Cloning a drive/partition

[Kelemvor]

So my wife has a laptop with a 750 gig drive in it. It has a couple OEM partitions and then the main one is around 650 Gigs total with only about 20 gigs used. She is having issues and I need to reinstall Windows to see if it's a HW or SW problem.

I'd like to clone her machine before I start so that if it's not a SW problem, I can just put the clone back on and reset it right back to how it was before.

The problem is that I only have a 250 gig drive to use.

I tried using Clonezilla but it's not happy that the "new" drive is smaller than the original. Tried resizing the partition to make it smaller than the 250 but it still wasn't happy.

Is there some other program I can use that will clone a larger partition to a smaller one as long as the data fits? Only other option I think I can try is using Clonezilla to just make an image of the drive onto the 250 and then reverse it if I need to put it back but that wouldn't help if the drive turns out to be bad and I want to swap in the 250 temporarily.

Just looking for any options.

 

[C1]

Based on your last paragraph, not sure what it is saying (eg, "Only other option I think I can try is using Clonezilla to just make an image of the drive onto the 250" VERSUS "the problem is that I only have a 250 gig drive to use. I tried using Clonezilla but it's not happy that the "new" drive is smaller than the original"?)

Anyways, what you are trying to do I do all the time. Just resize the OS partition and image it to the smaller drive using a utility that works (eg, Drive Copy). You can always image the back up to another drive then resize the OS partition to what you want (I use "Partition Commander" because it is bundled with System Commander). Anyways, there's a shit house of free utilities out there for doing what you want. Typical:
http://www.softsea.com/software/Partition-Manager.html

 

[Kelemvor]

What I meant is that I can create an image file (.ISO or whatever) of the drive instead of actually cloning it to a live, working drive.

My original intent was to clone it to create a mirror image so I could swap the hard drives and not see any difference as they'd both be live, working, drives.

I'll play with it again tonight and see what I get.

 

[cubby1223]

Haven't used clonezilla to know it's features, I have both Norton Ghost 2003 and Acronis True Image, and both these support automatic partition resizing when cloning drives, to fit onto a smaller size drive.

 

[pete1229]

There is a way of reinstalling windows without losing all your personal data and installed programs. Check out this link, I'm not sure if it will solve your problems but it may keep you from having to do all the steps you mentioned.

http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/win7s-no-reformat-nondestructive-reinstall/

 

[Diogynes]

>> Is there some other program I can use that will clone a larger partition to a smaller one as long as the data fits?

You might try AOMEI Partition Assistant. I think it will copy just the used space of a partition and you can recover the copy to a smaller partition. It is free for private use.