Posted December 18, 2017 Hi! I have a 2.5" 1TB WD Blue drive which I will be giving to my sister. I'll be replacing it with a slimmer (7mm) 1TB WD Blue. Question: which would be faster? cloning or just copying the files over to the new drive? If cloning, what's a good cloning software? I'll try my best to connect both of them to SATA before the transfer. One's currently on a USB3 external enclosure. P.S. - not a boot drive, mostly contains media (movies/TV etc.) - original drive is almost full at around 900+GB Karamo Spoiler CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 5 3600 | CPU Cooler: Wraith Stealth | GPU: Gigabgyte AORUS GeForce RTX 2070 Super | Motherboard: MSI B450M Mortar Max | RAM: G.Skill FlareX 2x8GB 3200MHz CL16 | SSD: ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro M.2 256GB | HDD: 1TB 2.5" Western Digital Blue (WD10SPZX) | Case: NZXT H510 | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit | Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted December 18, 2017 I would clone, but since the drive is full, I would check and copy any files you need. If the drive has programs, you should do a clone since it has the lowest chance of breaking them. Cor Caeruleus Reborn v6 Spoiler CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K CPU Cooler: be quiet! - PURE ROCK Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver - 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste Motherboard: ASRock Z370 Extreme4 Memory: G.Skill TridentZ RGB 2x8GB 3200/14 Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive Storage: Western Digital - Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive Storage: Western Digital - BLACK SERIES 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Video Card: EVGA - 970 SSC ACX (1080 is in RMA) Case: Fractal Design - Define R5 w/Window (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA P2 750W with CableMod blue/black Pro Series Optical Drive: LG - WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit and Linux Mint Serena Keyboard: Logitech - G910 Orion Spectrum RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard Mouse: Logitech - G502 Wired Optical Mouse Headphones: Logitech - G430 7.1 Channel Headset Speakers: Logitech - Z506 155W 5.1ch Speakers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted December 18, 2017 Author 26 minutes ago, ARikozuM said: I would clone, but since the drive is full, I would check and copy any files you need. If the drive has programs, you should do a clone since it has the lowest chance of breaking them. No programs. It's a media storage drive. Karamo Spoiler CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 5 3600 | CPU Cooler: Wraith Stealth | GPU: Gigabgyte AORUS GeForce RTX 2070 Super | Motherboard: MSI B450M Mortar Max | RAM: G.Skill FlareX 2x8GB 3200MHz CL16 | SSD: ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro M.2 256GB | HDD: 1TB 2.5" Western Digital Blue (WD10SPZX) | Case: NZXT H510 | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit | Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted December 18, 2017 I've had bad luck with cloning software, the Samsung migration software has worked well for me, but outside of that the few that I've tried just haven't worked properly, I even had a drive die last week while trying Macrium Reflect. I would highly recommend using a cloning dock such as the Inland GDPD01T, I've used it about 4 or 5 times now after the guys at Microcenter recommended it and it's worked flawlessly every time. There are more expensive options that can clone a half full 1TB to a 500GB if you want that option, this one can only clone to drives of the same size or larger. http://www.microcenter.com/product/486120/dual_bay_docking_station i9-10900K, Asus ROG STRIX Z590-E Gaming WiFi, Asus TUF RTX3080, 32GB G.Skill 3200MHz CL14 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB, EVGA Supernova 850W G3, Asus Xonar DGX Fractal Design Define C TG, Noctua NH-U14S, Asus PG279Q 27" IPS 1440p 165Hz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted December 18, 2017 just copy the files and be done with it. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted December 18, 2017 If the files are mostly large, the difference in speed should not be too high, so it probably does not matter too much here. As an aside though: For many small files, this can make a significant difference. Copying carries more overhead, since the copy routine has to open a filehandle for each source file, a filehandle for its target, send the contents from the source to the target, and then close both filehandles again (and maybe do some other magic too, like checking for file path uniqueness on the target side, depending on what you're using to copy them). The smaller the files become, the larger the overhead relative to the overall volume of data. If you clone the drive, it can just slurp up all its contents and spew them onto the new drive without having to do any of that extra work (unless the cloning software does something extra, but the utilities I tend to use don't). Downside is that you have to trust your cloning utility as opposed to the OS copy routine (assuming you're going to use that). BUILD LOGS: HELIOS - Latest Update: 2015-SEP-06 ::: ZEUS - BOTW 2013-JUN-28 ::: APOLLO - Complete: 2014-MAY-10OTHER STUFF: Cable Lacing Tutorial ::: What Is ZFS? ::: mincss Primer ::: LSI RAID Card Flashing TutorialFORUM INFO: Community Standards ::: The Moderating Team ::: 10TB+ Storage Showoff Topic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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