Free Software - Clone Different Sized Drives

There are definitely some commercial alternatives to this process, however, like I’ve said before, I’m cheap. If, I were to purchase software to do this, I would get a copy of Symantec Ghost, Partition Magic, or HD Clone Professional edition. But for this post, we are going to discuss how to do this process for free. I’m not going to go into much detail, however, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or post a comment.

• Download the Ultimate Boot CD (Free)
• Burn the ISO to CD using ImgBurn (Free)
• Install 2nd HD in computer that you wish to clone
• Boot that computer from the CD that you burned
• Choose “File System Utilities” from the OS Menu

• Choose HDClone (Free Edition)
  • Walk Through the Questions it asks you on screen. Very basic.

Note: After the clone of the smaller to larger drive is complete, remove the smaller drive from the system, install the larger drive as you would normally do, and boot again off of the Ultimate Boot CD

• Boot from the CD again
• Find partition tools in the menu and choose “Partition Resizer”
  • Answer the questions on there just as you did before. Very basic. The last part will be simi graphical; just use the page up button to max out the partition size that you wish to use.

When this process is finished, remove the CD from the CD Rom tray and reboot into your newly cloned and repartitioned system. Everything should function as nothing has changed; however I recommend defragmenting and running CHKDSK on the drive right away to avoid any potential disasters. The process is very simple, clean and cost you zero dollars to do. Very nice in my book.