How to Copy Partitions without Resize [Free Guide with Pictures]

The scenario

"I decided to take it upon myself to complete a 'simple' task in transferring a handful of partitions onto a new SSD (1TB) from a failing HDD (240GB). To fit partitions to entire disk, my clone process was:

1. I formatted the SSD through GParted under GPT (since this drive exceeds 4 partitions for MBR).

2. When creating the partitions, I was careful to match every partition I created to the partition I would transfer.

But I failed, I don't know what's wrong with the process. Should I just copy partitions without resize?"

Copy partitions without resize or fit partitions to entire disk?

Many people have the same trouble as the user above especially when cloning hard drives of different sizes. They usually feel confused and don't know whether they should choose fit partitions to the new disk or clone partitions without resize. To make better decisions, let's have a basic understanding of the two clone options in the first place.

▶ What does copy without partitions resize mean?

As the name implies, cloning without resizing partitions refers to keeping the size of source partitions, enabling you to get a duplicate of the original partition on the target disk, which seems your drive has never changed. Thus, copy partitions without resize will save you time to adapt to the new partitions.

If your target drive is smaller than the source disk, there is a high possibility of clone failure. If the destination disk size is larger, the unused space will show as unallocated space which can be used to extend the partition or create new partitions.

▶ What does fit partitions to entire disk mean?

Compared with the former one, fitting partitions to the whole drive shows different features, which means the size of partitions will be adjusted automatically to fit the whole disk. In other words, there won't be unallocated space on the new disk. From this perspective, fitting partitions to entire disk is less flexible than clone without resize partitions but it's more suitable if you plan to copy a large disk to the smaller one.

As we can see, they have their respective pros and cons, you can choose one according to your needs. If you still can't do a decision making, just try the copy partitions without resizing it in the process, and then fit partitions to entire disk if the former one doesn't work.

Freeware to copy partitions without resize

No matter which clone method you will apply, what you concern most must be the safety of your data on the hard drive. As we know, Windows has no built-in feature to clone a whole hard drive to a new one, thus, you have to resort to reliable and professional disk cloning software to ensure the data security.

Here we recommend you to use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, a free but professional cloning tool, providing Disk clone, System clone and Partition clone to meet your different needs.

You can only copy the used space to a new location via Clone disk quickly or clone every sector (whether used or unused) via Sector-by-sector clone. More importantly, this software is featured with both copy partitions without resize and fit partitions to entire disk, so you can choose either of them during the clone process.

★Notes:

If you are cloning a system disk, the standard edition only enables you to clone MBR disk to MBR. To clone MBR to GPT disk, GPT to MBR, or GPT to GPT, please upgrade to Pro edition.

If you need to clone an MBR system disk to a GPT disk, make sure your motherboard  supports UEFI. Otherwise, you will find the cloned hard drive won't boot.

Please note that all the data on the destination disk will be erased while cloning, so you can back up something important in advance.

Then, I will show you how to copy partitions without resize Windows 10 (or fit partitions to entire disk), you can download the freeware and follow the guide to have a try:

Step 1. Install a second hard drive in your computer and make it be connected and recognized or connect it via SATA-to-USB adapter as an external drive.

Step 2. Download and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Click "Clone" > "Clone Disk".

Step 3. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 4. Select another drive as the destination disk, and then click "Next".

Step 5. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to "Sector to Sector clone", and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of the SSD. 

Notes:✎...

"Copy without resizing partitions": The source disk configuration will be copied on the new disk with the same partitions size.

"Fit partitions to the entire disk": The partitions on the source disk will occupy the entire destination disk.

"Edit partitions on this disk": It allows you to adjust the size of partition manually, if you don't know what size is better, just keep the default.

Step 6. You can preview the operations you did. To save the changes, you must click "Apply" on the toolbar and "Proceed" to commit the operations.

Summary

From all above, no matter you prefer fit partitions to entire disk or copy partitions without resize, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can make both of them available via "Disk clone Wizard". Apart from it, AOMEI software is featured with many other useful functions you may be interested in, such as migrating OS to SSD without reinstalling system, converting NTFS into FAT32 without formatting, and so on. If you are using Windows Server, the server edition is always standby.