Clone V2 drive from 3TB to 4TB.

gibster · Post by **gibster** » Sun Oct 02, 2022 18:16

Hi All:

Couldn't find anything specific to this on the forum. Sorry if it's here somewhere.

I've currently got a 3TB drive hooked up to my V2. The drive occasionally disappears and the V2 reverts to internal storage. The drive is several years old and used to be in my T4 before it died.

I'm now going to a WD 4 TB 2 1/2" drive and will use a clone dock to copy the existing drive to the new one. Because of size difference the new drive will end up showing as a 3TB instead of a 4TB if I understand the cloning process of the external 2 drive dock correctly. This is the fastest way to copy the roughly 2TB of recordings I have at the moment. Clone in an hour, or transfer files over the network for hours on end. LOL

Anyway, my question is where can I find info on extending the 3 TB of space to use all of the 4TB without losing the 2TB of data on the drive.

Can this be done on a Windows PC or would I have to do it from the command line on the V2 or using a live USB to boot into linux or something like that on the PC?

Gib

IanL-S · Post by **IanL-S** » Mon Oct 03, 2022 09:10

I would try MiniTool Partition Wizard Free, which I have used to resize partitions. Not sure if it will resize ext4 partitions but it is worth truing: https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-pa ... nager.html

Ian

raymondjpg · Post by **raymondjpg** » Mon Oct 03, 2022 10:45

gibster wrote: ↑
Sun Oct 02, 2022 18:16
Can this be done on a Windows PC or would I have to do it from the command line on the V2 or using a live USB to boot into linux or something like that on the PC?

I'd be looking at Parted Magic https://partedmagic.com/. Free gratis and for nothing, I've used it successfully to extend linux partitions in virtual machines. Boot from a USB drive in your windows PC.

From the web page: Supported File Systems ext2, ext3, ext4, fat16, fat32, ntfs, and reiserfs Supported Actions: Create, grow, shrink, move, copy, check, label, and UUID.

Edit: Apparently no longer free, but the last known free version released is available from https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/detail ... magic.html. They note that is is known to cause problems on certain computers, but I stand by my comment that it still works for me.

gibster · Post by **gibster** » Tue Oct 04, 2022 17:47

Thanks for the recommendations. I've made me up a bootable GParted usb key and will give it a go after I've cloned the disk to see how it works. After some online searching I discovered GParted is a utility I had used in the past for Win disks for my old HP Media Smart server.

Cheers

Gib

gibster · Post by **gibster** » Thu Oct 06, 2022 21:49

Just an update I cloned my 3TB 3 1/2" drive to a 4TB 2 1/2" drive and it worked fine. Then booted into GParted on a USB stick on my PC. I was able to just select to expand the partition since GParted recognizes Ext 4 drives with no problems. Total time about 6 hours. 5 hours for the cloning in my Welland Dual Drive cloning dock. No PC needed for cloning.

Gib