Clone different size HDD's

[electromechanical30]

I have several PC's that are used in a SCADA type setup on an industrial platform. The machines are early 1990's vintage, so the hard drives are rather small. The drives range from 2-8.6 GB. I have a 40 GB from the OEM as a spare. I'd like to copy it for back up purposes. Can I copy the 40 GB to a 8.6 GB? I know that question sounds rather dumb, but the actual used space on the drive is 250 MB...
I'd like to use up the few extra small hard disks that I have left before buying and using 60 or 80 GB drives, plus it just seems like a waste to use such a large drive for the small amount of data stroed on it.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[vacunita]

I think cloning is not what you want to do.

Perhaps it would be better to either copy it manually into a folder on the 8GB, or get an app that can create an image file, instead of a direct clone.
An Image file would be an exact replica of the drive, but would only be as large as the information it contains, i.e 250Mb, and would be just a normal file that you could even backup to a CD in that case.

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[cdogg]

For cloning, I recommend the following utilities:

- Farstone's DriveClone
- Symantec's Ghost
- Acronis TrueImage

None of them are free, however.

In your situation, you might want to visit the 40GB drive manufacturer's website for a free cloning utility download.

Although you can simply copy the data over manually, you will miss other important information such as the MBR (Master Boot Record) that help control the boot process. So if you have any type of OS that this drive expects to boot from, use a cloning utility. If the drive is ONLY used for data, then you can manually copy it over.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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