How to clone drives using DD and GParted

[@travis5732]

I love when people explain how to use core utilities instead of weird proprietary software. Thanks!

[@RAZR_Channel]

I know... all they do is push you off to BS 3rd party shit to download creating a maximum risk situation...

[@TM-jx6et]

Is it easier and faster to use that softwares. It has many overhead process

[@HowdyFolksGaming]

I appreciate when someone takes the time to not only explain what to do, but why we need to do it. Actually understanding the process helps me remember it in the future. Great tutorial, worked perfectly for me. Thanks!

[@smb1397]

its usually cause a lot of people dnot themselves understand why they're doing it, just copying from some other guide

[@omardude39]

This is quite possibly the best tutorial and explanation of this process that I have seen ever. The theory is correct, the process simply works, and you are left with an understanding of why and how.

[@senritsujumpsuit6021]

good to know this for it can help me avoid the fuk up am dealing with XD my main Linux system is in kernel panic thus won't boot an I have download files either deleted or hidden XD

[@Dark_Jaguar]

Your guide is excellent and isn't just a pristine "clean room" ideal situation but a nuanced real world case showing how to resolve issues people can and will actually run into, and I thank you for that!

[@Sheovion2]

Thank you very much! i was needing to clone the OS from a laptop harddrive to an SSD while searching about this process, i only found videos about proprietary software that was ""free"" (30 days trial before needing to buy it) but i knew that Linux probably had such a feature built into it, so i took my bootable Ubunto USB stick, searched about drive cloning in Linux, and found your video, which solved my problem the cloning was from a 500GB's HDD to a 500GB's SSD, so the entire process went on flawlessly and i didn't even needed to mess with disk partitions, again, thank you very much for your great tutorial on that subject!

[@audiencebigg6302]

Thank you! I was able to move my 1TB Windows HDD into a 512GB SSD all thanks to this video. You easily helped explain the steps and their reasons for the migration. No more proprietary cloning software madness, good ol FOSS utils to save the day!

[@manasmaharana4644]

I like the way you explained what's happening and how for what. 🎉 Kudos buddy, keep growing up and keep sharing us your valuable expertise on. ❤

[@Elcientifiko]

I can't thank you enough. You saved me a lot of painful hours. I tried a bunch of propriety software and they limited what I could do unless I paid some money. I wish I found your video earlier. I would save even more time.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Glad I could help here.

[@belvederebaileycambodia]

I finally stopped procrastinating and did my first clone with dd. I found it extremely straight forward and using the lsblk command, I could see exactly what and where each of my drives were, so for me, there was absolutely no confusion as to the source, the live and the destination. Your instructions were flawless and easy to follow and dd and gparted worked like a charm. It's a daunting process the first time round, but knowing whats happening while it's happening makes it a lot easier. And when that cloned drive just booted straight up (linux/win dual boot)...I was more than impressed. Shout out to you brother.... Thanks for your video and sharing your knowledge and obvious talent for these things.

[@stanislavtodorov8705]

Your tutorial is the most compregensive and easy to follow. Tried a bunch of windows program to duplicate an iptv/vod server drive, but every time it failed to boot. When I found this linux based software I was sure it will do the job opposed to the Windows junk free programs. The trick was actualy the fix you did at the end with gdisk. Server is up and running again. Thank you!

[@bostocked]

Your a wizard and an absolute life saver, every other way of cloning seemed to fail I wish I found this 2 weeks ago. Honestly thank you so much, and for your detailed explanation of the tools!!

[@jzgonzo]

I found the scenario you chose-cloning from a larger drive to a smaller one-really usefull. Most guides tend to focus on copying from smaller to larger drives, so your approach was refreshing. As an additional tip, you might want to consider using Gparted, which is available in most Linux distributions. If you already have a Live Linux distro pen drive, you can use it to resize partitions in a similar manner. Thanks for sharing!

[@genaugmen4505]

If you're not familiar with linux, this is the clearest, most straightforward tutorial I've come across. Thank you, thank you, thank you!! "dd" was perfect for getting a 1:1 copy of the original sd card I was working with, and the fastest method as well.

[@RedneckPythagorean]

It's evident you have a fundamental understanding of the Way of the Machine. Thx for sharing with us, your channel is a gem.

