Can I clone a disk to different cluster siz?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pete
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Pete

This disk is in a WinXP PVR/Multimedia system. What I would like to do
here is clone the existing 100GB drive that has the default NTFS 4KB
clusters to a new 300GB drive, but I want to use 64KB clusters on the new
drive. I have already formatted the new drive at 64KB. Is there a utility
to just take the files and OS without doing a sector by sector copy or is
it crush and rebuild time? PS - the system box can only hold 1 HDD.
Thanks for reading.

Pete
 
If you were talking about just DATA files, you could just copy them
from the old drive to the new drive. But to answer you question, it is
a THREE STEP process.
1. Use image (sector) copying software to copy/clone your old drive
onto the new one. (most programs do not want the new drive formatted,
so you may have to delete the partitions first)
2. Boot from the new drive in place (with old one set aside and not
connected) and verify it works correctly.
3. Use Partition Magic (or several other partition utilites) to change
cluster size from 4k to 64k.
 
Pete said:
This disk is in a WinXP PVR/Multimedia system. What I would like to do
here is clone the existing 100GB drive that has the default NTFS 4KB
clusters to a new 300GB drive, but I want to use 64KB clusters on the new
drive. I have already formatted the new drive at 64KB. Is there a
utility
to just take the files and OS without doing a sector by sector copy or is
it crush and rebuild time? PS - the system box can only hold 1 HDD.
Thanks for reading.

Pete
Click to expand...

http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html was recommended by one of those m$oft
MVP'ers as it was the only one (supposidly) that was smart enough to align
at 2048 boundaries instead of 512 when going from fat32 to ntfs. It is not
lame but expires after 30 days. I did not actually use it as I went with
the builtin convert.exe

If you are moving the OS then be sure to record the volume serial number
from the original boot drive and use an editor to set the new drive to the
same VSN. This might be helpful if you are close to having to reactivate
your copy of XP. A change in the VSN will count against you.
 
Pete said:
This disk is in a WinXP PVR/Multimedia system. What I would like
to do here is clone the existing 100GB drive that has the default
NTFS 4KB clusters to a new 300GB drive, but I want to use 64KB
clusters on the new drive. I have already formatted the new drive
at 64KB. Is there a utility to just take the files and OS without
doing a sector by sector copy or is it crush and rebuild time?
Click to expand...

xxclone should do that. Havent actually tried that tho.
The author is pretty responsive, try asking him.
PS - the system box can only hold 1 HDD.
Click to expand...

So how do you propose to handle that ?

You should be able to have one drive loose, not in the case,
for the clone. Be careful tho, some drives get stinking hot
when used like that, particularly some Seagates.
 
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