Two Internal Hard Drives - Need to Clone One of the Two & Replace the Cloned

[waner21]

Issue

I have a PC with two internal hard drives: one 250 GB SSD and one 1 TB HDD. The SSD is used to boot my OS and I use the HDD as my primary file/program storage. I am about 65-70% full on my HDD and I can see reaching capacity in the near future. I would like to replace the current HDD with a 3 TB HDD but try to avoid messing with the SSD if possible.

Below are the questions I have pertaining to my situation:

1. Can someone provide some helpful hints/steps how I can clone (or create a system image) of only the 1 TB HDD and then transfer it to a new HDD

2. What programs do you recommend for accomplishing Item 1? I saw that Windows 10 has a Create System Image option, but perhaps my situation warrants using another program since I care to only clone one of my two hard drives.

3. If I am successful in creating a clone of my current HDD and transferring it to a new HDD, will there need to be any time spent to reconfigure the new HDD to any files/programs where maybe I had some files referencing files/programs contained on my SSD? My understanding is that cloning of a hard drive creates an exact replica and once the hard drive cloning process is complete my computer will view the new HDD essentially as the same hard drive as the old HDD, except now I will have more storage capacity.

Additional Information

My current PC has an external eSata port that can be connected to directly where my USB ports are on the front of my PC. I would like to avoid having three hard drives installed internally at one time if I can avoid it. Also, I do have an external 5 TB hard drive that can be used if that makes some of this process easier.

I'm fairly new to working on computers and slowly learning as I go. I apologize in advance if this topic has been discussed/addressed, but I did not find anything specific to my situation in the forum search or through Google and was hoping I could get some helpful insight from forum members. Thank-you in advance.

 

[CircuitDaemon]

I'd recommend Acronis True Image in its bootable media format. It's not free, but it's one of the best and easiest I've seen. It can clone the drive "on the fly", meaning that it won't necessarily make an image and then restore it, so no need for a third drive to store it. You may also do the image, but since your purpose is not a backup, there's no need. It will also adjust the partition size to make sure it uses the most available space free on the second drive. (It will even shrink it in smaller drives as long as the data can fit).

The second option is Clonezilla, also bootable. It doesn't have a graphical interface but it can achieve the same purpose and also has more advanced settings. It's not as simple as Acronis, but it's not hard either and there are plenty of tutorials online.

Both of them will do what you need, and as long as the new drive stays on the same computer, there shouldn't be anything to configure once it boots. You will see some messages about windows installing the hard drive's drivers, but that's it.

 

[James Mason]

I'd also recommend acronis, what you're trying to do isn't really that hard, just kinda time consuming, as cloning a drive will take a while.

After the cloning, both drives will have the same exact data, assuming the old HDD is still fine, you'll probably want to reformat it so it's clean, and then just use as extra storage space.

 

[USAFRet]

I recommend Macrium Reflect, but the above mentioned Acronis would work.
Either way, this is easy stuff.

After, you may need to change the drive letters around.

For instance:
Old drive = E, you need to make the new drive to be E, and the old drive something else.
It will be an exact dupe, so the only thing that may need to be changed is the drive letter.

 

[waner21]

Thank-you to all who contributed their two-cents. I appreciate the feedback/comments. I'll take note of your comments and proceed from there. Thanks.