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Clone a disk that used to use Ext32 file system

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Hello. I have a NAS that formatted a disk to EXT32 file system. I moved hard drives around in my system and ended up pulling that disk out of the NAS and installing it as the data drive in my PC. I did a "quick format" of the drive in windows 7 before loading it with data.

But now I can't pull up any of the SMART drive diagnostic data, and in certain windows Admin tools/screens the drive either doesn't show up or shows up with no partitions, etc.

It works fine, shows up in MyComputer with no problems. But I was getting nervous not being able to see the SMART data, so I ordered a new drive. It will be here tomorrow.

I want to clone the old drive onto the new drive. My question is, will any of the suspect EXT32 file system data carry over? How can I ensure I get a clean NTFS file system install? Or instead of cloning should I just restore a backup archive onto the new disk?

I saw another post asking if the disk was prepared correctly, I checked the offset on my partition and it divided to 256 so I think I'm ok from that perspective.

Thanks for any help!!

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Hello Chris!

Welcome to our Forum, we're glad to greet you here! I understand your concern, and will be glad to help you.

Chris, in case your old drive is formatted to the FAT32, then you must avoid cloning and perform a data backup in order to restore it to the new NTFS drive, as cloning copies the source drive entirely, including the file system.

In case the source drive is NTFS, then you can simply clone it to the new drive.

I hope this information was useful for you. In case you still have concerns, or I haven't answered any of your questions, please, let me know, I'll gladly help.

Thank you!