Clone a striped volume into a basic volume, then revert it to a bigger striped volume.
Clone a striped volume into a basic volume, then revert it to a bigger striped volume.
Recently, I faced some issues with my standard backup program. Instead of trying to recover the data, I opted to clone the partition I wanted to copy. I need three actions in this sequence: 1. Copy a 4TB striped volume/software RAID 0 from two 2TB HDDs as dynamic disks onto one 4TB volume on a single 4TB HDD running GPT. 2. Duplicate the simple volume from the original HDD to another 4TB striped volume using two 3TB HDDs. 3. Increase the partition size from 4TB to 6TB so the extra 2TB can be used. Essentially, I’m upgrading my RAID setup from 2x2TB to 2x3TB and have a spare 4TB backup drive as a temporary step. What tool should I use for this? P.S. I’m on 64-bit Windows 10 Home. Appreciate your help.
The optimal method is to paste the information onto an external hard drive using the built-in file manager on Windows, edit the desired fields, and then transfer the updated data back.
You might want to avoid copying the data through Windows Explorer. At first I planned to do it, but I noticed the file size didn’t match the available space on the original drive, suggesting Explorer wasn’t working perfectly.
I utilized the partition cloning feature in my backup program to duplicate the RAID array onto both the backup drive and the new setup. Each time the cloning process matched the data perfectly, yet the storage usage varied across the three volumes—despite identical file sizes and quantities. This suggests some unused space might be being filled without clear justification on each drive. On the first drive, around 71GB was used out of a total 6TB, while the second used only about 2.9GB. I’m not overly concerned. I’ll treat this as resolved since all data transferred successfully. P.S. For reference, when I checked the size in Windows Explorer, it matched closely with what the partition cloner sent, hinting that a straightforward method might have worked if needed again.