Do you need to clone the "System Reserve" partition

[pirc]

Do you need to clone the "System Reserve" partition of a drive along with the main partition for the new drive to function properly? The drive is a storage drive, and does not house the OS.

 

[USAFRet]

This depends.

If you disconnect that 'storage drive', does the system boot properly?
What are the rest of the drives in the system?

Generally, for a secondary storage drive, you do not need to clone at all.
Simply copy to the new drive, and swap drive letters.

But....let's see what the rest of the system is first.

 

[pirc]

Long story short:

Current system has 250gb SSD running OS and Programs, also has a 2TB HDD which contains the storage. I'm filling on storage so I bought a 5TB HDD for an upgrade. Plan is to Clone the 2TB (not the SSD at all) of storage to the 5TB drive and then swap them out, so that the system has an internal 5TB for storage and the SSD running the OS and programs.Then I'll probably back up OS from the SSD onto the 2TB drive, which will now be external.

The system does boot w/o the 2 TB connected. To clarify, my question is whether the 5TB will work without cloning the "System reserve" partition of the 2TB, just the main storage partition.

 

[USAFRet]

In that case, sure. You do NOT need to clone the system reserved. Yes, it will work.

But you do not need to 'clone' anything.
Simply copy/paste to the new drive, and swap drive letters.
The system will see the new larger drive exactly as it saw the original 2TB, just more free space.

 

[pirc]

I'm just trying to get it as "plug and play" as possible.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm just trying to get it as "plug and play" as possible.

Either way...about the same level of complexity.
Yes, cloning to the new drive will work.