reformatting and using half for a strictly file history partition and the other half as a VM for running linux. I know that partition was included by the manufacturer when I bought the PC, but I've never been unable to wipe a HDD before so that's strange.

If it didn't clone all the partitions, the clone process failed.
I would decrypt it first and then clone. When done, encrypt the new drive

Need to see a new screenshot of disk management.