[@AngryPacman111]

very nice video. Just need too add that before running dd check, check again and again which is the source drive and especially important which is the target drive. source drive must be specified in if= and target drive must be after of=. If you put it in wrong order or specify a different drive as target it will destroy your data. Never happened with me, but just for those who uses tool like dd first time - be very careful. In right hands dd is super useful tool which allows to copy any data to different drive, but if it used incorrectly it will be "disk destroyer". For GParted it's also a powerful tool, but it has GUI, which means less likely to make a fatal mistake.

[@haolu6939]

I was cloning my Linux Lite from a 500G HDD to a 120G SSD. Unexpectedly, the Gparted bootable usb somehow didn't work on my laptop - boot failed by some firmware error - but I used a workaround - my Linux Lite OS live bootable usb, which contains Gparted and DD by default! Beside the booting, the rest part of the operations were the same with what has been demonstrated in your video, and it ended up with a success! I appreciate that you not only presented what the steps are, but also explained how it worked under the hood! Thank you so much for the tutorial!

[@iatheman]

Best explanation I've seen on the drive partitioning and copying/cloning subject!

[@techthisout3549]

Best video ever on DD and partition tables ! Thanks a lot 👍

[@pemburydidge]

A fantastically well put together explanation. This really is the number 1 tutorial for performing this commonly troublesome operation. Thank you.

[@RidleyofZebes]

Thanks for the video man, just used this to clone my Proxmox install from a 128gb SSD to a 500gb SSD after Rescuezilla threw LVM unmounting errors. You're the bomb!

[@nesdi6653]

This is what im going through clonezilla threw some wierd mapper errors, got me in a login loop

[@pcmman3]

This was a wonderful video. I am a computer tech but I learned several things that I didn't know about the drive utilities dd and gparted. Thank you so very much!

[@walter_lesaulnier]

Excellent video! You include details a lot of others neglect.

[@JasonL1202]

This is terrific! Very clear and perfect because you solved a common problem by going from a larger drive to a smaller one.

[@LesCalvin3]

To my delight, I i was moving from a SATA using the same amount of space as your old drive was using, to an NVMe of the exact same capacity. I was able to follow along step by step, and accomplish something much more "difficult" then my current skill level. Thanks!

[@Sapious1]

Came across this and tried it today going from 4TB to a 750GB drive, worked flawlessly! Thanks for the video.

[@JAVIERLLAMAS10]

Great as usual. Inthe same line of the recovery/copy tools, one thing I recently discovered is Ventoy, you should make a video showing how to use one pendrive for everything. Anyway, just after finishing watching this video, I dropped the GParted iso that you just suggested. Great tool and great procedure!! Mate, I really enjoy all of your videos

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have used Ventoy in the past and will plan a video comparing it to some alternatives.

[@Matt-qu5vc]

Excellent. I've been looking high and low for a video and/or instructions on how to a clone a bootable linux Hard drive to a smaller drive. This is the only one that produced a fully functioning bootable drive. Thanks!

[@vassilissotirchenas787]

This is how tutorials should be made, well done sir

[@ScorpioR1sing]

Awesome video! Been a while since I cloned disks and I learned some new cmds! Love how you explain everything!

[@pdgz8746]

Just used this method to clone a dual boot windows/popos and it worked like a charm! Thank you!

[@amilino]

The best video with the best method. Thank you very much!

[@markdawson25]

Excellent video. The command @7:10 is worth the price of admission.

[@BitsOfTruth]

Thanks for this. I have not tried this yet but have been researching it and fully believe what you are saying.

[@Chris-jp2wo]

Your tutorial works like a charm -- and the explanation is complete and succinct. Thank you very much!

[@rajeshSimpleton]

I have referred to this video at least 5 times. Thank you so much

[@xtalplanet]

Thanks for straightforward explained and demonstrations, that exactly what I need to know

[@borisandhisthreeverses]

This is really helpful, both the tutorial and also the explanation. Thanks!

[@franciscoventuraperez2790]

this video is worth gold, great explanation and actually useful utilities. Thanks

[@VZR_]

One of the tutorials of all time

[@pawelgaj]

Great explanation of the whole process and tools! Thank you!

