Using Macrium Reflect Free to Clone A Larger Drive

[Tim Smith]

I had a few questions about using Macrium Reflect free and wondered if I really needed the payed version.

What I'm doing- Cloning my C drive from a 500gb drive to a 1tb drive.

Last evening I successfully managed to make a clean clone of C drive. It appeared to have two smaller partitions (less than 500mb) and the main larger partition.

My plan was to extend the C partition after I made the clone in disk management. After some wrangling I realized disk management will not allow me to increase the size on my C drive. The image is an exact copy with no provision to add the extra space on my 1TB drive to the C partition.

After investigating some more it appears that when using Macrium before you go to step 4 in the clone process,  there is provision to add the rest of the space to C, THEN you commit to the image. What this means is I will  need to start all over and erase that clone to increase the size of that partition DURING the process right after step 3.

I should add, I have heard in some cases enlarging the C partition can introduce data corruption.

My questions are-

Will I need the paid version of Macrium to do this correctly?

Are there real dangers in enlarging my C partition this way?

As a side note- I noticed my  license usb thumb drive stopped scanning and was flagged after I made the clone. Everything else boorted and worked normally. I suspect Waves and ilock might be I.D.ing my hard drive. Since it sees a different SSD it's a no go. How do I get around that if true?

[rsinger]

I've used Macrium Reflect free to do what you're saying a number of times. No problems. I don't remember the details, but I thought I cloned the disk, installed it and then used disk management to enlarge the partition. I could be wrong, it's been a while. My DAW is around eight years old now, I started with a 256 gb system SDD, switched to a 512 gb, and eventually a 1 tb.

Edited June 28, 2022 by rsinger

[Xoo]

@rsinger is right: clone the partition, then use Windows Disk Management to extend the partition to as large as you want.

[Tim Smith]

7 hours ago, rsinger said:

I've used Macrium Reflect free to do what you're saying a number of times. No problems. I don't remember the details, but I thought I cloned the disk, installed it and then used disk management to enlarge the partition. I could be wrong, it's been a while. My DAW is around eight years old now, I started with a 256 gb system SDD, switched to a 512 gb, and eventually a 1 tb.

Thanks for your help @rsinger.

I finally managed to get it to work using Macrium Reflect. The free version of Macrium Reflect allows for enlargement of C partition when cloning as you stated. It's a little tricky for the first time user because you need to right click on the C partition to change partition size after dragging it to the clone drive and BEFORE you drag any more partitions on to it. After ordering some additional cabling, I should be able to now use my old 500gb drive as another storage drive and image all of my drives onto a larger external drive.

5 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

then use Windows Disk Management to extend the partition to as large as you want.

Thanks Kevin, I attempted this with the last clone I made ( the smaller partition) it seemed as if it should work but didn't. I remember reading something about the succession of partitions being important. IOW if you had a partition after the C partition, this somehow prevented enlarging the middle one. 

I'm not sure why my boot drive has three partitions, a smaller 500mb at the beginning, the larger C drive in the middle and another a smaller 500mbish one at the end. I replaced everything the same because I didn't want to take any chances on the new drive.