HOW to CLONE copy go to 1 partition of 5 pat's on destination HDD/SSD?

I need to CLONE my 256GB SSD Boot drive and wish to place it onto a 3 TB HDD. I have this 3TB HDD divided into 5 Partitions for various needs. BUT I have one partition I have assigned 300GB so if will accept the Clone of the SSD Drive.

Will it clone only to that Partition considering it is a completely different drive letter than the other partitions on the destination HDD?

Is their special software or settings I need to make this happen?

And can someone list some free or nearly free cloning software?

Thanks every/all. Please ask me if none or some makes no sense.

What is the purpose for doing the cloning? If it is for backup purposes, then you want to image, and not clone. The image will be in one file that you can store anywhere, just like any other file.

If you want to make the 3TB HDD bootable, then remove the 300GB partition from the HDD and clone all of the partitions of the SSD to the unallocated space on the HDD. Then you will have to fix the BCD copied over to the HDD to point to the OS Partition on the HDD to boot from and Macrium Reflect is very good for that (but you have to boot into the Macrium Reflect rescue environment to get that option).

NavyLCDR said:

What is the purpose for doing the cloning?

I want to clone my WIN 10 drive SSD 256GB to the 300GB HDD Partition in case my "repair install of windows 10" doesn't work correctly, then I can just boot to that fresh made partition with my most recent copy of Windows 10 on it.

Can you or anyone think of a better method??

p.s. I got Windows 10 via A purchased Windows 7 then Upgraded free to Windows 10, PLEASE tell me the easiest method to safe install without losing my pics, videos etc?

anyone there??

axelrose1969 said:

I want to clone my WIN 10 drive SSD 256GB to the 300GB HDD Partition in case my "repair install of windows 10" doesn't work correctly, then I can just boot to that fresh made partition with my most recent copy of Windows 10 on it.

Can you or anyone think of a better method??

Use Macrium Reflect Free to save an image of the SSD to the HDD. Make sure to create a Macrium Rescue DVD or USB flash drive.
Macrium Reflect Free

If something goes wrong with the Windows installed on the SSD, then you boot from the Macrium Rescue DVD or USB flash drive and restore the image back to the SSD.

axelrose1969 said:

p.s. I got Windows 10 via A purchased Windows 7 then Upgraded free to Windows 10, PLEASE tell me the easiest method to safe install without losing my pics, videos etc?

anyone there??

Download the Windows 10 ISO file using option 1 here:
Windows 10 ISO Download

Mount the saved ISO file, run setup.exe from the new (virtual) drive letter that appears when you mount the ISO file.

For clarity, cloning overwrites everything on a drive, and you would lose all data on hdd.

Cloning is used to make it possible to change out a drive with a second one eg when first drive has failed and you want to go at a moments notice.

Image backups are where you put a copy of a drive in a compressed file like a zip file so you put it back in ORIGINAL drive or new drive if original has failed. If course this takes longer but this DOES NOT affect storage hdd in any way as image can be written to any suitable partition.