[@jothain]

Man, once _again_ you saved my time. Wanted to change ssd in one of my laptops for smaller and already began to DL clonezilla, but remembered that at least years ago its interface was atrocious to say in slightest. So decided to checkout if someone has made tutorial about cloning drives in linux and it was about as close what I thought might work, but I've always sucked with DD. Your tips worked 100% though I didn't need to work with that recovery part as it was btrfs system. Thank you! Once again 🙂

[@smonster]

best explanation i have found about dd and gparted… subscribed :D and thank you for sharing your knowledge and explaining so well

[@jwaldron2508]

super explicit, and clear. Thanks for the info!

[@allananderson5840]

This worked well and is much easier to understand and use than...all the packed (not!) easier solutions. And with a live USB linux, I have a great tool for lots of situations. Thanks!!

[@allananderson5840]

I'm getting stuck with the Windows Boot Manager, disk collisions/signatures, etc. ... You asked for new video suggestions, :-) .. so, how to boot a Win11 clone, manage having several clones (like a weekly and monthly BU). Could include compressed images (dd ... | gzip | dd of=Image) . Just a thought.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

@allananderson5840 thanks for the idea. I’ll think about ways to put that video together. If you want frequent backups that can be restored I’d look at backup software like veeam. Then incremental backups can be used for much less disk space usage.

[@allananderson5840]

@@ElectronicsWizardry veeam seems way overkill for a home PC/workstation. I tried Macrium Free version 8 (discontinued but still "out there"). Weekly full image/daily differentials (incremental isn't part of free version). Can't "see under the hood". People seem to love and trust it.

[@bugs389]

After repairing the gpt backup table at the end of the disk, wouldn't this repair be undone in the next step at 12:32, where the unallocated space is moved around, placing the Windows recovery partition at the end of the disk with no unallocated space at the end? Or does the space where the backup gpt is written to become unavailable to Gparted ; no longer part of the unallocated space, an invisible "partition" if you will?

[@walle1976]

Simple and to the point. Well done.

[@ianbrien1712]

Amazingly well done and explained in a way that works for Linux beginners. Keep it up!

[@therearetoomanytomatoes]

Thanks man this worked perfectly. Even my VMs and passthroughs are working just like earlier.

[@wildmanjeff42]

GREAT VIDEO ! Just found your channel, subscribed and will be going through past videos and watching for more!

[@johnturnipseed3166]

Thanks for this GREAT tutorial! I cloned my nvme drive like a boss thanks to this video! 👍👍👍

[@JaredT-k8s]

Worked like a charm, thanks for the video!

[@guineapig1016]

High-quality free underrated 🎉

[@KALClFER]

Awesome dude, just what I needed! Cheers 👍

[@VinnieSajan]

This is exactly the video I needed. Thank you.

[@6r3nt0nt]

This is a great walkthrough! Much appreciated. Subscribed!

[@bertvantol9669]

GREAT explanation. THANKS

[@kosodrzewinka]

Thanks, that's very helpful. I used to tried that a couple times in the past but always failed, seemingly because of that end of the disk partition thing. Other online resources usually point to some crappy, paid Windows utility....

[@madskilz3940]

Fantastic demonstration, Thank you.

[@akyhne]

Thanks! Helped me a lot. I was trying to migrate the partitions from a Raspberry Pi 4 bootable disk, to another, with Clonezilla, but that wouldn't boot up, although the gdisk command said, there was a valid MBR. So I tried cloning with the dd command, and it worked like a charm. I used GParted for the whole lot, as I don't have a Linux computer.

[@DJ-ew8fd]

Wow awesome. I love the part where you fix the partition tables.

[@brucefox6580]

Very well presented tutorial as usual. Thank you.

[@atfarmerbrown]

Thank you for making these videos !

[@TM-jx6et]

Please tell how to clone between m.2 of same size. I had some issues with partition management. Like my system reserved partition gets fixed in middle

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

You should be able to just use dd if the drives are the same size, and the partitions will be in the same spots. For example if sda is the current drive, and sdb is the drive to be cloned to: dd if=/dev/sda /dev/sdb bs=1M status=progress

[@ecw0647]

Excellent explanation of dd. Finally.

[@MagicJF]

Good content, Is nice to view what is going on inside disks

[@Arkid77777]

This dudes underrated

[@RuffRides]

Great vid. I didn't get any issues with Gparted loading up again to resize new partitions but I did get "press any key to skip disk checking" booting up windows 10 and "restart to repair drive errors" notification in Windows"?

