[mathieumg]

Then how will it know to only use 2TB out of the 3TB on the new drive?

[Elvandil]

You will choose the new partition size in the cloner.

Or, clone the exact partition and then expand the partition with gparted in Parted Magic to fill the 2 TB's.

Or clone the partition and make a second 1 TB drive. If you keep your data on a second drive, it will be easier to back up both of them because they will be smaller, you'll have all your data together, and the drives will run chkdsk and defrag faster.

That can all be decided and changed later, too, so it does not need to be done or decided right now. Just pop in Parted magic later and shrink your big partition, if you choose.

I believe that Parted Magic's help is all online. So if you want to connect to the internet while using it, connect your intenet to a wired network card. Parted installs most cards automatically, but does not have drivers for the many wireless cards out there.

Click image for Parted Image screenshots:

[mathieumg]

Alright! I saw you edited your post to add the information I asked for, sorry if I was too quick! I will try that ASAP and let you know how it went! Thanks a lot for all the help!

[Elvandil]

OK. Good luck.

Be sure to check the "Extras" menu on the Parted Magic boot screen. You could even make that now and boot your machine with it. Unplug your drive from power so it doesn't run any more than necessary. Or you could now copy the most important files you wnt to save to a USB drive or burn them to CD or DVD with the burner program in PM.

Parted Magic will fix or recover just about anything that can go wrong with any computer. It has tests for hardware. About all it can't do is replace damaged Windows files (pretty rare, anyway). It even has a registry editor that can be added to it.

Clonezilla is on this CD, too.

[crjdriver]

Just returned from work. It looks like elvandil has answered your questions regarding booting with that drive. It is only the latest mb that support the new uefi type bios that will allow booting with the full 3tb.

I second the use of parted magic; I use it for all types of drive tasks. It is especially good for secure erasing of drives.