Clone Hard Disk except got One Partition

I would like to replace a hard disk in my desktop with a smaller SSD. This hard disk has the following partition setup:

Linux ext4 partition (and related swap partitions)
Windows 7 NTFS partition
miscellaneous partition for file storage

I have tried manually copying partitions to the SSD and recreating the boot sector, but this has not worked well.

I would like to make a near identical copy of the hard disk onto the SSD minus the miscellaneous partition -- this way, all of the data will fit on the smaller SSD.

Is it possible for me to clone the hard disk, including the bootloader, to the new SSD EXCEPT for this "miscellaneous" partition?

Ryan Rosario

Posted 2013-02-19T21:44:12.893

Reputation: 121

For moving boot sector try easy BCD;. For Windows partition use driveimage xml ; For Linux partition use dd command and you can manually create swap – Madhubala – 2020-01-16T10:36:09.940

Answers

Sure, make an Ubuntu Live USB or something similar. Boot it, start gparted and delete your miscellaneous partition. If space isn't sufficient with deleting that partition you can even shrink another partition with gparted.

Then make Live CD or USB of Clonezilla. It is pretty much straight forward and easy to use. It does all the cloning for you, including bootloader,MBR,etc.

kschurig

Posted 2013-02-19T21:44:12.893

Reputation: 56

Won't that delete my files though?? I don't want to delete the data on the partition, I just don't want to copy it to the new drive. – Ryan Rosario – 2013-02-19T22:01:27.227

Now I get you. You just want to keep that miscellaneous partition on HDD and clone the other partitions to SSD. In this case just use Clonezilla in expert mode (its not that difficult) and clone just the partitions you want. – kschurig – 2013-02-19T23:46:31.887

Thanks. Will that still clone the bootloader? – Ryan Rosario – 2013-02-20T04:15:55.453

I guess it is possible but I cannot say for sure. – kschurig – 2013-02-21T22:46:15.507

Do a bit copy of the drive (using dd for example), until the new drive runs out of space. Then delete the half-baked last partition on the new drive.

davidgo

Posted 2013-02-19T21:44:12.893

Reputation: 49 152