Question Cloning a 2 TB HD to 3 TB, or larger.

[JimmyNelson]

At present I have a 2 TB HD running windows 7 that is low on disk space, I want to clone to a 3 TB HD so I can upgrade to windows 10 or 11. Straight cloning only resulted with an HD that was still low on disk space and a whole 1 TB of unallocated space that EaseUS could not extend to. Of course now we’re also talking about converting from MBR to GPT. Is this possible? What are the steps? None of searches I’ve done break this process down into easily understandable and duplicatable steps, though they hint that this can be done.

Also it seems that the way the bios boots up also has to be changed from its default setting. Is this done before cloning and resizing, or after?

 

[dwd999]

At present I have a 2 TB HD running windows 7 that is low on disk space, I want to clone to a 3 TB HD so I can upgrade to windows 10 or 11. Straight cloning only resulted with an HD that was still low on disk space and a whole 1 TB of unallocated space that EaseUS could not extend to. Of course now we’re also talking about converting from MBR to GPT. Is this possible? What are the steps? None of searches I’ve done break this process down into easily understandable and duplicatable steps, though they hint that this can be done.

Also it seems that the way the bios boots up also has to be changed from its default setting. Is this done before cloning and resizing, or after?

We could have a long debate here on whether or not upgrading from 7 to 11 is better or worse than a fresh install of 11; I think most people would advise the latter. As you note, 11 now prefers a GPT partition table which is not easy to convert from MBR and prefers Secure Boot which also may not work depending on your hardware.

But to your initial question, most people here would recommend the Macrium software for cloning since it makes expanding the partition size easy. When you select all of your old disks partitions to be cloned to the new drive a little box pops up and asks you if you want to expand your data partition to fill the disk; you just select that option and all goes well.

 

[SkyNetRising]

At present I have a 2 TB HD running windows 7 that is low on disk space, I want to clone to a 3 TB HD so I can upgrade to windows 10 or 11. Straight cloning only resulted with an HD that was still low on disk space and a whole 1 TB of unallocated space that EaseUS could not extend to. Of course now we’re also talking about converting from MBR to GPT. Is this possible? What are the steps?

Does your system support UEFI boot?
If it doesn't, then after converting HDD from MBR to GPT your system becomes unbootable.
Then conversion is pointless, as well as upgrade to 3TB disk.

Please list specs of your system.
Windows 11 has rather strict hardware requirements.
It probably will not be supported on your old windows 7 hardware.

What you can do:
1. Clean 3TB drive.
2. Convert it to GPT,
3. Create a single large partition, format it and
use it for secondary storage (user files, videos, games, whatever, just no windows).