Problems of Cloning a Smaller Harder to a Larger Hard Drive Solution
0If you clone a smaller drive into a larger hard drive, you will run across a unique problem. In computer management, the cloned hard drive will be the same size as the source drive. When you make a hard drive image and export it to another drive, you don't have this problem. In that case, you will be able to use the full size of the hard drive in one partition. Cloned hard drives are different. If you clone a hard drive, the size of the drive you want to clone must be equal to or greater than the size of the source cloned drive. That is the rule, and it cannot be broken. You may not always be able to find a new hard drive which is the size of the drive you want to clone for a number of reasons.
1. The hard drive is old, and it is no longer manufactured.
2. The price of that older drive may not be cost effective. It may cost more per gigabyte than buying a newer hard drive which is larger in capacity.
3. You may have to settle for a used hard drive. Ideally, you don't want to use a used hard drive to make backups. Hard drives have a limited lifespan.
You can solve the problem by creating a new disk partition for the reminder of the unallocated space on your hard drive.
To do this:
1. Go to search and type in "computer management".
2. Select "Storage"
3. Select "Disk Management"
4. Under Disk 0 to Disk X. Go to your cloned hard drive, and there you will see the unallocated space.
5. Right click on the unallocated space bar, and select "New Simple Volume".
6. If you want to make specific changes you can, like changing the allocation size, drive letter, change format file type, etc. Other than that, just click next through all of it. Wait a couple of minutes for it to create the partition, and format the drive.