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Extra free space after clone

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I have two Hard Disks exactly the same size. After I cloned one to the other, the target disk has almost 50 Gigabytes less space used than the source disk. I even changed my boot order and booted from the target disk and it still has 50 GB less space used than the original disk.

What is going on here. When I uncheck Hide System files and highlight all files and show properties from right pane of Explorer, both disks show the same spaced used within a few KBs. That makes sense, but a difference of 50GB on properites from the left pane of Explorer on disk does not make sense. Also, Disk Director show a 50GB difference. I would expect everything to be the same after a clone.

I am using Disk Director 11 and True Image 2013.

I found someone who had the same problem over two years ago but no one gave a response. I replied to that post hoping to bump the question to the top, but apparently it did not work. So that is why I am asking again as a new question.

Thanks,
Lane

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Lane, welcome to these forums.

I do not have an answer to your question other than to question whether your two HDD's are exactly the same size?  I would suspect that this is not the case unless you have two identical drives from the same manufacturer and of the same exact model and stated capacity.

They are indential. When I purchased my laptop from Dell, I selected the dual hard drive option. According to Dell they were identical. They both have exactly the same amount of total space.

Thanks,
Lane

 

Not everything is copied when cloning. For example:

System Restore points

Paul, the mystery here is in Lane's initial statement:

Lane wrote:
 After I cloned one to the other, the target disk has almost 50 Gigabytes less space used than the source disk. I even changed my boot order and booted from the target disk and it still has 50 GB less space used than the original disk.  

 

If this was simply restore point data not being cloned then the target disk should have more space than the source but the contention here is that it has 50GB less space than the source?

EDIT> Lane, just reading your post again, and in particular your topic title "Extra free space after clone" and am coming to agree with Paul that what you are seeing is correct for the default exclusions made by ATIH when cloning and what you are reporting is that your clone target has more free space than the source drive not less free space as I was reading this previously!

Paul,

Yes, the restore points turned out to be the answer to my issue. When I show protected files in Explorer, I still cannot see the difference probably because I do not have permission to access the folder. But when I browse files using Disk Director, I can clearly see that folder is almost empty on the target drive taking less than 40 MBs, and taking several GBs on the source drive. I just wish there was a way to get a summary of space used in browse files in Disk Director.

Thanks for your help.

Lane

Lane, glad to hear that this is resolved and thanks to Paul for picking up on this question.

You can use the TreeSize Free utility to get details of the sizes of all folders on the system, including those used by System Restore point data etc, which is very handy to identify exactly where space is being consumed.

You can see how much space is used by System Restore points by looking at System Properties/System Protection, highlighting C: drive and clicking the Configure button. I alway turn off System Protection as to not waste space on my drive. I do keep 10% of the space available because that is where snapshots are created during the TI backup operation.

It's been a while since I've used it but I seem to recall that the major disc drive manufacturers like Western Digital have proprietary free software that does an exact bit-for-bit clone.  No guarantees as it's been too long but you might try looking into that.

If you are wanting an identical clone (bit for bit) then you can also buy dual-bay clone docks which do not need a PC to do the cloning.

See ORICO Aluminium USB 3.0 to SATA Dual Bay Hard Drive Docking Station with Offline Clone Backup Function for 2.5 Inch & 3.5 Inch HDD SSD SATA I/ II/ III Supports UASP and 2 x 8 TB (SATA III 6Gb/s), Tool-free which will do just that.