What are you using to downsize a drive image?

[Diggs]

Cloning a drive/image to another drive that is the same size or bigger is a given, but I'm struggling for a good solution to take say a 1TB drive with a 125GB image down to a 500GB drive. So many large drives are out there that have only a fraction used I need a good solution to downsize them when they fail. I thought Aomei Pro could do it but I've never been able to make it happen. What others?

 

[Metanis]

I use an old copy of Norton Ghost when I run into this.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Most clone/imaging programs I have used do this automatically, e.g., AOMEI Back-upper. So far, only Paragon's "Migrate OS" has been able to remove partitions/data for downsizing to an SSD.

 

[mraikes]

I second AOMEI backupper. That's what I use to downsize.

 

[HCHTech]

Acronis, or the Samsung program they bundle with the disks, whatever it's called.

 

[lcoughey]

Are you working with a known healthy source?

 

[jft135]

If it will work and the source drive is healthy, Acronis does a decent job. If not, I clone to a temp drive, use GParted to resize, then clone to the new one. That's in case resizing breaks something.

 

[GTP]

+1 Acronis

 

[NviGate Systems]

Paragon does a very good job of this and support UEFI.

 

[timeshifter]

Macrium Reflect

 

[HFultzjr]

Another vote for Acronis

 

[lcoughey]

Also, if you happen to own a copy of R-Studio, you can resize partitions when you clone from one drive to another.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The drive manufacturers own cloning software, which most are based off of Acronis.

We have our "bench rig" which is a big Dell Precision workstation...has like 8 SATA ports on the motherboard, a Xeon CPU...we just leave the side cover off, SATA 'n power cables hanging out.

Boot from Acronis CD...and run through the clone. Downsizes nicely. Most drive brands regularly update their version of FREE Acronis....so we keep the latest version on CD to boot from to ensure latest compatibility.

It's quite fast and easy. I've tried all the other cloning programs 'n CDs...but Acronis..just works..and works well, and quickly.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Also, if you happen to own a copy of R-Studio, you can resize partitions when you clone from one drive to another.

Never even occurred to me that this would be possible, d'oh. I'll have to give it a whirl next time.

 

[Diggs]

Not sure why Aomei Back-Upper Pro doesn't work for me when downsizing. It always tells me there isn't enough room even when the image is 50 GB going onto a 500 GB drive (the image was from a 1TB drive). The auto-fit partitions function doesn't do it and if I manually fit partitions one at a time Windows 10 doesn't like it.

I'd never thought about resizing a temp drive which would work if again, Win10 isn't too picky.

Thanks for the input -

 

[gikstar]

My recent clone, a 1 Tb drive to a smaller drive (SSD) using Acronis, I had to clone to a 250Gb drive first and then to an even smaller drive. It would not let me go directly to a 128Gb SSD. Time consuming... Manufacturers live to put 1 TB drives into everything which makes it harder to switch to an SSD. Most residential clients will never max out a TB drive.

 

[CLC]

Not sure why Aomei Back-Upper Pro doesn't work for me when downsizing. It always tells me there isn't enough room even when the image is 50 GB going onto a 500 GB drive (the image was from a 1TB drive). The auto-fit partitions function doesn't do it and if I manually fit partitions one at a time Windows 10 doesn't like it.

I'd never thought about resizing a temp drive which would work if again, Win10 isn't too picky.

Thanks for the input -

I use
Easeus backup workstation and Paragon drive copy pro, if it's a good drive they work. I prefer paragon because it will copy through i/o errors.