I have my 2tb ssd in my laptop at the moment with windows slop11 on it. It's bitlocked and I cannot get my bitlocker code from my account on another pc. Can I put this drive into an enclosure on linux, erase the drive, then clone my 512gb drive with zorin already installed and running?
SSD cloneing questions.
- Thread starter Kojack
- Start date
You just cannot erase the drive - you will have to delete the existing partition(s) first then create a new partition then format the drive - I would use Gparted for this
See here - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/a...0/format-bitlocker-encrypted-disk-without-key
See here - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/a...0/format-bitlocker-encrypted-disk-without-key
The thing to remember is that cloning a 512GiB drive to a 2TB drive will leave ~1.5TB of unallocated space on the larger drive. You'll need to use gparted or similar to either expand the filesystem to the size of the drive or add new empty partitions. Which way to go is up to you, it's just a personal preference. But you can absolutely transfer everything on the smaller drive to the larger one.
Ok, so if I am understanding correctly, I can clone my 512 and then just reallocate the rest of the space to the same partition as the small drive? I think I am just going to erase my 2tb and install Zorin Fresh on it.
No. As @deb_user mentioned in post #3, if you write a clone to the drive, it will split the drive into the clone allocation, and the rest of the drive. That means the clone data and rest will not be on the same partition. The rest of the drive could be made into a separate partition, but it's not an ideal way of creating a fresh install.
To get a new clean system installed without the complications mentioned in post #3, one could backup the data on the smaller drive, install the new distro with the partitioning that one chooses, and then copy the backed up data to the new installation. There is no cloning that needs to be involved, and no split drive and separate partition that would result from using that clone.
If the installation has a common partitioning, for example: a small EFI partition, a small swap partition, and the rest of the drive as a single large partition to hold the root filesystem and home directory within that root partition, then you could copy your backed up data into your home directory to have access to it once the new installation is up.
The advantage of the single large partition holding the root filesystem is that the user is not restricted by space when installing software subsequently over the life of the installation and its upgrades. If, on the other hand, one makes separate partitions for root, and say, for home, limitations would apply. For example if root is made to be 50G, then there's a much greater chance of limiting the amount of software one can install, the limit being that 50G size that the root partition can hold for the system files that need to be there. On the other hand, with a 2TB drive, one could have a 500M EFI partition, a 5G swap partition, and nearly 1.85TB left for root and home, where the limitations of a separate root partition accepting software are enormously diminished. The maths is clear.
There may be reasons for other partitioning arrangement than in the example above, but the point is to have reasons for what one does so the future is less constrained than it otherwise might be.
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It is possible to expand the root partition to include the entire disk, it's not difficult. You do have to boot from a different drive which has gparted, however. You cannot expand a drive holding the current running OS, but you can from a different boot drive. IMO a better method would be to make a timeshift backup of the original drive, including everything, do a fresh install on the new drive, and then restore the timeshift backup to the new drive. That would require another drive to hold the timeshift backup, of course. There are multiple ways to get it done.
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