Copying Drives with Different Block Sizes | The Easiest Way  

Copying Drives with Different Block Sizes | The Easiest Way

Updated on Jun 24, 2024 | by Oaklynn

Table of Contents
  1. Help: Copying drives with different block sizes is not supported
  2. Overview of block size
    1. How to check disk block size
  3. Why clone hard drive with different block sizes?
  4. Best freeware to clone hard drive with different sizes
  5. Step-by-step guide: copying between drives with different block sizes
    1. Step 1: Change block size of the destination disk
    2. Step 2: Copy data from the old drive to the new drive
  6. Summary

Help: Copying drives with different block sizes is not supported

"I've been running into clone problems lately with 1TB hard drives. HDClone gives me an error saying, 'copying between drives with different block sizes is not supported'. Clonezilla won't work either and it's really a bother to do a clean install and migration manually. Karen's Replicator is another possibility that I've considered but it's a bit time-consuming, especially with hard drives that have multiple partitions."

Cloning hard drive with different block size is a little tricky. However, there is a workaround to finish this task - you can make the block size of the source and destination disk the same, and then transfer data between them with a professional disk clone tool.

Overview of block size

In the first place, you need to know what the disk block size is. In computing, a sector is a subdivision of a track on a disk. A block is actually a group of sectors. As for the disk block size, it is the size of a block in file systems and data storage.

How to check disk block size

If you are not sure about the block size of your hard drives, follow the steps below to check it:

Check Sector Size

Why clone hard drive with different block sizes?

There are three main reasons as below.

Best freeware to clone hard drive with different sizes

To clone hard drive with different sizes, you can seek help from the best free disk cloning software - Qiling Disk Master Standard.

Well then, how to clone hard drive with different size? Download Qiling Disk Master now and follow the step-by-step guide below.

Step-by-step guide: copying between drives with different block sizes

Before you start to clone disk with different size, some preparations are required.

Then, let's get started to clone hard drive with different block size with Qiling Disk Master Standard.

Step 1: Change block size of the destination disk

🔔 Note: All data on the destination disk will be removed during the process. If you have any important data on it, you must backup files in advance.

1. Press Win + E to open File Explorer.

2. Right-click on the destination disk and choose Format.

3. In the format dialog, choose the same block size as the source disk under Allocation unit size. Then click on Start.

Allocation Unit Size

Step 2: Copy data from the old drive to the new drive

1. Install and launch this software. Then, on its main page, click Clone from the left side. And click Disk Clone on the right.

Disk Clone

Tip: Please note that the free version only supports cloning non-system disks. To clone a system disk, please upgrade to higher editions.

2. Select the current disk (Disk 1). Then click Next.

Select Source Disk

3. Select the new HDD or SSD (Disk 2) with different block size from the source disk. Then choose Next.

Select Destination Disk

4. Confirm everything is right and click Proceed to clone disk with different size. It's suggested to tick SSD Alignment to accelerate the reading and writing speed if you are cloning HDD to SSD.

Proceed

👍 Advanced feature you may need

◑ If you are cloning a smaller hard drive to a larger one, you need to adjust the partition size of the destination disk using Edit Partitions during the process. If not, the cloned hard drive will not show full capacity.

It has three options, including "Copy without resizing partitions", "Add unused space to all partitions", and "Manually adjust partition size". The last two options are supported by Qiling Disk Master Professional, so you need to upgrade the freeware before using this feature.

Sector by sector clone will clone every bit of the source disk, whether it is used or not. Do not check this option when copying drives with different block sizes, or the cloning process will fail.

👉 After cloning

After the cloning process has been completed, you still need to check if the cloned drive can boot successfully. Shut down your computer completely, swap out the old drive for the new HDD/SSD, and then restart to check if all the programs and data are there.

If there is an extra drive bay inside your computer, you can keep both the old and new disks installed. To boot from the new disk, you need to set the cloned drive as the first boot option in BIOS. If the new disk works well, you can wipe the old disk for reuse.

Boot from the cloned SSD

Summary

To copy drives with different block sizes, you should first make the block size of the source and destination disk the same, and then transfer data between them with professional disk clone software Qiling Disk Master Standard. Its intuitive interface and simple steps make the disk clone effortless. It is worth mentioning that this software can help you retain the best performance of SSD. And it won’t interrupt your work during the cloning process.

Also, you can only migrate operating system to SSD with its "System Clone" feature (advanced feature) if there is not enough disk space to hold everything on the old drive. What's more pleasing, Qiling Disk Master is superb backup and sync software that can help you with data protection and file transfer. Try it now to discover more!

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