Issues with cloning a dynamic volume

[john.n.fielden]

I want to upgrade my secondary large storage hard drive to a larger newer drive, but am having issues cloning it.

I boot from an SSD (only windows and a few drivers), with a large 4 TB drive that I put everything else on, including where I store programs and downloads and such. Both drives are getting old, 4 years or more, so I want to swap out the large 4TB (WD Black) disk first.

I purchased a 6TB (WD Black). Installed it, and am ready to clone. Ideally, I want to clone it, then remove the old secondary drive and just use the new one.

But, Macrium Reflect free won't copy a dynamic volume. So, I bought EaseUS ToDo. EaseUS says that Linux can't read a GPT drive.

I attempted to convert the new drive from GPT to MBR (which split into two volumes, the first one being too small to do the clone). That didn't matter cause I still got the GPT error when I tried it anyway with EaseUS .

I feel I'm fighting too hard here. What path should I take?

1. Should I convert my dynamic volume to a non-dynamic (simple?), is there any danger of losing data? Then use Macrium?
2. Should I convert to the MBR and use partition magic to resize, then use EaseUS?
3. Should I just use Clonezilla?

What's the right approach here?

My system:
Win 10
i7, older
500Gig Samsung SSD for boot
4TB WD Black, GPT dynamic volume, 3TB used

New drive is WD black 6TB.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks for your time.

John

 

[USAFRet]

For a secondary drive, no cloning is needed.
Simply copy/paste everything to the new drive, ensuring that it remains the same folder tree structure.
After, swap drive letters around.

The OS will not know the difference.

 

[john.n.fielden]

For a secondary drive, no cloning is needed.
Simply copy/paste everything to the new drive, ensuring that it remains the same folder tree structure.
After, swap drive letters around.

The OS will not know the difference.

Thanks, I was leaning towards doing that. I have two minor issues that kept me from doing that.
1. I was concerned that hidden files would not copy.
2. I was hoping to verify the copy is correct and complete.

Should the new volume be a non-dynamic, I don't think I need that anyway.

Thanks,

John

 

[USAFRet]

For a secondary drive, no cloning is needed.
Simply copy/paste everything to the new drive, ensuring that it remains the same folder tree structure.
After, swap drive letters around.

The OS will not know the difference.

Thanks, I was leaning towards doing that. I have two minor issues that kept me from doing that.
1. I was concerned that hidden files would not copy.
2. I was hoping to verify the copy is correct and complete.

Should the new volume be a non-dynamic, I don't think I need that anyway.

Thanks,

John

On a secondary drive, there should be no hidden files of any import.
For verifying the copy...don't try to select the whole thing and copy all at once.
Select some of it and copy that. Verify. Move on to the next few folders.
Repeat.

As long at it ends up in the same folder structure as original, all is good.