[@Antien-q1z]

Way useful: outstanding video !!!!!

[@linuxxxunil]

Gotta decrypt the bitlocker first. Good video.

[@horst.zimmermann]

Thank you for this tutorial, i need to copy my Proxmox boot drive from a SAS drive to an NVME drive.

[@user-Theo-Verdurmen]

Thank you learned some new issues using dd.

[@Artemides456]

It was so good! It was so precious! Thanks!

[@unknown_channel_name]

It was a helpful tutorial. I wonder if increasing the block size to something larger like 100M or 1G will increase the copying speed when cloning NVME ?

[@gersontentainvestir3929]

Super useful video, thanks a lot!!

[@davidarmandosilvadepaz310]

Very nice tut, I was able to clone a macos w/win hdd to ssd. At first I couldn't open gparted, because it throwed me the error "Invalid argument during seek for read". I looked for an answer on internet, but were too complicated, however the problem was the one you explained at the end, macos doesn't have a gpt backup table at the end of the drive. So I had to applay gdisk twice, before and after cloning. I don't know what would've done without you help. Thanks in advance!

[@pdgz8746]

would this work for a dual boot windows pop os system? im trying to clone my drive to a larger one and I have win and popos partitions but havent been able to do it

[@pdgz8746]

I just copied the full drive with both pop and windows partitions with this method and it is booting smoothly thank you so much!

[@Morphine-691]

Finally m out of deep shit.. uffff your video saved my ass bro 🙏☝️🔥🔥🔥👌👌😌❤️🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰. M feeling peace & relaxed.. Lots & lots of love from India ❤️ bro 🤝

[@cldpt]

great video. I want to suggest also using Macrium Reflekt, which also has a WinRE USB creator utility which can be used to spool a recovery system with the app running and perform whatever you need. Reflekt has a free trial which works fine without payment last I checked. It also uses Windows/Microsoft's imaging tech which makes the process almost as quick as with DD.

[@brucefox6580]

For awareness, Macrium Reflect Home Free, it is being phased out and the current version is the last.

[@LesCalvin3]

Aaaaaaand it's gone

[@swtpeteswtpete1515]

VERY VERY helpful- thank you for this @ElectronicsWizardry !! I am trying to learn HDD and SSD digital forensics/recovery on my own, organically but not studying a lot first - so your video is monumentally educational!! Some great commands for you and others out there are 'pv' and 'dialog' to see progress bars like this => #######[ ], and dialog creates a sort of 8bit color graphical screen and progress meter. I am still struggling with understanding the TABLE at the beginning of the drive or block device but still reading up a lot ; also, if I have say a 2TB HDD and 'clone into it' a 500gb SDD using DD, is it ok to (as I have tried) simply use if=/dev/zero and of=(the 2TB HDD) to rezero the drive then just DROP the 500gb 'image' (raw data) over using dd, or should I MAKE a /dev/sdb1 "container" of say, ext4 (linux fs) first and 'spray' the 500gb of data into the /dev/sdb1 ? I think for forensics it doesn't matter. OH another great tool is 'testdisk' part of the 'photorec' suite of tools, for you and your Subscribers. Have a great day- I look fwd to your reply if you have time to write back =) Thanks again

[@Bobalazs]

When many partitions are included with various sizes on the source disk, can i skip any partitions that otherwise wouldn't fit on the target disk?

[@juanfritas_8398]

Thanks a lot bro, so useful. Best wishies

[@Galileo63]

Nice video. Will this method work for replacing the old small 22GB nvme part of a mac fusion drive, with bootcamp, to a larger and faster nvme? Already replaced HDD with SSD. Thanks.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I have never tried this with a fusion drive, so I can't be sure what would happen here. You can try it, and put the old drive back if it doesn't work. In this case I'd probably remove the fusion drive if possible to make the storage system simpler on the system.

[@neogeo8267]

Great video / review! Video idea: Same thing but with linux LVM

[@ES-iv6wb]

Thank you so much for creating this video. I was able to downsize my 512 gb drive to 526 gb! You’re a wizard 🧙🏽‍♂️! Now I am trying to do the reverse, and moving an old 50 pin SCSI 1 gb drive to another 50 pin SCSI 2 gb drive. But I’m running into boot issues. Any chance you could help? Really appreciate you.

