How to Clone Partition using GParted Step by Step?

About GParted

According to the Wikipedia, GParted is the abbreviation of GNOME Partition Editor. It is an official GNOME partition-editing application. It enables you to change the partition organization on a disk device while preserving the contents of the partition. It can work on x86and x86-64 based computer with Linux, Windows, or Mac OSX operating system by booting from media containing GParted Live. And a minimum of 320 MB of RAM is needed to use all features of the GParted.

With free GParted application, you can create, delete, resize, move, check and copy disk partitions and their file systems. These functions are quite useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks, and mirroring one partition with another disk imaging.

How to clone partition via GParted?

From above introduction, we can easily know that GParted is able to clone partition. To accomplish this task, it uses the mouse gesture of copy and paste. Besides, GParted copy partitions at the filesystem-level, so it is capable of cloning different sizes of partition for the same source as long as the size of the source filesystems does not surpass the size of destination partition. Now, let’s take a look at how to copy partition to another drive with GParted:

Before proceeding, please note:✎...

The target partition you need to copy and paste is not mounted;

You cannot just install GParted and start to clone partition. You have to boot your computer from GParted Live CD.

Step 1. Download GParted ISO files and burn it to a CD.

Step 2. Put the GParted Live CD into your computer CD drive. Boot Windows computer from the CD by changing boot order.

Step 3. Once you boot to GParted, you’ll get the below screen. It should be set to GParted Live by default.

Step 4. Next, you’ll get a screen asking about what keymap to use. By default, just select “Don’t touch keymap”.

Step 5. Then go for the default language, mode and other settings and press Enter.

Step 6. Then the GParted window will open. Then right click the partition you want to copy and select “Copy” button from the drop-down menu.

Step 7. Now, select a piece of unallocated space on your second disk. Right click it and choose the “Paste” Button.

Step 8. When you click the Paste button, a new window will open that requires you to define how much of the unallocated space to use. If it is not enough, you can resize the partition to make more room.

Step 9. Once everything is done, click the "Paste" button. Then "Apply" to start cloning partition to SSD or HDD.

Cannot copy partition via GParted?

Although GParted claims to be able to clone partition to another hard drive, sometimes it fails especially when cloning partition to smaller disk. Below is a real user case:

“I am trying to clone two partitions (partition 1 size is 900 GB while partition 2 size is around 14GB) to a new disk. I can copy the contents of the smaller partition from the old disk to the new one. Their partition sizes are similar. But I cannot copy the 900GB partition from the old drive to the new 500GB partition no matter what I try. The “Paste” function is grayed out and won’t let me do it. Any idea, please?”.

To solve “GParted cannot copy partition to smaller disk” problem, the most effective and direct solution might be shrinking the source partition size down to meet the destination partition size. Besides this issue, some users also report that they cannot boot from GParted Live CD.

Free GParted alternative to clone partition more easily

Since cloning partition via GParted involves too many steps and it won’t work sometimes, many users are searching for an alternative to GParted that can clone (Windows) partition to SSD/HDD more easily and effectively. Here we highly recommended AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

This free partition manager can clone partition to smaller disk in all editions of Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista. Compared with GParted, you don’t have to make a bootable CD and perform the partition clone in the WinPE environment as long as you can boot into Windows successfully. So, the clone steps are much more simple. Moreover, it offers two different partition clone methods:
✔Clone Partition Quickly: only clone the used space of source partition to the destination partition or disk. This method allows cloning partition to smaller disk or drive.
✔ Sector-by-Sector Clone: clone every sector (used and unused) from source partition to destination partition.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant,  right-click the partition you want to clone and select the "Clone Partition" tool to run partition clone. (You can also click the "Clone" main tab and select "Clone Partition".)

Step 2. In next window, select the destination partition or unallocated space to hold your source partition, and then click "Confirm".

Step 3. Then, you will enter the Confirm interface where you can check the source and destination clone location. After all is set, you can click the "Confirm" button to continue.

Notes:

• There is a "4k alignment" option. If you want to copy a partition onto a SSD (Solid State Drive), ticking this option will optimize the read and write speed on this partition. It can also extend the life of the SSD.
• If you select the "Sector-by-Sector Clone" mode, the unallocated space must be equal or larger than source partition. If you tick the option, it will be unable to resize the destination partition.

Step 4. In the next window, you can click the "Settings" button to adjust the target partition size. As you can see from the screenshot, you could adjust the size of source partition in order to fit the target partition as per your need, or directly skip the step and click "Save".

Step 5. You can preview the partition copy operating by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

The cloning process will start and you can check the cloning process. Once the process is completed successfully, you will get a congratulation window. Finally, you can check the partition layout on the destination disk will be identical to the source partition.

See, within 5 simple steps, you can clone partition successfully when Windows 11/10 is running.

✎Notes:
1. As for cloning Windows system partition, it is better to use "Migrate OS To SSD Wizard" of AOMEI software.
2. To clone Windows partition from MBR to MBR disk, MBR to GPT disk, GPT disk to MBR, or GPT to GPT, please upgrade to Professional edition.
3. To clone partition in Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012/2008/2003, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.

Final words

In this article, we not only tells how to clone partition via GParted step by step, but also provides a free alternative to clone (bootable) partition easily when GParted cannot copy partition successfully. If you are not familiar with GParted, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a great choice. It is far more than a disk and partition cloning tool. It is also a free MBR to GPT converter, SD card repair tool, etc.