How to determine the block size of a hard drive

[JimSr83]

I'm using EZ Gig IV with USB connectors to try to clone my Win 7 C Drive on a desktop (Dell). but, when I come to selecting the destination drive I get the reading, "copying between drives with different block sizes is not supported"
What can I do?
How do I find the "block size" of a hard drive?
Can I modify the block size? If so, How?

 

[dariens007]

what year did you purchase your dell computer?

 

[dariens007]

so to understand you are cloning from an internal harddrive to an external usb harddrive?

 

[ddpruitt]

Changing a disks bock size isn't something I would recommend unless you REALLY know what your doing and why. Changing block sizes can cause all sorts of interesting issues. It sounds like EZ gig is doing a blockwise copy instead of filewise copy which is a bit unusual. If you're swapping out drives I would recommend copying all the files (as in copy paste) and then using your rescue DVD to make the drive bootable, or if your concerned use a different tool that doesn't clone the blocks, but clones the files on the drive.

<edit> I looked at the documentation for EZ gig and it looks like the error means it's having issues reading some of the drives parameters, they have a procedure for handling this if you want to try it but IMHO software that needs the block size to clone a drive really isn't written all that well </edit>

 

[dariens007]

also do you have the Apricorn DriveWire Universal Hard Drive Adapter.

 

[dariens007]

Changing a disks bock size isn't something I would recommend unless you REALLY know what your doing and why. Changing block sizes can cause all sorts of interesting issues. It sounds like EZ gig is doing a blockwise copy instead of filewise copy which is a bit unusual. If you're swapping out drives I would recommend copying all the files (as in copy paste) and then using your rescue DVD to make the drive bootable, or if your concerned use a different tool that doesn't clone the blocks, but clones the files on the drive.

copy and pasting files to another harddrive for it to boot? and then using a rescue CD? um, i dont think that will work at all

 

[dariens007]

i was waiting on your reply so i did a little googling to try and resolve your issue this is what i came up with

with the EZ drive clone tool you are trying to clone from an internal harddrive to an external harddrive. EZ drive clone acts funky when you try to clone from an older drive to a new drive. here is were i referenced the issue form

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/How-to-clone-a-pre-2006-HDD-to-an-M500-with-EZ-GIG-IV/td-p/133448

to resolve your issue you need to swap the direction of how you are cloning your harddrive. What i mean by that is right now you are trying to clone from the internal harddrive, your source drive which is older, to a newer external harddrive, the external usb harddrive. what the solution i link suggest is that you take your internal harddrive and put THAT into the EZ drive clone usb enclosure, and you take the harddrive you would like to clone to, your destination harddrive, and connect that internally in the computer. then you use the EZ drive clone boot CD, and do a drive clone from the USB harddrive, now your source where your operating system is located, to the internal harddrive, now your destination harddrive that you swapped to your computer.

sounds a bit complicated but that should work.

another alternative is to use a free program called Macrium Reflect free edition which can be downloaded here

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

now i have used this program and how it works is that you install the free edition and you can clone your harddrive while you are still using windows to your external USB and there should be no issues.

now in Macrium reflect you can also create a Rescue CD, in the program you go to Other task and then Create Rescue Media. Now once here you want to Create a Windows PE 3.1 rescue media. Click the Advanced option and select Windows PE 3.1 and create that one. for the PE Architure the 64 bit version should be sufficient. you can i think burn it to a live CD or create an ISO and burn from that option. once the rescue CD is created you can now restore your backed up partition from system boot to any harddrive you desire

think to note.....

1. changing block size? as the other person suggested please dont do it it can cause errors
2. copy and pasting files manualy to another harddrive and then trying to create a bootable harddrive. i just dont think that'll work very well.

i hope this helps