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How to unclone a hard drive

Chuckie59Chuckie59
in Suggestions and Feedbacks
I cloned a 2tb external hard drive to a 4tb external drive, but didn't know that it become a 2tb drive. What is the safest way to un-clone the 4tb to get the space back? I now know that I should have just backed up the files to the larger disc drive.

Comments

  • JohnnyboyGoJohnnyboyGo
    edited August 2019
    Do you want to keep the clone or is it OK to clean the entire drive. You can make a backup then.
    You can Clean the disk with Windows Diskpart. And convert it to GPT (I Guess). Google. Then format again.
  • Chuckie59Chuckie59
    The original hdd is fine, I just want to undo the clone on the 4tb drive to restore it back to 4tb. I'm not sure if just formatting it would do that. I can copy the files to it later.
  • JohnnyboyGoJohnnyboyGo
    That's why I said to use the Clean command of Windows Diskpart. That is the best way to go back to the original empty state of the drive. Then convert to GPT, partition and format. Google on how to issue the commands.
  • wssddcwssddc
    Can't you just go into Windows disk management and expand the partition to the full disk?  Such an expansion should only take seconds.  A 4tb partition doesn't need to be GPT unless you want to boot from it.
  • JohnnyboyGoJohnnyboyGo
    The organization of the partition table in the MBR limits the maximum addressable storage space of a disk to 2 TiB (232 × 512 bytes)
  • vbbrittvbbritt
    Chuckie59, First you would have to convert the disk from MBR to GPT.  The Aomei Partition Assistant provides you with a tool to accomplish that task.  Then you can also use the Partition Assistant to resize the primary partition to include all of the remaining free space on the disk to incorporate all 4TB on the disk.

    I would certainly recommend that you backup your disk before attempting the changes I mention above. 
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