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Cloning a NON OS (spare) hard drive that contains dropbox etc. to a larger drive

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I have a 256Gb SSD non-os hard drive that has dropbox folders etc. on it and I have purchased a 1Tb SSD to replace this, as I'm running out of space. What is the easiest way to copy this 256Gb drive to the new 1Tb drive whilst retaining permissions, shortcuts, links etc with as little problems as possible, using my Acronis True Image 2020. Many thanks in advance for your assistance.

Operating system is Window 7 32bit, the 256Gb drive has 512 bytes/sector and is classed as Basic in Disk Management.

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Stuj, welcome to these public User Forums.

There are several different methods that you can use to migrate your data from the 256GB SSD to the new 1TB SSD.

  1. Make a Disk & Partitions backup of the 256GB SSD to an external drive.
    Shutdown and remove / replace the old SSD by the new SSD.
    Restart and recover the backup to the new SSD (leaving the old SSD as is, as a safe backup).
  2. As 1 above but make a Files & Folders backup of the 256GB SSD contents then recover this backup to the new 1TB SSD after swapping the drives.
  3. Connect the 1TB SSD externally via USB then use the Active Clone tool to duplicate the 256GB SSD to the 1TB SSD
  4. Connect the 1TB SSD externally and use the integrated Robocopy tool to copy all the files & folders from the old drive to the new one. ( robocopy d:\ f:\ /mir  where d: = the 256GB drive letter, f: = the 1TB SSD drive letter and robocopy is to mirror the contents of the source d: to the target f: drive. )

I would recommend making a full disk backup of the 256GB SSD regardless of the method you choose to use - this is your protection against any errors or mistakes!

How did this go for you? Did dropbox recognize the drive as before or did you have to reconfigure anything. I have a similar project coming up and I'd like to know what to expect. Thanks!

It worked perfectly. I ended up shutting down dropbox, then copying the files to the new drive using Robocopy and the switches below, as it keeps the file dates the same. 

robocopy S:\source D:\destination /e /dcopy:T

When you restart Dropbox and if it's been moved to a different folder location, it should ask you where it is. Alternatively if you have kept the path and drive letter the same, it should start without issue. This was a while ago, but this should be good.

 

As per the ROBOCOPY /? usage info:
/DCOPY:T :: COPY Directory Timestamps.
/e :: Copies subdirectories. Note that this option includes empty directories. 

 

 

 

THANK YOU for getting back to me. I am planning on cloning the old normal drive to an SSD and using the same drive letter so hopefully, that will work as its supposed to. I have a lot more confidence about it now. I think I will set dropbox not to start automatically so that when I boot the computer up with the new drive after the clone I can fix the drive letter assigned to it if needed first.