[Alex]

Ok, on your 500GB disk you have a 500GB system, which doesn't like to be shrunk again onto a 120GB disk, therefore we'd have to resize it first.

If you have your 500GB disk connected, you could try the following (assumed you are using Vista or higher):

open a command shell (Start|Run|cmd.exe) and enter

diskpart

You'll get a prompt like this:

DISKPART>

here you can enter the command

list disk

Select the disk you need and hit

select volume 4
(if volume 4 is the volume you want to resize)

and now enter

shrink

the volume will be shrunk to the smallest size possible.

On Windows XP this doesn't work, so I'm not sure what - apart from making a non-resized copy - to do.

[Rebecca]

I am on XP. What if I put in the old HD, re-do the clone without doing the automatic re-sizing, and then try to re-image the new hard drive again?

[Alex]

This would work, but again takes time.

If you are able to do it, you can try to put the future system disk (120GB) into the USB case and do one simple copy without the need for a 2nd copy process, then you would only copy from the 80GB to the 120GB and could use the expand feature right away. Otherwise, you should copy from the 80GB disk to the 500 GB disk but not expand, and then copy back from the 500GB disk to the 120GB disk, but this time expand (HDClone knows that only 80GB on the 500GB are used, and therefore knows how to expand).

[Rebecca]

I will try the second and let you know what happens - thanks again for your prompt assistance! I never expected such a quick response.

[Rebecca]

So I re cloned the primary drive and this time I did not expand. Now I am trying to clone the info (about 68 gig) that is on the 500 gig drive onto the new 120 gig drive. I got the same message about the target drive being smaller than the source drive that I got earlier and it's saying it is going to take over 7 hours again. Is this correct? I went ahead and am performing the clone, but I am expecting to have the same result as before after another 7 hours - the new drive not booting. Can you tell me if I am doing something wrong? Do I need to try to re-size the larger drive again (I was unable to do that earlier) even though I selected no resizing when cloning? I never thought it would be so hard to clone an old drive onto a new one.

[Alex]

When cloning the 500GB drive (with the unexpanded 80GB data) to the 120GB, hdclone should ask you what to do with the partitions (and how to resize).

7 hours for 68GB is still a bit too much. The Free Edition copies up to 18MB/s, so 70GB should take somewhat over 1 hour to copy.

[Rebecca]

Unfortunately, it took over 7 hours to copy back. Not sure why it takes 1-1/2 hours to copy from the primary to the external, and 7 to copy back, but it does seemed to have worked this time. I guess it reads all the sectors on the larger drive even if they are not being used? Might be nice to have a way around that as it took me a total of 20 hours to copy this over and back twice.

It asked me if I wanted HD Clone to automatically adjust the final drive and I let it. I guess I need to check and see if it is actually using all the new drive space?

It did reboot afterwards so that's great!

For future editions, it might be good to have a popup box that lets someone who is moving from a smaller drive to a larger drive know that they should choose not to automatically resize the clone as that seems to be a common occurrence judging by the questions on this site.

Thanks again for the help and for the free program!

[Alex]

In one of the next versions of HDClone, such specific use cases as yours will be addressed in special ways, so there will be less confusion as to what to do on which stage.

I'm glad HDClone was able to help you to make a bootable clone.