[@Smart-Skippy]

Hey this is a great video. Thank you !!!! How would I go about cloning a disk in a RAID 5 (Linux) array ?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Are you trying to cline a single disk or clone the whole array? For a single disk I'd probably just use the mdadm device replace function or remove a disk and let the raid rebuild. For the whole array you should be able to dd over the whole virtual disk to a new device or array. It should show up as something like /dev/md0 in your system and you can use that as the inputbor output in dd. I'd make a backup first if possible as it's easy to make errors doing this.

[@CK113th121]

This helps a lot, thanks!

[@patricklarose]

Great video! Thank you.

[@chaihow-to6300]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I had no idea you could move the partition, the way you did with gparted. A while back i googled about if its possible but all the results i found were to pay $ for some program. i think AOME or something.. Had no idea you could do that with Gparted. Gonna use the shrinking option before i backup my raspberry pi sdcard to be restored later to a smaller sd. Would be great if you did a video about that i think.. There is a lot of questions on that online. But people just suggest to use windows program, or just to use the dd without shrinking the partition first. Thank you

[@irkedoff]

Thank you.

[@abeibrahim5846]

Great Tutoria - Q: I have a QNAP NAS with a 500GB SSD, I need to clone it with a 4TB SSD on my Windows PC - Can I use DD & GParted for Linux drive? will these tools read Linux partitions?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I'm not sure how the QNAP NAS has the ssd formatted. I know those nas units can be interesting with formats so be careful about that. GPT and MBR partition tables works on Linux + Windows and other oses, so any OS should show the same partitions.

[@rcdenis1]

How would this be done from the command line?

[@ArkedVoid10]

Idk if i did somthing wrong or what, but im trying to move a 1tb hdd to a 500gb ssd, and every thing looked right cloned over just fine, reset the partitions...but the ssd i cloned to wont boot when i solo boot

[@con5818]

Thanks for your help!

[@dp70737]

Why did it have that 1MiB of unallocated space between the last 2 partitions? Will that ever cause an issue in certain circumstances?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I’m pretty sure that extra space won’t cause any issues. You can have free space between partitions, and 1m of wasted space won’t make a significant difference in usable space.

[@bigalexlaw]

Great Video. Question: I used dd to clone a Windows 10 drive from 500gb to 1TB. After clone, I can see partition and I can boot into Windows for the new drive. The issue I noticed back in GDisk, the 'Main Header' and 'Main Partition Table" show 'ERROR'. And for the partition table scan, 'MBR: Only' and 'GPT: Damaged'.. I tried the "r", "bc" and "e" options but I loose all partitions. In the GParted gui, I can move/reorg partitions (the "Win RE" and "msftres") to utilize the extra disk space, however, I would like to fix Headers and convert to GPT. What's your advice?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I'm afraid I haven't seen this exact issue so not really sure what to do here. I'd probably want to start fresh if possible. You can probably copy the partitions to a file using DD, then re create the partitions table and dd the partitions back. Make a backup just in case before trying this.

[@myBestWishes677]

Great tutorial. I have an MBR disk with three win versions, and linux, and I have had a tough time cloning it to a slightly smaller ssd disk... evrything else failed even clonezilla

[@samolse]

thanks a lot - very useful for me

[@yountune9799]

Can't get Gparted to shrink NTFS partition. Keep getting check file system error.

[@matepozzo]

question, where does dd "start" to copy in the output disk? I want to backup a windows system and i have 300gb free at the end of another disk with linux installed, is it going to overwrite my linux partitions, or just ignore them?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

DD starts writing at the befogging of the drive by default. You can use skip= to jump ahead to later on in the drive with the number being the block size which can be set with bs=. If you clone to the drive, you will overwrite the partition table, and use the partition table from the image. You may want to clone partitions here. In linux this could be using something like /dev/sdb3 for the 3rd partition on sdb for example. If your doing something like this with partitions, I'd make sure to have a backup first in case something goes wrong.

[@matepozzo]

@@ElectronicsWizardry ok, thank you!

[@macualey]

this didn't work for my proxmox install that I wanted to move to a slightly smaller drive. Couldn't shrink the partition at all.